CHAPTER XI. 



HOW WE FARED. 



Angora goats — Difficulty of keeping meat— The plague of flies — Rations 

 — Our store — Barter — Fowls— Chasing a dinner — Fowls difficult 

 to rear — Secretary birds as guardians of the poultry-yard —Jacob 

 in the Karroo — He comes down in the world — He dies— Antelopes 

 — A springbok hunt— The Queen's birthday in the Karroo — 

 Colonial dances — Our klipspringer — Superstition about hares — • 

 Game birds — Paanw — Knorhaan — Namaqua partridges — Porcu- 

 pines — A short-lived pet — Indian corn — Stamped mealies— Whole- 

 meal bread — Plant used for making bread rise — Substitutes for 

 butter — Pritmbesjes — A useful tree — Wild honey — The honey bird 

 — Enemies of bees — Moth in bees' nests — Good coffee — Sour milk. 



" How did you live ? " is a question we have very often 

 been asked by friends, who, evidently thinking that our 

 fare on that far-away South African farm must neces- 

 sarily have been of the roughest, and that from a 

 gastronomic point of view we were deeply to be pitied, 

 have been quite surprised to hear that on the whole we 

 lived very well. 



To be sure there were drawbacks. In the first place, 

 however simply you may live in the Cape Colony, you 

 cannot possibly live cheaply ; for import duties are 

 ruinously heavy, and almost everything, with the ex- 

 ception of meat, has to be imported. Wheat, for 

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