By ANNIE MARTIN WITH TEN ILLUSTRATIONS NEW YORK D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1891 Authorized Edition. To T. M. IN REMEMBRANCE OF OUR SOUTH AFRICAN LIFE....

Some portions of the chapters on "Ostriches" and "Bobby" have already appeared, in an abridged form, in the Saturday Review . Part of the chapter on "The Climate of the Karroo" has also appeared in the St. James's Gazette . By the kind permission of the editors of both papers I am now enabled to reprint these pages. A. M....

Early ambitions realized — Voyage to South Africa — Cape Town and Wynberg — Profusion of flowers — Port Elizabeth — Christmas decorations  — Public library — Malays — Walmer — Hottentot huts — Our little house —  Pretty gardens — Honey-suckers — Flowers of Walmer Common — Wax-creeper  — Ixias — Scarlet heath — Natal lilies — "Upholstery flower" — Ticks —  Commence ostrich-farming — Counting the birds — A ride after an ostrich. In the year 1881, leaving our native land wrapped in the cold fogs of

Friendliness of South African birds and beasts — Our Secretary bird — Ungainly appearance of Jacob — His queer ways — Tragic fate of a kitten — A persecuted fowl — Our Dikkops — A baby buffalo — Wounded buffalo more dangerous than lion — A lucky stumble — Hunter attacked by "rogue" buffalo — A midnight ride — Followed by a lion — Toto — A pugnacious goose — South African climate dangerous to imported dogs — Toto and the crows — Animals offered by Moors in exchange for Toto. South Africa is the l

We move up-country — Situation of farm — Strange vegetation of Karroo district —  Karroo plant —  Fei-bosch  —  Brack-bosch  — Our flowers —  Spekboom  — Bitter aloes — Thorny plants —  Wacht-een-Beetje  — Ostriches killed by prickly pear — Finger-poll — Wild tobacco fatal to ostriches — Carelessness of colonists — Euphorbias — Candle-bush. Our five months at Walmer passed so pleasantly, that in spite of my longing to be settled on a place of our own, and the impatience I felt to enter on all th

Building operations — A plucking — Ugliness of Cape houses — Our rooms — Fountain in sitting-room a failure — Drowned pets — Decoration of rooms — Colonist must be Jack-of-all-trades — Cape waggons — Shooting expeditions — Strange tale told by Boer. On our first arrival in the Karroo we were unable to take up our abode at once on our own farm; the best of the three small Dutch houses on it being little better than a hut, and consisting but of two small and badly-built rooms; with mud floors and

Cape Colony much abused — Healthy climate — Wonderful cures of consumption — Karroo a good place for sanatorium — Rarity of illness and accidents — The young colonist — An independent infant — Long droughts — Hot winds — Dust storms — Dams — Advantage of possessing good wells — Partiality of thunderstorms — Delights of a brack roof — Washed out of bed — After the rain — Our horses — Effects of rain indoors —  Opslaag  — The Cape winter — What to wear on Karroo farms. OF all portions of the globe

An unwilling ride — First sight of an ostrich farm — Ridiculous mistakes about ostriches — Decreased value of birds and feathers — Chicks — Plumage of ostriches — A frightened ostrich — The plucking-box — Sorting feathers — Voice of the ostrich — Savage birds — "Not afraid of a dicky-bird!" — Quelling an ostrich — Birds killed by men in self-defence — Nests — An undutiful hen — Darby and Joan — A disconsolate widower — A hen-pecked husband — Too much zeal — Jackie — Cooling the eggs — The white-

Vagaries of an incubator — Hatching the chicks — A bad egg — Human foster-mothers — Chicks difficult to rear — "Yellow-liver" — Cruel boys — Chicks herded by hen ostrich — Visit to Boer's house — A carriage full of ostriches — "The melancholy Jaques" — Ostriches at sea — A stampede — Runaway birds — Branding — Stupidity of ostriches — Accidents — Waltzing and fighting — Ostrich soup — An expensive quince — A feathered Tantalus — Strange things swallowed by ostriches — A court-martial — The ostri

Meerkats plentiful in the Karroo — Their appearance — Intelligence — Fearlessness — Friendship for dogs — A meerkat in England — Meerkat an inveterate thief — An owl in Tangier — Taming full-grown meerkat — Tiny twins — A sad accident — Different characters of meerkats — The turkey-herd — Bob and the meerkat — "The Mouse." The little meerkats were surely created for the express purpose of being made into pet animals. Certainly no prettier or funnier little live toys could possibly be imagined. N

Bobby's babyhood — Insatiable appetite — Variety of noises made by Bobby — His tameness — Narrow escape from drowning — A warlike head-gear — Bobby the worse for drink — His love of mischief — He disarms his master — Meerkat persecuted by Bobby — Bobby takes to dishonest ways — He becomes a prisoner — His clever tricks — Death of Bobby. "Out of question thou wert born in a merry hour." Bobby was our tame crow. We brought him up from earliest infancy; indeed our acquaintance with him commenced wh

A retrospective vision — Phillis in her domain — Her destructiveness — Her ideas on personal adornment — The woes of a mistress — Eye-service — Abrupt departure of Phillis — Left in the lurch — Nancy and her successors — Cure of sham sickness — The thief's dose — Our ostrich-herd — A bride purchased with cows — English and natives at the Cape — Character of Zulus and Kaffirs. "Man's work is from sun to sun, But woman's work is never done." It is always amusing, for those who have tried housekeep

Angora goats — Difficulty of keeping meat — The plague of flies — Rations — Our store — Barter — Fowls — Chasing a dinner — Fowls difficult to rear — Secretary birds as guardians of the poultry-yard — Jacob in the Karroo — He comes down in the world — He dies — Antelopes — A springbok hunt — The Queen's birthday in the Karroo — Colonial dances — Our klipspringer — Superstition about hares — Game birds —  Paauw  —  Knorhaan  — Namaqua partridges — Porcupines — A short-lived pet — Indian corn — St

Leopard drowned in a well — Baboons — Egyptian sacred animals on Cape farms — "Adonis" — A humiliating retreat — A baby baboon — Clever tricks performed by baboons — Adonis as a _Voorlooper_ — A four-handed pointsman — Sarah — A baboon at the Diamond Fields — Adonis's shower-bath — His love of stimulants — His revengeful disposition —  Pelops the dog-headed — Horus — _Aasvogels_ — Goat-sucker — The butcher-bird's larder — Nest of the golden oriole — The kapok bird —  Snakes in houses — A puff-ad

Hospitality of Cape colonists — Cheating and jealousy in business —  Comfortless homes — Spoilt children — Education — The "Schoolmaster" —  Convent schools — A priest-ridden nation — The _Nachtmaal_ — Old French names — A South African duke in Paris — Fine-looking men — Fat women —  Ignorance of _Vrouws_ — Boers unfriendly to English — A mean man. There is much to be admired in the character of those decidedly unpolished diamonds, the colonial-born, English-speaking inhabitants of the Karroo. T

Recalled to England — Regrets and farewells — Cape horses lacking in intelligence — "Old Martin" — A chapter of accidents — A horse "after Velasquez" — The Spy's revenge — Virtues and faults of Cape horses  — Horse-sickness — Good-bye to Swaylands — Kaffir crane — The voyage home — Dogs in durance — St. Helena — A visit to Longwood — Home again. At last, after several busy and most enjoyable years of ostrich-farming life, the time came when—our presence being required in England—we bade farewell