Vagaries of an incubator — Hatching the chicks — A bad egg — Human foster-mothers — Chicks difficult to rear — "Yellow-liver" — Cruel boys — Chicks herded by hen ostrich — Visit to Boer's house — A carriage full of ostriches — "The melancholy Jaques" — Ostriches at sea — A stampede — Runaway birds — Branding — Stupidity of ostriches — Accidents — Waltzing and fighting — Ostrich soup — An expensive quince — A feathered Tantalus — Strange things swallowed by ostriches — A court-martial — The ostrich, or the diamond? — A visit to the Zoo.

An incubator, considerably increasing as it does the number of chicks that can be hatched, is of course of the greatest value on a farm. We had one, capable of holding sixty eggs; and a "finisher," in which thirty more could be placed. Two paraffin lamps, kept constantly burning, heated the large tank of the incubator; and a thermometer, inserted in the water, had to be carefully watched in order that the temperature of the latter might neither exceed nor fall below 103°. Beneath the tank—so that the eggs, as in nature, might be heated from above—were four drawers, each with compartments for fifteen eggs. I was appointed manager of the incubator; and morning and evening—following the example of the hen ostrich—I gave the eggs their quarter of an hour's cooling by allowing the drawers to stand open; also, as she does, I carefully turned each egg.

The regulation of the temperature was a matter of some anxiety, and enabled me—especially on first undertaking the work—to form a very good idea of the responsibilities of a vestal tending the sacred fire. Some mischievous imp seemed to be perpetually at work causing that thermometer to indulge in the wildest vagaries. Perhaps just one degree of the required temperature would be wanting; and though, for the best part of the morning, I had been coming anxiously every ten minutes or so to look at the thermometer, it refused, with all the perversity of "a watched pot," to rise above 102°. Then at last, a little off my guard, and absorbed in one of the numerous other home duties, I might possibly forget the incubator's existence for a little while; and, on suddenly remembering and running to it, find that the treacherous mercury had jumped up two or three degrees. Then the drawers would have to be thrown open, and the contents of several jugs of cold water wildly dashed in through the opening at the top of the incubator—and when at last, by still trembling hands, the thermometer was readjusted in the said opening, it would probably register as many degrees below as it had just been above 103°. T—— was away for three weeks during the time the incubator was in full work; and so great was the anxiety which haunted me, lest on his return I should present him with some sixty cooked birds, that I set an alarum every night for two o'clock, to assure myself that the temperature was playing me no tricks.

When within about eight or ten days of hatching, the chick can be felt moving about in the egg; and later on, when nearly ready to come out, he is heard squeaking, and tapping with his bill against the shell. Then at last, one day, when you come to turn the eggs in the finisher, where they are placed for the last fortnight, you find one with a hole in it—generally a three-cornered piece is knocked clean out—and in the opening a pinkish, soft-looking bill is making impatient movements, and a bright eye is peeping at you as knowingly as though already well acquainted with all the ways of a world on which its owner has yet to enter. An ostrich, by the way, seems far more intelligent as a baby than he ever is in after life.

A strong chick is generally able to free himself, by his own unaided efforts, from the shell; but if after a certain number of hours he is not out, it becomes necessary to assist him. This, however, requires extreme gentleness and caution, as there is great risk of inflicting injury; and, although I have helped many young ostriches into the world—losing but one patient in all my practice—I always preferred leaving that delicate work to nature. And yet there is something so tempting about these little half-opened parcels; one always longs to undo them and have a full view of the contents. The moment the little fellow is out of the egg, he seems to swell out, and looks so large that you wonder how he can possibly have been packed away in such a small space; and I am quite sure that the task of replacing him in the shell would as far surpass the powers of "all the king's horses and all the king's men," as did the reintegration of Humpty Dumpty.

Occasionally—and even at this time and distance it is hardly to be recalled without a shudder—the incubator would contain a bad egg. Imagine all the horrors of a bad hen's egg, multiplied by twenty-four! The whole drawer would be so pervaded by the odour that it was difficult for some time to discover the actual offender; and when at last it revealed itself by an uncanny moisture exuding through the shell, an amount of courage and caution was required for its removal and safe depositing outside, which suggested very flattering comparisons of one's own conduct with that of a soldier winning the V.C. by carrying away a live shell.

