LIFE ON A MOUNTAIN FARM. 87 



finds around, are models of strength and symmetry. 

 All day as he works he sings loudly to himself. I 

 have promised him a pair of second-hand military 

 trousers, and he is almost too effusive in his 

 gratitude and affection ; yet I cannot help liking 

 the merry, good-tempered soul. We jabber together 

 'Occasionally, and laugh mutually over our lingual 

 ■difficulties. I gather from this Basuto that his 

 ancestors, a generation back, found their building 

 capabilities of great assistance in protecting them- 

 selves from the attacks of Moselikatse and his 

 destroying hordes of Amabaka-Zulus, then ravaging 

 the Transvaal and adjacent territories. 



In this and most other portions of Cape Colony 

 away from the southern timber belt, great timber 

 trees are unknown. In the bottoms of the valleys, 

 dense groves of mimosa {Acacia horrida) are found, 

 and in the kloofs and smaller ravines the wild olive 

 {Olea verrucosa), the kaffir plum [Harpepphyllum 

 caffrum), and very occasionally the cedar boom 

 ( Widdringtonia junipernoides) , and the willow by the 

 rivers; but the English eye, scanning the average up- 

 country farm at the Cape, searches in vain for the 

 tall trees and spreading foliage of the Old Country. 

 Tree planting is, however, coming more and more 

 into vogue, and will effect great changes in this 

 respect. Our mountains possess a large variety of 

 bush and shrubbery ; there is a wealth of flowering 

 and fruiting shrubs. The goats find upon the 

 mountain-sides quantities of spekboom and other 

 fattening plants ; as for flowers, there is no limit to 

 them. Heaths, orchids, lilies, amaryllids, irids, wild 

 geranium, and pelargoniums, in particular, are to be 

 found in astonishing profusion. Aloes, euphorbia, 



