An unwilling ride — First sight of an ostrich farm — Ridiculous mistakes about ostriches — Decreased value of birds and feathers — Chicks — Plumage of ostriches — A frightened ostrich — The plucking-box — Sorting feathers — Voice of the ostrich — Savage birds — "Not afraid of a dicky-bird!" — Quelling an ostrich — Birds killed by men in self-defence — Nests — An undutiful hen — Darby and Joan — A disconsolate widower — A hen-pecked husband — Too much zeal — Jackie — Cooling the eggs — The white-necked crow — Poisoning jackals — Ostrich eggs in the kitchen — A quaint old writer on ostriches — A suppliant bird — Nest destroyed by enraged ostrich — An old bachelor.

A Few years before my marriage, having, as usual, fled the terrors of the English winter, I was with a friend in Egypt. And one morning this friend and I stood in the court of the HÔtel du Nil in Cairo; preparing to mount donkeys and start on a photographing expedition to Heliopolis (the "On" of the Scriptures), and Matariyeh, one of the supposed resting-places of the Holy Family on their flight into Egypt. The fussy, bustling little German manager of the hotel, with his usual paternal care for his guests, was commending us, in a long and voluble Arabic speech, to the special care and attention of the donkey-boys; with numerous minute instructions, all unintelligible to us, as to our route, etc. Then, just as we had mounted, he turned to us and said, "I have told them to show you something more on the way back, something very interesting." "What is it?" we were about to ask; but before we could get the words out, the ubiquitous little man had bustled off to other business; and we ourselves were flying at a headlong pace down the narrow Arab street, closely pursued by our impetuous donkey-boys; who, anxious to make an imposing start, urged on our animals, not only with savage yells and blows, but also with frequent and cruel digs from the sharp points of our camera's tripod stand.

Even after we had left the town far behind us, and our tyrants, for lack of an admiring crowd before whom to exhibit us, allowed us to settle down into a peaceful trot, it was quite useless to look to them for any information concerning this promised interesting sight; for our few words of Algerian Arabic did not avail in Egypt; and as for the European vocabulary of the donkey-boys, it was, as usual, strictly limited to an accurate knowledge of all the bad words in English, French and German. N.B.—A donkey-boy is never promoted to the dignity of being called a donkey-man, but, however old and grey he may have grown in the service, always retains the juvenile appellation.

On arriving at Heliopolis, our ungratified curiosity was soon forgotten in the interest of seeing that venerable obelisk which once, in all probability, looked down on the wedding procession of Joseph and the daughter of "Potipherah, priest of On;" and the sun gave us some good pictures of that sole remaining relic of the city where he himself was formerly worshipped. We spent a long morning at Heliopolis and Matariyeh; and it was not until we had proceeded some distance along the dusty road leading back to Cairo, that we suddenly recollected there was yet one more sight on our programme. The sun was blazing down fiercely on us; we were very tired; longing visions of the HÔtel du Nil luncheon, the hour for which had already come, filled our minds; and most devoutly did we hope the donkey-boys might forget they had something more to show us, and—possibly being hungry themselves—take us straight home. But no! suddenly our reluctant donkeys were abruptly turned from the homeward course on which they were trotting so merrily; and by main force pushed into a particularly uninviting path branching off at right angles from the road. We made one desperate effort to turn them back; but our tormentors flew to their heads, and, dragging, pushing, almost lifting them along, applied the tripod's spikes with fresh energy. In vain did we expostulate; explaining piteously, with all the powers of pantomime at our command, that we were tired and hungry, and wanted to go back to the hotel; that we would come and see this interesting sight, whatever it was, tomorrow, bookra—that favourite word of the procrastinating Orientals, which, like the maÑana of the Spaniards, soon becomes hatefully familiar from constant hearing, and which is second only to the terrible baksheesh! The relentless donkey-boys, beyond chuckling over our disappointment, took no notice whatever of our appeals; and on we had to go at a rapid gallop, stirring up dense clouds of the blinding, choking, evil-smelling Egyptian dust; and realizing, as did Mark Twain when ascending the Pyramid, how powerless one is in the hands of Arabs, who surely, with such iron wills, ought to be good mesmerists. Resigning ourselves at last to our fate with the patience of despair, we tried, though with but languid interest, to find out what we were going to see; but for a long time could get nothing intelligible from the donkey-boys, who only enjoyed our mystification. At last one of them, struck by a bright idea, pointed to J——'s hat, in which was an ostrich-feather; and we guessed at once that the Khedive's ostrich farm, which we knew was somewhere in the neighbourhood of Cairo, was the object of our unwilling ride. Here was another disappointment! Not even a ruined mosque, picturesque Arab house, or other possible subject for the camera, to reward us for our fatigue and discomfort; nothing but dry, barren-looking land, ugly modern European buildings, and ungainly birds! We walked hurriedly, and with great indifference, past the rows of camps, each with its pair of breeding-birds; felt little regret on being denied entrance to the incubator-rooms, which, happening to contain young chicks, were closed to the public; and rejoiced exceedingly when, our task done, and our tyrants appeased by our complete subjugation, we were at last on our way back to Cairo.

