the skin and broke
off the pear with the least touch. The great evil of prickly pear
thorns is that it is almost impossible to extract them, and although it
can scarcely be said that they cause pain, the irritation they produce
is great and prolonged. The monkeys know this well!

I was greatly amused once, while delayed at a road-side inn, by the
antics of a monkey with a prickly pear. I had fed him with part of one,
of which he seemed passionately fond. Wishing to know whether monkeys
as well as men were cautious in handling the fruit, I pulled another by
means of a couple of sticks. The usual mode of proceeding is to rub the
pear on the ground with a bunch of grass, and thus remove the prickles,
when it may be handled with impunity. Without doing this, however, I
lifted the pear with my sticks and handed it to Jacko. He looked at it
earnestly for a few seconds, then at me with a round mouth and
reproachful eyes, as though to say, "You don't mean _that_, do you?"

I smiled and nodded.

Jacko looked again at the pear and put one finger towards it with great
caution, but drew back and looked up at me again, as if to say, "_Won't_
you help me?"

I smiled again and shook my head, whereupon he went to work with the
most gingerly and delicate touches, as if he were handling red-hot iron.
At last he managed to tear a hole in the skin, into which he inserted
his black nose, and greedily devoured the contents. Despite his
caution, however, I noticed that Jacko kept scratching his hands pretty
steadily for some time afterwards.

As we advanced into the hills the roads became unimaginably bad. In one
place our track had been carried away by a flood, and the
boulder-covered bed of the torrent was our only road.

At last we got up into the mountain region of Glen Lynden, the place to
which the Scotch settlers were sent by Government in 1820, under the
care of Thomas Pringle, the "African poet," who, among other pieces,
wrote the beautiful poem which begins:

"Afar in the desert I love to ride,
With the silent bushboy alone by my side."

The descendants of the 1820 men now occupy these valleys. Both in
physique and character they do credit to their sires.

Here I met one of the few survivors of the original settlers, Mr Dodds
Pringle, and brother to the poet. [This happened about 1876.] Although
upwards of seventy, and a large, stout man, I saw him mount his horse
with the activity of a man of thirty. At