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Updated: June 6, 2025
On the third day we were just on the point of following some bustards, which clumsily rise on their wings and after some time descend again to the ground, when a general alarm arose in the caravan. "The Arabs are coming!" was shouted everywhere. A throng had been noticed in the distance approaching very rapidly.
This was the first course merely. In the second were all kinds of game and wild-fowl, roast herons three in a dish, bitterns, cranes, bustards, curlews, dotterels, and pewits. Besides these there were lumbar pies, marrow pies, quince pies, artichoke pies, florentines, and innumerable other good things.
Above the forest rise tiers of cliffs, and there were trees at the top on a tableland, as well as large isolated trees on most of the mountain tops, sheltering many birds. We had to wait fully an hour for our tent, as the servants' camels were somehow belated, and it was considered to be all owing to the jinni, whose abode we passed. Large white bustards assembled round our camp.
Heaps of grass were also found lying together, on which four or five people appeared to have slept. Mr. Gore, in another place, observed the track of a large animal. Some bustards were likewise seen, but not any other bird, excepting a few beautiful loriquets, of the same kind with those which had been noticed in Botany Bay.
The wildmen that brought us defended us above all things, if we would come directly to them, that we should by no means land, and so goe to the river to the other sid, that is, to the north, towards the sea, telling us that those people weare very treacherous. They made us a mapp of what we could not see, because the time was nigh to reape among the bustards and Ducks.
The dietery of a grand house was further varied by the admission into it of poultry and game the game including wild boars, stags, antelopes, bustards, and probably partridges; the poultry consisting of geese and chickens. Oysters and other fish were used largely as food by the inhabitants of the coast-region.
Think of bustards, which inhabit wide open plains, and which so seldom take flight: a very little increase in size of body would make them incapable of flight. The idea of ostriches acquiring flight is worthy of Westwood; think of the food required in these inhabitants of the desert to work the pectoral muscles!
Thither, accordingly, I went in due course, nothing loth, for on the veld between our station and Maraisfontein many pauw and koran that is, big and small bustards were to be found, to say nothing of occasional buck, and I was allowed to carry a gun, which even in those days I could use fairly well.
The gastrolobium grandiflorum covered the ground, with its bushes covered with gay flowers. Several unimportant creeks, mere streams full of little rushes, and half covered up with orchids, often interrupted the route. They had to ford these. Flocks of bustards and emus fled at the approach of the travelers. Below the shrubs, kangaroos were leaping and springing like dancing jacks.
We passed a great number of dry swamps or swampy water-holes; sometimes however containing a little water. The bottom of the dry swamps was covered with a couch grass, which, like all the other grasses, was partly withered. Bustards were numerous, and the Harlequin pigeon was seen in large flocks. Wallabies abounded both in the high grass of the broken country near the river, and in the brush. Mr.
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