Thus, in weariness and indifference, I viewed an ostrich farm for the first time. Could I but have had one vision of the happy home, situated among just such surroundings, which awaited me in the future, with what different eyes would I have looked on all the minutest details of a daily life destined one day to be mine! How eagerly would I have bribed the custodian of the incubators for just one peep at the little rough-coated baby ostriches, if I had known what numbers of these comical wee things were in future to be my carefully-tended nurslings! And when T——, anxious to compare notes, sometimes asks me how this or that was managed on the Khedive's farm, and I am unable to give accurate information, I still regret that lost opportunity; and blush at the remembrance of the base longing for luncheon, to which, I fear, the want of observation was chiefly due.

It is rather surprising to find how little is known in England about ostrich-farming. Any information on the subject seems quite new to the hearers; and the strangest questions are sometimes asked—as, for instance, whether ostriches fly; whether they bite; whether we ever ride or drive them, etc. It is always taken for granted that a vicious bird administers his kick backwards, like a horse; and there seems still to be a very general belief in those old popular errors of which the natural history of these creatures possesses more than the average share. If you look at the picture of an ostrich, you will be sure to find, in nine cases out of ten, that the drawing is ludicrously incorrect; the bird being almost invariably represented with three toes instead of two; and with a tail consisting of a large and magnificent bunch of wing-feathers, the finest and longest of "prime whites." Farmers would only be too thankful if their birds had such tails, instead of the short, stiff, scrubby tuft of inferior feathers which in reality forms the caudal appendage.

Each of my friends and relatives, when first told, at the time of our engagement, that T—— was "an ostrich-farmer," received the intelligence with an amused smile; and the clergyman at whose church we were married seemed quite taken aback on obtaining so novel and unexpected an answer to his question, during the vestry formalities, as to T——'s vocation in life. He hesitated, pen in hand, for some time; made T—— repeat and explain the puzzling word; and at last only with evident reluctance inscribed it in the church books.

In the early days of ostrich-farming splendid fortunes were made. Then, feathers were worth £100 per lb., the plumes of one bird at a single plucking realizing on an average £25. For a good pair of breeding-birds £400, or even £500, was no uncommon price; and little chicks, only just out of the egg, were worth £10 each. Indeed, the unhatched eggs have sometimes been valued at the same amount. But, since the supply has become so much greater than the demand, things are sadly changed for the farmers; our best pair of ostriches would not now sell for more than £12, and experience has taught us to look for no higher sum than thirty shillings for the feathers of the handsomest bird at one plucking. At the same time, if a lady wishes to buy a good feather in London or Paris, she has to pay nearly the same price as in former times.[4]

