Africa 273 



less than forty-five or fifty feet in circumference. They 

 swarmed with gray hornbills, purple rollers, brilliantly 

 colored bee eaters, and agama lizards. Although we 

 had seen big baobabs at Mombasa and elsewhere in East 

 Africa, these giants at Dakar certainly stand out in mem- 

 ory. 



At Cape Town, after visiting the splendid South African 

 Museum, the lovely botanical garden at Kirstenbosch, the 

 only place where the famous silver trees are still to be seen, 

 and with a superb collection of Proteas and heaths, we 

 went again to the University at Stellenbosch, and then set 

 forth on a long tour. We hired a Dodge truck, a sort of 

 delivery-wagon affair, which carried all our goods and 

 chattels — as well as shovels, for we knew the roads would 

 be bad, some canned goods, and other odds and ends. 

 My daughter Julia rode in this with one of our Boer 

 drivers so that she could help him by taking a turn at the 

 wheel. The rest of us rode in another car. Peg helping with 

 the driving of this one. Leaving Cape Town we started 

 straight south, crossing the lovely Sir Laurie's Pass, for 

 our first destination was the Bontebok Reserve at Bredas- 

 dorp. This strikingly beautiful antelope, the bontebok, 

 occurred only in a region which is now all farming country, 

 and thanks to the Albertyn family some of them had been 

 preserved on one of their farms. Finally the government 

 bought a considerable area of the Strandveldt, fenced it, and 

 twenty-three of the antelopes were successfully moved 

 there. By now there are probably two hundred individuals 

 and the herd is thriving. We motored on to Mossel Bay and 

 saw the sea-lion colony on rocks only a few miles from 

 the city. This spectacular herd is capable of development 