An incautious friend of T——'s was too closely investigating a doubtful ostrich-egg, when it exploded with a loud report. He was an old gentleman, with a beautiful white beard; and his condition, as described by T——, who—luckily from a safe distance—witnessed the accident, is best left to the imagination. Suffice it to say that an immediate and prolonged bath was imperative, and that a whole suit of clothes had to be destroyed.

In the days when chicks were so valuable, people who did not possess incubators sometimes had recourse to a strange way of hatching those eggs which, during the sitting, were either left orphaned by accident, or, as in the case of Jackie, deserted in consequence of floods. Some poor old Hottentot woman would be carefully tucked up, in company with the eggs, under numerous blankets,—where she would remain bed-ridden until she had hatched out the last chick. Sometimes, even, the stout, lethargic Dutch vrouw herself, to whose indolent nature the task was doubtless congenial enough, would perform the part of foster-mother.

When, either by natural or artificial means, the little ostriches are safely brought into the world, the farmer's next anxiety is to keep them there. They do well enough on the coast; but in the Karroo they are most difficult to rear, and our experience with them has been sad and disheartening. Numbers of them die, when about a month or five weeks old, from an epidemic which comes and goes in the strangest manner. During a whole season, for instance, one farmer will lose nearly every chick; while brood after brood will be successfully reared by another at no very great distance. Next year, perhaps, it is the turn of the latter to be the sufferer; and vice versa. Our unlucky year had a most promising beginning, unusually good rains having filled the country with nests; yet at the end of the season all we had to show of the rising generation of ostriches was a poor little troop of fifteen lanky, ragged-looking creatures, which through some rare toughness of constitution had survived the perils of infancy—over two hundred having succumbed.

The disappointment of losing the chicks is much intensified by the fact that they always begin so well. For the first three weeks nothing can be more encouraging than the appearance of the stout, sturdy toddlers; they eat voraciously and are full of life and spirits, waltzing, in absurd imitation of their elders, to show their joy on being first let out in the morning—the effort usually ending in a comical sprawl on the back.

Again and again comes the delusive hope that the spell is broken at last; that the luck has turned, and that this little brood is really going to live. But alas!—one morning, during that fatal fourth week, you notice that one little head, instead of being held up saucily and independently, is poking forward and downward in a dejected manner with which you are only too well acquainted. You know at once that the owner of that head is doomed, and that it will not be long before most, if not all, of his brethren show the same dreaded symptom. The disease is quite incurable—indeed, I have never known of an ostrich, old or young, recovering from any illness whatever; and though we tried all possible kinds of medicine, diet, and treatment, resolutely refusing to despair of any case while a spark of life remained, those chicks persisted in dying, sometimes at the rate of three or four a day. I was hospital nurse, and so deeply did I take to heart the loss of patient after patient that it became a joke with T——; and a plentiful sprinkling of grey happening just at this time to make its appearance on my head, he still attributes each silver thread to a little dead ostrich. A post-mortem examination of chicks which have died of this disease shows the liver to be of the bright colour of orange-peel.

Internal parasites also destroy a good many chicks; and altogether the little lives are precarious, and every troop of young birds successfully reared in the Karroo is a triumph.

For the first two or three months the chicks are herded near the house by boys, whose duty it is to keep them well supplied with prickly pear leaves and other green food, cut up small. This work ought to take up the greater part of the young herd's time; but—small boys being no more satisfactory as servants in the Karroo than they are anywhere else—we found it necessary to keep a very strict watch; and often during the day, however busy I might be, I would "make time" to run down to the shady spot which was the chicks' place of encampment—generally to find the infants hungry, and their useless nurse either asleep or plunged in some absorbing business of his own with a knife and a piece of wood. Sometimes, too, the boys, getting impatient with the chicks, were rough and cruel; one budding criminal especially was several times caught making footballs of his innocent charges, kicking them up several feet into the air. And on a farm where T—— was once staying, a juvenile black fiend was found to have deliberately broken the legs of some twenty chicks under his care; and, when asked the reason of his conduct, said, "They run about, give me too much trouble."