There are not many young animals prettier than a little ostrich-chick during the first few weeks of life. It has such a sweet, innocent baby-face, such large eyes, and such a plump, round little body. All its movements are comical, and there is an air of conceit and independence about the tiny creature which is most amusing. Instead of feathers, it has a little rough coat which seems all made up of narrow strips of material, of as many different shades of brown and grey as there are in a tailor's pattern-book, mixed with shreds of black; while the head and neck are apparently covered with the softest plush, striped and coloured just like a tiger's skin on a small scale. On the whole, the little fellow, on his first appearance in the world, is not unlike a hedgehog on two legs, with a long neck.

One would like these delightful little creatures to remain babies much longer than they do; but they grow quickly, and with their growth they soon lose all their prettiness and roundness; their bodies become angular and ill-proportioned, a crop of coarse, wiry feathers sprouts from the parti-coloured strips which formed their baby-clothes, and they enter on an ugly "hobbledehoy" stage, in which they remain for two or three years.

A young ostrich's rough, bristly, untidy-looking "chicken-feathers" are plucked for the first time when he is nine months old; they are stiff and narrow, with very pointed tips, and their ugly appearance gives no promise of future beauty. They do not look as if they could be used for anything but making feather brooms. In the second year they are rather more like what ostrich-feathers ought to be, though still very narrow and pointed; and not until their wearer is plucked for the third time have they attained their full width and softness.

During the first two years the sexes cannot be distinguished, the plumage of all being of a dingy drab mixed with black; the latter hue then begins to predominate more and more in the male bird with each successive moulting, until at length no drab feathers are left. At five years the bird has attained maturity; the plumage of the male is then of a beautiful glossy black, and that of the female of a soft grey, both having white wings and tails. In each wing there are twenty-four long white feathers, which, when the wing is spread out, hang gracefully round the bird like a lovely deep fringe—just as I have sometimes in Brazilian forests, seen fringes of large and delicate fern-fronds hanging, high overhead, from the branches of some giant tree.

The ostrich's body is literally "a bag of bones;" and the enormously-developed thighs, which are the only fleshy part of the bird, are quite bare, their coarse skin being of a peculiarly ugly blue-grey colour. The little flat head, much too small for the huge body, is also bald, with the exception of a few stiff bristles and scanty tufts of down; such as also redeem the neck from absolute bareness. During the breeding season the bill of the male bird, and the large scales on the fore part of his legs, assume a beautiful deep rose-colour, looking just as if they were made of the finest pink coral; in some cases the skin of the head and neck also becomes red at that time.

The North African or Barbary ostriches, several of which are to be seen at the Jardin d'Essai, in Algiers, have bright red thighs, head, and neck, and are altogether far handsomer than the Cape birds; their feathers also, being larger, softer, and possessing longer filaments, command much higher prices than those of their southern brethren.

Altogether, ostriches are queer-looking creatures; they are so awkward, so out of proportion, and everything about them, with the exception of their plumage and their big, soft, dark eyes, is so quaintly ugly as to suggest the idea that they have only by some mistake survived the Deluge, and that they would be more in their right place embedded in the fossiliferous strata of the earth than running about on its surface. And how they do run! Only startle an ostrich; and very little is sufficient to do this, his nerves being of the feeblest, and "his heart in his mouth" at even the smallest or most imaginary danger. What a jump he gives, and what a swerve to one side! Surely it must have dislocated some of his joints. But no; off he goes, flinging out his clumsy legs, and twisting himself about as he runs, till you almost expect to see him come to pieces, or, at any rate, fling off a leg, as a lobster casts a claw, or a frightened lizard parts from its tail. An ostrich's joints seem to be all loose, like those of a lay-figure when not properly tightened up. He rapidly disappears from view; and the last you see of him he is, as Mark Twain has it, "still running"—apparently with no intention of stopping till he has reached the very centre of Africa. But his mad scamper will most probably end a few miles off, with a tumble into a wire fence, and a broken leg.

