I remember that one day, when I was thirteen, I went out one morning
after breakfast to look for plovers' eggs, just at the beginning of
the laying season when all the eggs one found were practically new-
laid. My plan was that of the native boys, to go at a fast gallop over
the plain and mark the spot far ahead where a lapwing was seen to rise
and fly straight away to some distance. For this method some training
is necessary to success, as in many cases more birds than one--
sometimes as many as three or four--would be seen to rise at various
points and distances, and one had to mark and keep in memory the exact
spots to visit them successively and find the nests. The English
method of going out and quartering the ground in search of a nest in
likely places where the birds breed was too slow for us.
The nests I found that morning contained one or two and sometimes
three eggs--very rarely the full clutch of four. Before midday I had
got back with a bag of sixty-four eggs; and that was the largest
number I ever gathered at one time.
Our dinner consisted of meat and pumpkin, boiled or baked, maize "in
the milk" in its season and sweet potatoes, besides the other common
vegetables and salads. Maize-meal puddings and pumpkin pies and tarts
were common with us, but the sweet we loved best was a peach-pie, made
like an apple-pie with a crust, and these came in about the middle of
February and lasted until April or even May, when our late variety,
which we called "winter peach," ripened.
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