The chicks are often attacked by old birds—always spiteful to little ones which are not their own—and we have had several kicked to death by their vindictive elders. On a neighbouring farm, however, dwelt the usual exception to the rule, in the shape of an old hen, which—although herself not a mother—showed such a strong affection for chicks, and took such devoted care of them, that at last, much to her delight, she was appointed to the post of herd, vice the small boy, dismissed as incorrigible. She filled the place of the latter far better than he had ever done; leading the little creatures, with the greatest care, wherever the tenderest veldt was to be found; never losing her temper with them, or failing to bring the full number home to bed at sundown; and altogether acquitting herself in a wonderfully sedate and business-like manner for so scatter-brained a creature as an ostrich.

Her history ought of course to have ended here; but truth compels me to state that at last, after she had successfully brought up many families of chicks, and had come to be respected and trusted as the steadiest and most useful of farm-servants, one day the idiotic ostrich-nature asserted itself; she took a sudden and senseless fright—probably at nothing—lost her wits, bolted right away, leaving the chicks to get dispersed about the veldt, where only a few were found; and was herself never heard of again.

I think our friends at home would have been rather amused if they could have seen us one day, driving home from Mount Stewart with twelve ostriches in our extremely small American spider. On our way to a farm where T—— had business we happened to pass a Dutchman's house, round the door of which we noticed a lively little brood of chicks running about. T—— of course no sooner saw them than he coveted them (he frankly confesses himself quite unable to keep the tenth commandment as far as ostriches are concerned); and we pulled up, accepted the hospitable invitation of the Boer, who doubtless read in our eyes the chance of "doing a deal," and went into the house, where, first of all, a solemn, silent, and apparently endless course of hand-shaking had to be gone through. The Cape Dutch living in very patriarchal fashion, there were not only a wife and many sons and daughters, but a well-preserved parental couple, a mother-in-law, several sons and daughters-in-law, and—needless to say—a crowd of children of all sizes, including two babies. All but the two last came forward one after another and gravely took our hands; then we all sat round the room, solemnly looking at each other, and T—— and I felt as if we were at a funeral. We would have been thankful to have fled; but—our own birds not having begun laying—we did so want those chicks, and we felt that it was worth while to endure something for their sakes.

Presently coffee was handed round in huge cups, evidently more than half filled with sugar. The more highly the good vrouw wishes to honour you, the more horribly and sickeningly she over-sweetens your cup of tea or coffee; and the syrup we had to drink on this occasion left no doubt as to the kindly feeling of our hosts towards us. The entrance of the tray was the signal for conversation to commence; and, once set free, it flowed abundantly. As we sat drinking our coffee and talking of everything but the business on which we were bent, our thoughts flashed back to Oriental bazaars, where these identical preliminaries are necessary to every bargain. The relationship of everybody present to everybody else was accurately explained to us, with much pointing, or clapping on the back, as the case might be; and we in our turn were minutely questioned as to our names, ages, number of brothers and sisters and other relatives, etc.; the women again bringing back Eastern recollections by their resemblance to the inquisitive, chattering inmates of harems. Then T—— ventured to lead the conversation round to the coveted chicks; but it was a little too soon, the subject was abruptly dropped, and we again waded through all manner of irrelevant talk until, a becoming time having elapsed, and the requirements of etiquette being satisfied, the business was allowed to commence.

After such an inauguration, it may well be imagined that the bargain was not concluded in a hurry; and we had paid a tediously long visit before we were at last the happy possessors of the chicks for which we had suffered so much; and, putting them loose into the spider at our feet, where—being about as large as ducks—they made rather a tight fit, drove off with them.

A little further on, at another Dutchman's house, and with more bargaining, we bought a young paauw (pronounced "pow"). This game bird (the great bustard) grows to an immense size, some being occasionally shot which measure nine feet across the outspread wings; but fortunately—considering the number of passengers already on board—the present specimen, being but a chick, was no larger than a fine fowl.

