A SPORTING SAUNTER. 139 



handsome birds ; they have not yet perceived me, 

 but directly I betray myself, they bustle off on strong 

 and noisy pinions. My gun is up, and with the 

 report, the nearer bird turns over in mid-air, and 

 falls heavily to earth, its fellow somehow escaping 

 the second barrel, much to my disgust. Below the 

 rocky cliffs, just where the pigeon fell, the wild 

 geranium, or pelargonium, grows in bewildering 

 luxuriance, and, being retrieverless, I have some 

 difficulty, wading through the flowers, thick and 

 middle high, before I pick up my spoil ; at length 

 it is secured and I resume my march. The kloof 

 lying before me is here 200 yards wide, and is 

 shut in on either hand by dark brown frowning 

 hills, their sides here and there lit up by ruddy 

 splashes of lichen and the blood-red flower spikes 

 of the aloe. A stream of clear water, down which 

 I note the swift flash — mazarin-blue and red — of 

 a kingfisher, runs through. The rich bottom soil 

 is gay with flowering shrubs and bushes, and — 

 besides the pelargoniums, brilliant heaths, ixias, 

 gladioli, and other irids — amaryllids, orchids, and 

 other flowers, bewildering in their splendour and 

 their plenty, star the ground. 



The flora of the Cape, perhaps the richest in 

 the world, seems created in truth but to blush 

 unseen. At home it is almost unknown, yet 

 English botanists, if placed in a South African 

 mountain kloof, or upon the boundless karroo, 

 would give their eyes and ears for the beauty 

 around them at certain seasons. Proceeding quietly, 

 in a few hundred y^rds, I come upon four or five 

 more pigeons, sunning themselves upon a rocky 

 krantz ; my powder this time proves straighter, and 



