i8 HOME LIFE ON AN OSTRICH FARM. 



blankets of a beautiful artistic terra-cotta colour are 

 draped in folds worthy of an Arab burnous. Occasion- 

 ally some of the red ochre with which the blankets are 

 coloured is daubed over the face and head, the effect 

 being rather startling. The slender, bronze-like arms 

 are often completely hidden from wrist to elbow by a 

 long spirally-twisted brass wire, looking like a succes- 

 sion of the thinnest bangles quite close together. 



We found a comfortable little furnished house at 

 Walmer, in which we spent the first five months after 

 our arrival. It was just a convenient size for our small 

 party, consisting, besides my husband and myself, of 

 our two English servants, and Toto, a beautiful collie. 

 The rooms were all on the ground floor ; shaded, and 

 indeed almost darkened, by a broad verandah running 

 the whole length of the front. This absence of suffi- 

 cient light in nearly all colonial houses strikes the 

 new-comer unpleasantly ; but one gets used to it, and 

 in the heat and strong glare of the Cape summer the 

 darkened rooms are restful and comforting. At one 

 end of our verandah we made a little fernery, which 

 we kept green and bright with trophies brought home 

 from some of our longer walks and rides — also an 

 aviary, the little inhabitants of which kept up a 

 constant chorus, always pleasant to hear, and never 

 loud enough to be troublesome. The Cape canary is 

 a greenish bird, with a very pretty soft note, quite 

 different from the piercing screech of his terrible yellow 

 brother in English homes. Another soft-voiced little 

 singer is the rooibeck, or red-beak, a wee thing very 