When we arrived at last at our original destination, the young ladies of the house presented us with a pretty little baby hare, which had just been caught; and with this wee creature nestling in my lap, and the paauw and the ostriches all scrambling about among our legs and apparently not on the best of terms, we drove the twenty miles home. The poor paauw was very unhappy, and kept bewailing his fate in a long, weird cry, like the moaning of the wind; whence he immediately acquired his name of "the melancholy Jaques." We had an amusing though rather anxious journey; for the spider—consisting simply of a kind of magnified Japanese tea-tray, supporting the lightest of seats, and mounted on four wheels, almost bicycle-like in their slenderness—was hardly the safest thing in which to convey restless live stock which was not fastened or secured in any way. The road, too, was terrible; indeed, in one place it resembled a steep, rocky staircase, and after every bad jolt I looked anxiously back to see if any of our creatures were lying on the ground. Thanks to T——'s careful driving, however, we brought the whole collection safely home, none the worse for their long journey.

Jaques, I may as well mention here, soon grew very tame; but, being—we never knew why—persistently snubbed by all the other pets, was driven to the companionship of the fowls, with which he struck up a close friendship; spending most of his time among them, and always coming with them to be fed. He would also forage about in the kitchen for scraps; and, if disappointed in his search, would utter his desponding cry, and seem quite heart-broken. He was a handsome bird; with delicately-pencilled plumage of different shades of grey and brown, a little neat crest on his head, and absurdly small feet, which looked as if they could not possibly support so large a body. Unfortunately, poor Jaques did not live to attain his full size, but poisoned himself with pumpkin seeds; which had been carelessly dropped on the kitchen floor, in spite of repeated orders that these seeds—being a deadly poison to turkeys—should always be instantly burnt as soon as a pumpkin was cut open. We lost several of our turkeys through the neglect of this rule by the stupid Hottentot girls.

Although little ostriches are such good travellers, it is anything but easy to transport full-grown ones about the world. They are wretched sailors, as T—— has found to his cost; for when, some time ago, he took several pairs of birds to Sydney, about half of them died at sea. The day before they were shipped from Port Elizabeth they were placed in a store where there was a large quantity of tobacco, on which some of them regaled, with the consequence that before they had been at sea a week three were dead from nicotine poisoning. T—— does not mind a story told against himself, so I may mention that a plan adopted by him with a view to ensuring the comfort and cleanliness of the birds during the voyage did not—as regards the former advantage—turn out quite a success. He carpeted the pens with cocoa-nut matting; and when the vessel began to roll, and the birds sat down, their legs were terribly chafed and rubbed by the roughness of the matting. And although T——, to procure rag wherewith to bind up their sores, recklessly sacrificed shirts, pocket-handkerchiefs, and whatever other linen came to hand, several succumbed. The survivors did so well in Australia that arrangements were made to carry on ostrich-farming in that country on a large scale; and T—— was about to export two hundred birds when the Cape Government, hearing of the project, imposed an export duty of £100 on every ostrich, and £5 on each egg.

Ostriches are very bad railway travellers; and avail themselves of every possible opportunity of coming to grief in the cattle-trucks; in which they often seem to be too closely packed. And as for their behaviour when travelling on foot, T—— has had some experience of the infinity of trouble they can give to those in charge of them. Having once bought a troop of ninety birds on the West Coast, he accompanied them himself on the long journey to Port Elizabeth. One night there was a stampede; and when daylight broke over the vast plain not one ostrich was in sight. Of course "there was mounting in hot haste;" and poor T—— had to ride about the country after the runaways, which were so dispersed that they could only be collected by twos and threes. He had two days of very hard work before he succeeded in getting them all together again.

When T—— first started ostrich-farming, a good many years ago, he and his partners—little knowing the "kittle cattle" with which they had to deal—thought they would do without fencing. They soon found all their birds gone; and had to scour the country for hundreds of miles in pursuit of their erratic stock, riding all their horses to death.

Profiting by this sad experience, T—— has carefully fenced Swaylands in all directions except where the steepness of the mountain forms a natural barrier. Yet in spite of all the trouble and money spent—and enclosing is one of the heaviest of all expenses incurred in starting a new farm—our birds were continually getting away. We have unfortunately the great disadvantage of a high-road running straight through the farm; and often a lazy Boer, thinking it too much trouble to kick away the stone with which he had propped the gate open while his waggons passed through—though T—— had carefully adjusted that gate to fall to and close itself—would cause the loss of several of our birds; which of course might or might not be heard of again. On one occasion over twenty birds seem to have gone out in a body, owing to the gate being left open; and only a few were eventually recovered.

