32 ADVENTURES IN SOUTH AFRICA. 



CHAPTER II. 



Mysteries of Inspanning— Cape Wagon and its Farnitare — Departure 

 from Grahamstown — My head Servant leaves me— Impassable State 

 of the Boads— My Wagon in a Fix — Change of Route— Singular In- 

 stinct of the Honey-bird. 



On the 23d of October, 1843, having completed my 

 final arrangements, and collected and settled all out- 



the waters, " they seem to stand like guardian Naiads of the strand." 

 Another tribe of plants, which particularly delighted me from old as- 

 BociationB, though not so striking as many of its neighbors for perfume 

 and brilliancy, was composed of several varieties of the light, airy fern, 

 or bracken, which, whether gracefully overshadowing the mossy stones, 

 eternally moistened by the bubbling spray of the stream, which they 

 kissed as it danced along, or vailing the gray licfa en-clad masses of rock 

 in the hollows higher up, strongly reminded me of those so conspicuous- 

 ly adorning the wild glens in the mountains of my native land. Besides 

 these, a thousand other gay flowers deck the hills and plains wherever 

 the eye can fall. Endless varieties of the ixia, the hiemanthus, the 

 amaryllis, the marigold, and a number of everlasting flowers, are scat- 

 tered around with a lavish hand; also the splendid protea, whose 

 sweets never fail to attract swarms of the insect tribes, on which sev- 

 eral bright kinds of fly-catchers, their plumage glancing in the noonday 

 sun, are constantly preying. Further down these water-courses, in the 

 dense, shady ravines, the jungle is ornamented with long, tangled fes- 

 toons of different creepers, among which the wild jessamine ranks fore- 

 most, hanging in fragrant garlands amid the shaggy lichens, and bunch- 

 es of bright orange-colored mistletoe, for which the forests of Africa, in 

 the vicinity of her sea-coasts, are so remarkable. While touching on 

 the floral beauties of the hills more immediately adjoining the sea- 

 coast, I may remark that here are the great nurseries for heaths and 

 geraniums. As the traveler advances up the country, these gr&dually 

 disappear, and, together with the animal kingdom, the vegetable world 

 assumes enturely new features ; the colonial forest-trees and bushes, 

 herbs and plants, being succeeded by a vast and endless world of love- 

 liness ; unseen, unknown, untrodden, save by those varied multitudes 

 of stupendous, curious, and beautiful quadruBeds, whose forefathers 

 have roamed its mighty solitudes from primeval ages, and with whom 

 I afterward became so intimately acquainted. 



