Six Months at the Cape

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Robert Michael Ballantyne. Six Months at the Cape

Letter 1 “A Life on the Ocean Wave.”

Letter 2. Hunting Springboks on the Karroo

Letter 3. Somerset—The British Settlers—Original “Owners”—Native Church-Going

Letter 4. Adventures with Ostriches

Letter 5. More about Ostriches—Karroo Gardens—A Ride with Bonny—Sketching under Difficulties—Anecdotes and Incidents

Letter 6. Over the Plains—Lion and Tiger Reminiscences—Frontier Forces and Escaped Convicts—Monkeys and Prickly Pears—A Veteran Settler’s Experiences of Kafir Warfare—Story of the Dutch Farmers’ Rising in 1815

Letter 7. Lion-Hunting, etcetera, in the Early Days—Bushmen and their Troubles

Letter 8. Rain! Rain! Rain!—Baboons River—Seahorse Kloof—We hunt the Hills on Horseback in spite of Rain—Floods and Accidents—Part from Hobson—Mail-Carts and Diamond-Diggers

Letter 9. Crossing the Great Fish River—Travelling at the Cape as it is to be—Grahamstown, her Early Struggles and Present Prosperity

Letter 10. Salem—A Peculiar Picnic—Polo under Difficulties—Lecturing and Singing—Sporting at Night

Letter 11. Algoa Bay—Kafirs on the Coast—Difficulties Regarding Servants

Letter 12. Port Elizabeth—Algoa Bay—Diamonds—Kafir Nobility

Letter 13. The “Cape Doctor”—The Capetown Mine—Mules, Literature, and Customs-Officials

Letter 14. Stellenbosch, etcetera

Отрывок из книги

To start for the hunting-field at seven in the morning in a carriage and six, smacks of royalty and sounds luxurious, but in South Africa there are drawbacks connected therewith.

Hobson’s farm is, as I have said, on the Karroo—those vast plains which at some seasons resemble a sandy desert, and at others are covered with rich verdure and gorgeous flowers. They are named after the small, succulent, Karroo-bush, which represents the grass of other plains, and is excellent food for cattle, sheep, and ostriches.

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for he was silent, though tremendously excited. His brown rags fluttered in the self-made breeze, and his brown pony scrambled over the ground quite as fast as Rob Roy. We reached a clump of underwood in time, and pulled up, panting, beside a bush which was high enough to conceal the horses.

Anxiously we watched here, and carefully did I look to my rifle,—a double-barrelled breech-loading “Soaper-Henry,”—to see that it was loaded and cocked, and frequently did I take aim at stump and stone to get my hand and eye well “in,” and admiringly, with hope in every lineament, did Michael observe me.

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