8o HOME LIFE ON AN OSTRICH FARM. 



making everybody tired, languid, head-achy and cross. 

 Indeed, excessive irritability seems to be the general 

 result of hot winds in all parts of the world ; in Egypt, 

 for instance, there is never so much crime among the 

 natives as while the khamseen is blowing ; every out- 

 break of the Arabs in Algiers invariably occurs during 

 an extra bad sirocco ; and in a Spanish family I knew 

 in Havana there obtained a very sensible rule, unani- 

 mously adopted to avoid collisions of temper, i.e., on the 

 days of an especially venomous hot wind peculiar to 

 Cuba an unbroken silence was maintained ; no member 

 of the family, on any pretence whatever, speaking to 

 another. Even our pets were sulky on a hot wind day ; 

 and as for the ostriches, tijey were deplorable objects 

 indeed as they stood gasping for breath, with pendent 

 wings, open bills, and inflated throats, the pictures of 

 imbecile dejection. In fact, everything human, four- 

 footed, and feathered, in the whole Karroo, was as 

 thoroughly unhappy as it could well be ; with the sole 

 exception of myself. My spirits, instead of falling 

 below zero, would always rise in proportion as the sur- 

 rounding air became more like the breath of a furnace ; 

 this was not owing, as may perhaps be supposed, to the 

 possession of so rare a sweetness of temper as to render 

 me happy under even the most adverse circumstances, 

 but simjily to a real and intense enjoyment of that 



weather which everyone else hated. While T , 



closing every door and window as tightly as possible 

 (which, however, is not saying much), would retire to 

 his bath, there to spend a couple of hours in company 



