88 KLOOF AND KARROO. 



and other cactus-like plants abound, and here and 

 there that pest of the Cape farmer, the prickly pear, 

 with its golden delicious-looking fruit, flourishes all 

 too well. The prickly pear, that Mexican marauder, 

 is not indigenous to South Africa, and no one 

 seems to know quite when it first made its appearance. 

 It propagates and spreads itself with alarming 

 readiness, and is most difficult of extermination. 

 The mellow-looking fruit is covered with a dense 

 growth of the tiniest, most silky-looking spikes; and, 

 once the confiding stranger allows these to come in 

 contact with his skin, he is not soon likely to forget 

 their poisonous and insidious properties. If these 

 spikelets are scraped from the fruit, it can be eaten 

 without further trouble, but it is a disappointing 

 morceau, when all is said and done. Cattle and 

 other stock that once take to eating this fruit, as 

 they will do in time of drought, suffer frightfully ; 

 their mouths become literally masses of inflammation, 

 and death is not seldom the penalty. Upon some 

 farms, this baleful plant has spread to such an 

 extent as to make the land almost worthless, and 

 once it attains .a stronghold, it is well-nigh impossible 

 of extermination, neither fire, poison, nor the knife 

 effecting its downfall. One of our great pleasures is 

 to ride up the long deep kloofs that pierce the 

 mountains, and inspect our horse and donkey- 

 breeding establishment ; this lies some miles away 

 from the house, and the stock wander over a large 

 extent of valley, ravine, and mountain. Much of the 

 lower parts of these hills is clothed with rooi-grass 

 (red grass), in which the rooi rheboks, following that 

 curious protective instinct of nature, find shelter and 

 feeding ground. Their cousins, the vaal (grey) 



