The Fire Trumpet: A Romance of the Cape Frontier

One round, black speck high up yonder on the stony hillside. There he sits—the large old baboon; wary sentinel that he is, keeping jealous watch over the safety of the nimble troop under his charge, which, scattered about amid the bush, is feasting upon succulent roots and other vegetable provender afforded by its native wilds. And from his lofty perch he can descry something unwonted immediately beneath—danger possibly, intrusion at any rate—and he lifts up his voice: “Baugch-m! Baugch-m?” The sun blazes in a blue, cloudless sky, darting down his beams with a fierceness and vigour somewhat premature this lovely afternoon of an early South African spring day, and all nature is at rest in the drowsy stillness now broken by that loud, harsh cry. A cliff rears its perpendicular face from amid the bush-covered slopes, which, meeting at its base, form a triangular hollow. From the brow of the cliff rises a rugged steep, thickly grown with dark prickly aloes, whose bristling shapes, surmounted by bunches of red blossom, sprout upwards from the dry, stony soil. The tiniest thread of a streamlet trickles down the face of the rock, losing itself in a pool beneath, which reflects, as in a mirror, cliff, and overhanging bushes, and blue sky. A faint cattle track leading down to the water betokens that in a land of droughts and burning skies even this reservoir, remote and insignificant, is of account at times; but to-day here are no cattle. The long-drawn piping whistle of a spreuw (of the starling species) echoes now and again from the cool recesses of the rock; the hum of bees among the blossoming spekboem and mimosa; the twittering of the finks, whose pear-shaped pendulous nests sway to and fro over the water as the light-hearted birds fly in and out—all tell of solitude and of the peace of the wilderness. Here a big butterfly flits lightly on spotted wings above the flowering bushes; there, stalking solemnly among the stones, an armour-plated tortoise seems to be in rivalry with a horny and long-legged beetle as to which of them shall be the first to reach the other side of the small open space.