Some birds—artful old rovers who have been away before and have tasted the joys of freedom—will spend days running up and down along the side of the fence; keeping the gate well in sight, and watching for the chance of its being left open.

The family of one of our herds, living close to a gate, were supposed to act as lodge-keepers; but—like most of the coloured race—they could never be induced to attend steadily and systematically to their duty, and we often found the gate wide open, inviting an exodus of birds. A fine of five shillings was imposed for each offence; but the hardened sinners knew that T——'s kind heart made him reluctant to enforce the penalty.

Ostriches, when very firmly bent on escaping, and finding no gate open, will sometimes charge the fence; and, though occasionally one will succeed in tumbling safely over and getting away, the clumsy performance most frequently results in broken legs.

Runaway birds are far from being the least among the many trials of an ostrich-farmer's life; and the annual losses caused by them even exceed in number those resulting from accident. Then they involve such endless waste of time and trouble. T—— was continually riding about, searching and making inquiries, often in vain, for lost ostriches. When he was fortunate enough to find one, or hear of its whereabouts; or perhaps see, from the advertised description of its brand, that it was an inmate of some distant pound, two of the herds—never spared without difficulty from other work—would be sent, often a long journey of three or more days, to bring it back.

A returning runaway, always a joyful sight to us, was also rather a laughable one. As he was marched along between the two men, each with a tight grip on his shoulder, he looked just like a pickpocket in the hands of the police, going to prison; and a large piece of sacking, roughly sewn round his body to give his captors a firmer hold, made him appear as though already in convict dress. Then, to prevent his giving trouble on the road, his head would be in a bag. As often as not this bag would be one of my pillow-cases, surreptitiously abstracted by T—— from the linen-drawer before sending off the men.

The very necessary operation of branding is performed on the ostrich's large, bare thigh, which seems just made for the purpose. Sometimes a considerable number of our young or newly-purchased birds would be branded at once. The irons with our brand, the Turkish crescent, were heated in a little portable forge placed in one corner of the plucking-kraal; and each poor bird in turn received the mark of our ownership with an agonized start on one side; the smell, and the hissing sound of the frizzling flesh always reminding me unpleasantly of the horrible performances of the AÏssaoua, which (because every one else went) I was once foolish enough to go and see in Algiers. Old birds, which have frequently changed hands, sometimes display a fine collection of initials and different designs, covering both thighs.

Unfortunately, branding is not always the safeguard against theft which it is intended to be; for there are quite as many dishonest people in the Cape Colony as elsewhere (if not rather more), and it is no uncommon trick to obliterate the brand of a bird which has come astray by applying over it a much larger one—a "frying-pan" brand, as one hears it occasionally called by victims.

As regards the stupidity of ostriches, although indeed they are falsely accused on one point; that of hiding their small heads in the sand and imagining therefore that their large bodies are quite invisible to the foe, they do many other things quite as foolish, and—to revert again to the Book of Job—their character could not possibly have been more perfectly summed up than it is in the words: "Because God hath deprived her of wisdom, neither hath He imparted to her understanding." And, indeed, no one looking at the ostrich's ridiculous little head, so flat immediately above the eyes as to leave no room for any brain, can wonder that he is an imbecile; possessing even less intelligence than a common fowl, and not recognizing the man who has fed him every day for years, if the latter comes to the camp in a coat or hat to which he is unaccustomed. A friend of T——'s was attacked and knocked down by one of his own ostriches, an old bird which had been constantly fed by him, but which, on seeing him for the first time in a black hat, took him for a stranger. Fortunately T—— was with him, and, having brought a tackey—in spite of assurances that none would be needed—came promptly to the rescue.

