Identifier: roundblackmansga00colv (find matches)
Title: Round the black man's garden
Year: 1893 (1890s)
Authors: Colvile, Zélie Isabelle Richaud de Préville, lady
Subjects: Africa -- Description and travel
Publisher: Edinburgh and London, W. Blackwood and sons
Contributing Library: Mugar Memorial Library, Boston University
Digitizing Sponsor: Boston University

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visit some oldfriends of his whom he had not seen since he hadbeen on the Staff in Natal. The road ran for manymiles across the veldt, with here and there only atrack to guide us over the succession of steep grass-covered hills, whose monotony was only broken byan occasional Kaffir kraal. It was the wildest spotimaginable — the little house covered with vines,surrounded by a garden where flowers and shrubsgrew luxuriantly at their own sweet will. Thehostess being a great invalid, our host did thehonours, and walked us off to see his ostrich-farm,which was extremely interesting; but I cannot sayI found these tall ungainly birds attractive. Hesaid it did not then pay, as there was no marketfor the feathers. He then proposed to lend us tw^oponies if we cared to ride some distance off to seethe banks of the Umgeni river, an offer I gladlyaccepted. While the black servant w^as putting thesaddles on, our host and his daughter brought outtwo laro^e bao^s of feathers, and chose a handful of
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A EIDE TO THE UMGENI. 243 lovely black ones with white tips for me to havemade up when I got home. The ponies ready, off we started. As it was get-ting late, and a storm was brewing, we galloped allthe way, and finally reached the edge of a precipiceoverlooking the lovely gorge through which theUmgeni here cuts its way. Opposite us, at the dis-tance of about three-quarters of a mile, an overhang-ing; red cliff*, about on a level with that on which wewere standing, separated the rolling expanse of veldtfrom a steep bush-covered slope, radiant with everypossible shade of green, and at that distance lookinglike a soft bed of variegated moss. Below this againwas a strip of gigantic boulders, among which theUmgeni—^sio^ hundred feet beneath us—foamed andtumbled, or collected into glassy pools, reflectingevery shade of the neighbouring foliage, and finallydisappeared a couple of miles to the east round thecorner of a hug-e red bluff. On our side of the riverthe same gradations of boulde

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