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CHAPTER II.

THE CAPE OF GOOD HOPE—THE SOUTHERN OCEAN—AUSTRALIA.

“Would you like to visit an ostrich farm?” said Dr. Whitney, while our friends were at breakfast, on the second morning after their arrival at Cape Town.

“I would, for one,” said Harry; to which Ned replied, “and so would I.”

“Very well,” continued the doctor. “I have an invitation to visit an ostrich establishment, and we will start immediately after breakfast. The railway will take us within about three miles of the farm, and the gentleman who has given me the invitation, and included you in it, will accompany us on the train, and his carriage will meet us at the station.”

“That is capital!” exclaimed Harry. “He will be sure to give us a great deal of information on the subject while we are on the train, so that we can see the farm more intelligently than would otherwise be the case.”

“Yes, that is so,” echoed Ned, “and as he is the proprietor of the establishment, he will certainly know all about the business.”

At the appointed time the party assembled at the railway station in Cape Town, and when the train was ready, our friends, accompanied by their host, Mr. Shaffner, took their places and were soon whirling away towards their destination. For a part of the way the train wound among hills and low mountains, and for another it stretched away across the level or slightly undulating plain. Mr. Shaffner entered at once upon the subject of ostriches, and as he began his conversation, Harry asked him if he had any objections to their taking notes of what he said.

“Not in the least,” was the reply; “you are welcome to take all the notes you like, and if there is any point that I don’t explain fully to your satisfaction, please tell me, and I will be more explicit.”

The youths thanked him for his courtesy, and immediately brought out their notebooks and pencils.

“According to tradition,” said Mr. Shaffner, “ostriches were formerly very abundant, wild ones, I mean, all over this part of the country. In the early part of this century they were so numerous in the neighborhood of Cape Town, that a man could hardly walk a quarter of an hour without seeing one or more of these birds. As late as 1858, a flock of twenty or thirty were seen among hills about twenty miles from Cape Town, but after that time they seemed to have disappeared almost entirely. Ostrich farming is an enterprise of the past twenty years, and before it began, the only way of procuring ostrich feathers was by hunting down and killing the wild birds. The practise was cruel, and it was also the reverse of economical. Thoughtful hunters realized this, and a rumor went through the colony that ostriches had been domesticated in Algeria, and were successfully raised for the production of feathers. When this rumor or report went about, it naturally set some of us thinking, and our thoughts were, ‘Why can’t ostriches be raised here, as well as in Algeria?’ Several enterprising men proceeded to make experiments. They offered to pay a high price for live birds in good health and condition, and the price they offered induced the natives to set about catching them.

“Of course we were all in the dark as to the proper method of taking care of ostriches, as the business was entirely new to all of us. We made many mistakes and lost a good many birds. The eggs became addled and worthless, and for the first two or three years it looked as though the experiments would be a failure. Our greatest difficulty was in finding proper food for the birds. We tried them with various kinds of grasses, and we studied as well as we could the habits of the wild bird at home. We found that they needed a certain quantity of alkalies, and they subsisted largely upon the sweet grasses, wherever they could find them. The grass called lucerne seems the best adapted to them, and you will find it grown on all ostrich farms for the special purpose of feeding the birds.

“We have got the business down so fine now that we understand all the various processes of breeding, rearing, herding, feeding, plucking, and sorting. We buy and sell ostriches just as we do sheep. We fence in our flocks, stable them, grow crops for them, study their habits, and cut their feathers as matters of business. We don’t send the eggs to market along with our butter and cheese, as they are altogether too dear for consumption. It is true that an ostrich egg will make a meal for three or four persons; but at five dollars an egg, which is the usual price, the meal would be a dear one.

“In fact, the eggs are so precious,” he continued, “that we don’t allow them to be hatched out by the birds. For fear of accidents, as soon as the eggs have been laid they are taken from the nests and placed in a patent incubator to be hatched out. The incubator makes fewer mistakes than the parent ostriches do. That is to say, if you entrust a given number of eggs to the birds to be hatched out in the natural way, and place the same number in an incubator, you will get a considerably larger proportion of chicks from the latter than from the former.

“The business of ostrich farming,” Mr. Shaffner went on to say, “is spread over the colony from the near neighborhood of Cape Town to the eastern frontier, and from Albany to the Orange River. Ostrich farms were scattered at no great distances apart, and some of the proprietors had a high reputation for their success. He said it must not be understood that ostrich farming was the great industry of the country; on the contrary, the product of wool was far greater in value than that of feathers, and the ostriches were to the sheep as one is to a thousand.”

Harry asked if the birds were allowed to run at large, or were kept constantly in enclosures.

“Both plans are followed,” said Mr. Shaffner, “and some of the farmers allow their flocks to run at large, feeding them once a day on grain, for which they must come to the home stable. The ostriches know the hour of feeding as well as if they carried watches, and are promptly on hand when their dinner time arrives. In this way they are kept under domestication and accustomed to the presence of men, but occasionally they stray away and disappear. The safer way is to keep a native boy or man constantly with each herd of ostriches, and the herder is held responsible for the loss of any bird.

“Even then the flock may sometimes be frightened and scattered beyond the ability of the herder to bring the birds together. On my farm, I have the ground fenced off into fifty-acre lots. I divide my birds into flocks of twenty-five or thirty, and put them successively in the different lots of land. I sow the ground with lucerne, and do not turn a flock into a field or paddock until the grass is in good condition for the birds to eat.

“You may put it down as a rule on ostrich farms, that plenty of space and a good fence are essential to success. In every paddock you must have a good shed, where the birds can take shelter when it rains. You must also have a kraal or yard in each paddock, where you can drive the birds whenever you want to select some of them for cutting their feathers. It is proper to say, however, that a kraal in each paddock is not necessary, as all that work can be done at the home station, where you have the buildings for artificial hatching and for gathering the feathers.”

Ned asked what kind of ground was best suited for the ostrich.

“You must have ground where the soil and plants are rich in alkalies,” replied Mr. Shaffner, “and when this is not the case, care must be taken to supply the needful element. Before this matter was understood there was some