Sometimes, however, ostriches, when they take fright, run so long and get so far away that their owner never recovers them. One we heard of, to whose tail a mischievous boy had tied a newspaper, went off at railway speed, and no tidings of it were ever received. Once, when T—— was collecting his birds for plucking, one of them was unaccountably seized with a sudden panic, and bolted; and though T—— mounted at once and rode after it, he neither saw nor heard of it again.

On a large farm, when plucking is contemplated, it is anything but an easy matter to collect the birds—the gathering together of ours was generally a work of three days. Men have to be sent out in all directions to drive the birds up, by twos and threes, from the far-off spots to which they have wandered; little troops are gradually brought together, and collected, first in a large enclosure, then in a small one, the plucking-kraal, in which they are crowded together so closely, that the most savage bird has no room to make himself disagreeable.

Besides the gate through which the ostriches are driven into the kraal, there is an outlet at the opposite end, through the "plucking-box." This latter is a most useful invention, saving much time and trouble. It is a very solid wooden box, in which, though there is just room for an ostrich to stand, he cannot possibly turn round; nor can he kick, the sides of the box being too high. At each end there is a stout door; one opening inside, the other outside the kraal. Each bird in succession is dragged up to the first door, and, after more or less of a scuffle, is pushed in and the door slammed behind him. Then the two operators, standing one on each side of the box, have him completely in their power; and with a few rapid snips of their shears his splendid wings are soon denuded of their long white plumes. These, to prevent their tips from being spoilt, are always cut before the quills are ripe. The stumps of the latter are allowed to remain some two or three months longer, until they are so ripe that they can be pulled out—generally by the teeth of the Kaffirs—without hurting the bird. It is necessary to pull them; the feathers, which by their weight would have caused the stumps to fall out naturally at the right time, being gone. Some farmers, anxious to hurry on the next crop of feathers, are cruel enough to draw the stumps before they are ripe; but nature, as usual, resents the interference with her laws, and the feathers of birds which have been thus treated soon deteriorate. It is best to pluck only once a year. The tails, and the glossy black feathers on the bodies of the birds, having small quills, are not cut, but pulled out; this, everyone says, does not hurt the birds, but there is an unpleasant tearing sound about the operation, and I think it must make their eyes water.

After a plucking would come several very busy days of sorting and tying up the feathers in readiness for the market; for T——, whenever he could spare the time, preferred doing this work himself to employing the professional sorters in Port Elizabeth, who charge exorbitantly. During these few days everything had to give way to feathers, large piled-up masses of which crowded the rooms, till we seemed to be over head and ears in feathers. Feathers covered the floor and invaded every article of furniture, especially monopolizing the dining-table; and when, at all sorts of irregular hours, we grudgingly allowed ourselves time for rough, impromptu meals of cold or tinned meat, we picnicked among feathers. It was useless to attempt keeping the rooms either tidy or clean while sorting was going on; and we resigned ourselves to living for those two or three days in a state at which owners of neat English homes would shudder—indeed, those only who have seen the process of sorting can form any idea of the untidiness, the dust, the fluffs, and the sneezing. But they were pleasant days; and many an interesting book will always be associated in our minds with the sorting of ostrich-feathers; for, while T—— arranged prime whites, blacks, tails, feminas, chicken-feathers, etc., according to length, colour, and quality, I enlivened the monotony of his work by reading aloud.

Sometimes the white feathers would be dirty—for there is nothing an ostrich likes better than sitting down to cool himself in the muddiest dam he can find—then it was necessary to wash them, dip them into strong raw starch, and shake them in the hot sun, beating two bundles of them together till quite dry. The starch makes them look very pretty and fluffy; and young ladies in England who economically wash their own feathers would find it a great improvement. Ostrich-feathers are quite tabooed by ladies in South Africa; they are too common, every Kaffir or Hottentot wearing one in his dirty, battered hat.