Ostriches are long-lived creatures; indeed, it is impossible to say what venerable age they may be capable of attaining, for, however old they become, they never show any signs of decrepitude, nor do their feathers deteriorate; while, as for an ostrich dying of old age, I do not believe any one has ever heard of such a thing. But it is accident which, sooner or later, ends the career of nearly every ostrich; and in about ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the disaster is, in one way or another, the result of the bird's own stupidity. There surely does not exist a creature—past earliest infancy—more utterly incapable of taking care of itself than an ostrich; yet he is full of conceit, and resents the idea of being looked after by his human friends; and when, in spite of all their precautions for his safety, he has succeeded in coming to grief, he quietly opposes every attempt to cure his injuries, and at once makes up his mind to die. If his hurt is not sufficiently severe to kill him, he will attain his object by moping and refusing to eat—anyhow, he dies—often apparently for no other reason than because his master, against whom he has always had a grudge, wishes him to live. He seems to die out of spite; just as a Hindoo servant will starve himself, waste rapidly away, and finally come and expire at the gate of the employer with whom he is offended.

The worst and most frequent accidents by which ostriches contrive to make away with themselves are broken legs; these—even were the patients tractable—it would be impossible to cure, owing to the strange fragility of that limb which, as we have seen, is capable of inflicting so deadly a kick,—and any poor bird which breaks a leg has to be instantly killed. The bone seems almost as brittle as porcelain; and a comparatively slight blow is enough to splinter it into just such jagged and pointed fragments as result from breaking the spout of a china teapot.

One very fruitful source of broken legs is the dervish-like habit ostriches have of waltzing when in particularly good spirits, and especially when first turned out of the kraal in the morning. They go sailing along so prettily in the bright sunshine; their beautiful wings, spread and erect, giving them at a little distance the appearance of white balloons; but they have a sad tendency to become giddy and tumble down, and, knowing the frailty of their legs, we do not look with unmixed pleasure on the graceful performance. Some birds, indeed, have the sense to save themselves by "reversing," which they do as cleverly as practised human dancers; but the accomplishment seems rare among them, and we calculate that waltzing costs us eight or ten per cent. per annum.

Then they often fight savagely; and the terrific "thud" of the blows they deal upon each other's bodies makes one tremble lest the next kick should fall on one of the brittle legs; as indeed frequently happens. One day (a long drought having brought our birds round the house), two splendid young cocks began fighting close to the windows. In an instant one of them was down; with his leg snapped across, and all but knocked off, by a frightful blow. T—— being from home, I had to go and inspect the poor bird's injuries—a sickening sight—and do him the only kindness possible, that of ordering his immediate execution. A couple of hours later, some of the flesh from one massive thigh was simmering in my stock-pot, sending forth a most delicious odour; while both legs, joints from which indeed to "cut and come again," dwarfed the proportions of the Angora meat as they hung beside it, high out of reach of dog or jackal, in our open-air larder. For when by some untoward accident, such as that just described, our birds came suddenly by their death, we had the very small and melancholy consolation of eating them. That is to say, following the example of French frog-eaters, we ate the legs only; there being no meat whatever on any other part of the creature's body. Instead of having a nice plump breast, like that of a fowl, turkey, or any other of the CarinatÆ or keel-breasted birds, the ostrich has a flat breast-bone and large ribs shaped wonderfully like those of a human being. His body is always bony; and, however well you may feed him, the nourishment all seems to go to his legs. An unpleasant stringiness prevents ostrich-steaks from being quite nice, but the soup is perfection. I never tasted any quite equal to it; although some, made from the enormous tortoises found occasionally on the veldt, came very near it in goodness. The best beef-stock is not to be compared with ostrich-soup; and I imagine the latter would be a most nourishing food for invalids. An ostrich which has died in good condition has a large quantity of beautiful, soft, bright yellow fat. This, being most useful, is always carefully put away in jars; and there is no fat equal to it for guns, saddles, harness, boots, etc.

Besides waltzing and fighting, there are endless other ways in which ostriches—always ingenious in devising plans for their own destruction—manage to get their legs broken, and their throats consequently cut; but the favourite form of felo-de-se is collision with the wire fences. These seem to have some magnetic attraction for the vogels, as the Dutch call them—the word, appropriately enough, too, being pronounced "fools."

Ostrich-chick.

(Photographed from case in Stanley and African Exhibition.)