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Major and Mrs. Boyd Horsbrugh,


IN THE GUARDS VAN.


By Major and Mrs. Boyd Horsbrugh.


It seems somehow decreed that when I am travelling it

should always be my fate to have birds with me. I have brought

birds home from South Africa on three occasions, from America two

or three times, and from various parts of the earth, a cage or two

has always been part of my luggage.


It is all very well, in our little island, to feed and water your

birds before you start and to put them in charge of the guard while

you sit comfortably in a smoking carriage. But on a journey of

days, down the long rolling Karroo where the train crawls its thump¬

ing clanging way at fifteen miles an hour, until you swing down the

winding curves of the Hex Biver Valley, and Cape Town lies at your

feet at last;—or across Europe, with days and nights to pass before

even Calais is in sight—the problem then is a very different one.


And so I travel in the guard’s van ; strictly forbidden it is

true on all railways and in all countries, and many and varied are

the experiences I have had.


In 1906 I came down from Potchefstroom in the Transvaal to

Cape Town, bringing with me a large consignment of Violet-eared

and Black-faced Waxbills, Lovebirds, Melba, Quail Finches, Weavers,

Chats, Bobin Chats, and a crowd of other birds.


It is a weary journey, especially to one who has often made

it (once during the war I did the greater part in a covered coal truck);

and the way by Fourteen Streams to Kimberley and De Aar and

then through the everlasting Karroo to the Cape, becomes one dread

nightmare of dust and glare, changing at nightfall it is true to the

wonderful colours that are the glory of Africa.


“ Slowly the desert changes.”


On this occasion I travelled for the first day in luxury, as I

had a deck chair set out and an empty guard’s van all to myself.

I had moreover a sympathetic guard, who was greatly interested in

my birds and who helped me to sort mealworms, to cut up fruit and

to concoct the various messes so well known to any aviculturist.


At night I went to the dining-car in the front of the train and

then to my sleeping-berth. This was all very well, going through