If an ostrich-feather is held upright, its beautiful form—graceful as the frond-like branch of the cocoa-nut palm, which it somewhat resembles—is at once seen to be perfectly even and equal on both sides, its stem dividing it exactly in the centre; whereas the stems of other feathers are all more or less on one side. The ancient Egyptians, observant of this—as of everything in nature—chose the ostrich-feather as the sacred emblem of truth and justice, setting it upon the head of Thmei, goddess of truth.

After a good rain, ostriches soon begin to make nests; the males become very savage, and their note of defiance—brooming, as it is called by the Dutch—is heard in all directions. The bird inflates his neck in a cobra-like fashion, and gives utterance to three deep roars; the two first short and staccato, the third very prolonged. Lion-hunters all agree in asserting that the roar of the king of beasts and that of the most foolish of birds are identical in sound; with this difference only, that the latter, when near, resembles the former very far away. T——, when hunting in the interior, has often been deceived by the sound—expecting a lion, and finding only an ostrich.

When the birds are savage—quei, as the Dutch call it—they become very aggressive, and it is impossible to walk about the camps unless armed with a weapon of defence called a "tackey." This is simply a long and stout branch of mimosa, with the thorns all left on at the end. It seems but a feeble protection against a foe who, with one stroke of his immensely powerful leg, can easily kill a man; the kick, no less violent than that of a horse, being rendered infinitely more dangerous by the formidable claw with which the foot is armed. Those, however, who are well practised in the use of the tackey are able, with the coolness of Spanish bull-fighters, to stand and await the charge of the terrible assailant. They allow him to come to what, to the inexperienced eye, seem unpleasantly close quarters; then, just as he prepares to strike, the tackey is boldly thrust into his face. The thorns oblige him to close his eyes, and he can only run blindly forward; the bearer of the tackey springing on one side, and gaining time to proceed some distance on his way, before the silly bird has recovered from his bewilderment and makes a fresh charge, when the weapon is again presented.

Fortunately, you are never assailed by more than one ostrich at a time; for in the large camps of some two thousand acres each—in which the birds are not fenced off in pairs, but live almost in the freedom of wild creatures—each one has his own domain, separated from those of others by some imaginary boundary-line of his own, visible only to himself, but as clearly marked out as the beat of a London policeman. There, in company with one or perhaps two hens, he dwells monarch of all he surveys; any other ostrich daring to invade his territory is at once attacked; and the human intruder is closely followed, his tackey in constant requisition, until the feathered lord of the land has seen him safely off the premises. Immediately after thus speeding the parting guest, the most savage bird is quite harmless; he dismisses you from his thoughts, and walks quietly back, feeding as he goes. And in the distance you see the head and long neck of his neighbour, whose kingdom you have now entered, and whose sharp eyes spied you out the instant your foot crossed his frontier. He now advances towards you with jerky, spasmodic movements, as if he were bowing you a welcome; this, however, is far from his thoughts, and after sitting down once or twice to give you his challenge—whereby he hopes you will be intimidated—he trots up defiantly, and the tackey's services are again required. Thus, during a morning's walk through the camps, you may be escorted in succession by four or five vicious birds, all determined to have your life if possible, yet held completely in check by a few mimosa thorns.

When an ostrich challenges he sits down; and, flapping each broad wing alternately, inflates his neck, and throws his head back, rolling it from side to side, and with each roll striking the back of his head against his bony body with so sharp and resounding a blow that a severe headache seems likely to be the result.

