A STREAM IN CAPE COLONY 91 



favourite pool. Whichever way one sauntered, the 

 deep kloofs and valleys and the savage masses of 

 mountain were full of beauty — sometimes soft and 

 peaceful, at others wild and inexpressibly forbidding. 

 In the more open valleys the flat alluvial bottoms near 

 the river favoured a growth of thorny acacias, thick 

 groves of which at spring-time put forth a bravery of 

 yellow plush-like blossoms, and filled the warm air 

 with sweetest perfume. In these groves the pleasant 

 cooing of throngs of doyes was always to be heard. 

 Many of the Cape doves and pigeons are very 

 beautiful. In our valley the handsome Bush dove, 

 the Olive dove, the sweet "Laughing" dove, the 

 Damara dove, and that beautiful and diminutive 

 creature, j^na cajjensis — the '' Namaqua duif " of the 

 Boers — were almost certain to be found. 



Towards Christmas-time the promise of the rains 

 brings many a notable bird of plumage south. That 

 great army of the cuckoos, which flocks to the very 

 shores of the Indian Ocean during this season, sent 

 its heralds and stragglers even to our remote valleys. 

 By our stream, and in the deep jungly kloofs around, 

 were to be seen, resting and recruiting from their 

 weary passage, the dark-plumaged " Noisy cuckoo," 

 with white barred tail — "Le Coucou Criard," Le Vail- 

 lant, the old French naturalist, calls it — the Solitary 

 cuckoo, and that perfect little gem of colour, the 

 Pidric cuckoo, conspicuous by the melancholy note 