A person on horseback is even more obnoxious to the ostriches than a pedestrian; and a ride through the camps enables one to realize how true to life is the description, in the Book of Job, of a vicious bird: "What time she lifteth up herself on high, she scorneth the horse and his rider." The creature, when preparing for an attack, draws itself up, stands on tiptoe, stretches its neck to the full extent, and really seems to gain several feet in height. And, indeed, it does its best to knock you off your horse. T—— once saw a man riding as desperately as Tam O'Shanter, with an ostrich in close pursuit. It kept up with him, helping his horse along with an occasional well-placed kick; while the unhappy rider, hoping to intimidate his assailant, was again and again firing off his revolver into the air, but without effect.

As the new arrival in a country subject to earthquakes begins by thinking very lightly of these disturbances, but finds his appreciation of their importance increase with every successive shock; so the new chum in South Africa, inclined at first to look with contempt on the precautions taken against savage ostriches, learns in time to have a proper respect for the foolish, innocent-looking creatures, whose soft, dark-brown eyes look at him so mildly (when he is on the right side of the fence) that he finds it impossible to believe the stories told him of their wickedness, and nothing but a closer acquaintance can undeceive him. On one of the farms a sturdy new-comer, six feet in height, starting for an early morning walk, was cautioned against going into a certain camp where the ostriches were dangerous. He laughed at his friends' advice, told them he was "not afraid of a dicky-bird!" and—disdaining the proffered tackey—started off straightway in the forbidden direction. He did not return home to dinner; a search was made for him; and eventually he was found, perched up on a high ironstone boulder; just out of reach of a large ostrich, which was doing sentry, walking up and down, and keeping a vicious eye on him. There he had sat for hours, nearly roasted alive (ironstone boulders in the Karroo can get so hot in the sun that it blisters your hand to touch them); and there he would have had to sit till sundown, had not the timely appearance of his friends relieved him of the too-pressing attentions of the "dicky-bird."

Another gentleman had a theory that any creature, however savage, could be subdued—"quelled," as he said—by the human eye. One day he tried to quell one of his own ostriches; with the result that he was presently found by T—— in a very pitiable predicament, lying flat on the ground; while the subject of his experiment jumped up and down on him, occasionally varying the treatment by sitting on him.

T—— once bought an ostrich which had killed two men; and which, although an unusually fine bird, was, on account of its evil reputation, sold to him for a very low price. Ostriches appear to have a strong aversion to all the negro race. They attack Kaffirs and Hottentots much more readily than they do their white masters; and although—as has just been seen—they are very far from showing that amount of respect for the latter which is desirable, they seem—except during the breeding season—to stand in some sort of awe of a white man as compared with the "niggers," for whom they have the deepest contempt.

They are uncertain, too, and take sudden and unaccountable dislikes. One poor Kaffir woman, coming up to work at the house, was attacked, inside the gate, by one of the tame old ostriches, which—looking out for scraps thrown from the kitchen, stealing the fowls' food, or now and then picking up and swallowing a delicious piece of soap left for an unguarded moment on the washing-machine—prowled about round the house, and of which no one had ever dreamed of being afraid. Her solitary and scanty skirt, torn from the top to the bottom, showed how narrow had been her escape; and she looked livid under her dark skin, as she came in to ask me for needle and thread to repair the rent.

It has several times happened that one of our herds, in danger of his life, has been obliged, in self-defence, to kill a vicious ostrich; and, the finest and most promising birds—naturally the most savage—being invariably the victims, the loss is always a serious one. It is indeed no small trial, when, perhaps just as you are comfortably seated at the breakfast table, the black face of "April," "August," or "September"—fraught with bad news, and looking very frightened and ashamed—is suddenly thrust in at the door; and, with much rolling of white eyeballs, a tragic tale is told, in the most dismal of voices, and with many harrowing details, of how "Red Wing" or "White Neck" was quei, and attacked the narrator up in the big camp; with the sad consequence that you are now minus one of the best birds on the farm. But the poor fellow cannot be blamed or fined for defending his life; orders are given to pluck and bring down the unfortunate bird's feathers—the last he will ever yield—and somehow a dead bird's plumes always seem the most beautiful—

"And then to breakfast, with

What appetite you have."