Letters from the Cape, by Lady Duff Gordon

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Transcribed from the 1921 Humphrey Milford edition by DavidPrice,gift beach toys for 11 year olds email [email protected].  Second proof by MargaretPrice.

LETTERS
FROM THE
CAPE

BY

LADY DUFF GORDON

Edited by

JOHN PURVES

LONDON

HUMPHREY MILFORD

1921

PRINTED IN ENGLAND
AT THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

p.iiiEDITOR’S FOREWORD

If Lady Duff Gordon’s‘Letters from the Cape’ are less familiar to thepresent generation of readers than those of the Lady AnneBarnard, the neglect is due in great part to the circumstances oftheir publication.  After appearing in a now-forgottenmiscellany of Victorian travel, Galton’s VacationTourists, third series (1864), where their simplicity anddelicate unprofessional candour gave them a brief hour of publicesteem, they were first issued separately as a supplement to LadyDuff Gordon’s Last Letters from Egypt, occupying thelatter portion of a volume to which the writer’s daughter,Mrs. Ross, contributed a short but vivid memoir, which touchedbut lightly on her South African experiences; and they have neverappeared, we believe, in any other form.  Yet they areinferior in nothing but political interest to those of theauthoress of ‘Auld Robin Gray’.  Indeed, in herintellectual equipment, her temperament, and her gift of style,Lady Duff Gordon was a far rarer creature than the jovial andmanaging Scotswoman who was the correspondent of Dundas. And in human sympathy—the quality that has kept Lady AnneBarnard’s letters alive—Lady Duff Gordon shows astill wider range and a yet keener sensibility.  Her lettersare the fine flower of the English epistolary literature of p. ivtheCape.  Few books of their class have better deservedreprinting.

The daughter of John and Sarah Austin ran every risk ofgrowing up a blue-stocking.  Yet she escaped every danger ofthe kind—the proximity of Bentham, her childish friendshipswith Henry Reeve and the Mills, and the formidable presence ofthe learned friends of both her parents—by the force of atriumphant naturalness and humour which remained with her to theend of her life.  Although her schooling was in Germany andher sympathy with German character was remarkable, her ownpersonality was rather French in its grace and gaiety.  Itwas characteristic of her, then, to defend as she did ‘lavieille gaieté française’ against Heine onhis death-bed.  But the truth is that her sympathies werenearly perfect.  She was one of those rare characters thatsee the best in every nationality without aping cosmopolitanism,simply because they are content everywhere to be human. Convention and prejudice vex them as little as pedantrycan.  Their clear eyes look out each morning on a freshworld, and their experiences are a perpetual school of sympathyand never the sad routine of disillusionment.

When Lady Duff Gordon came to the Cape in search of health in1861, she brought with her, young though she was, a wealth ofrecollection and experience such as perhaps no other observer ofSouth Africa has known.  She had been the friend p. vof nearly everyprominent man-of-letters from Rogers to Tennyson.  She wasintimate with half the intellectual world of England and Germany,and admired for her beauty and grace of character in the salonsof Paris as much as in the drawing-rooms of London.  And shehad shown the quality of her womanly sympathy in the most famousof her literary friendships, that with Heinrich Heine, when shevisited the poet and soothed him in his last sad days inParis—an episode perhaps better known to present-dayreaders from Mr. Zangwill’s story of A MattrassGravethan in the moving narrative of Lady Duff Gordonherself, on which the story is based.

It was into the little world of Caledon and Simonstown andWorcester, drowsy, sun-steeped villages of the oldcolony—for Cape Town had little attraction for her and theclimate proved unsuitable—that this rare and exquisitebeing descended.  But the test of the true letter-writer,the letter-writer of genius, is the skill and ease with which hebrings variety out of seeming monotony.  The letters of LadyDuff Gordon answer this test.  She had not been many days inthe country before she had discovered (if she required todiscover) the excellent principle: ‘Avoid engelschehoogmoedigheidin dealing with the Dutch’; and by thetime she reaches Caledon she is on the best of terms with her newfriends.  ‘The postmaster, Heer Klein, and his oldPylades, Heer Ley, are great cronies of mine’—shewrites—‘stout old grey-beards, toddling p. vidown the hilltogether.  I sometimes go and sit on the stoep with the twoold bachelors and they take it as a great compliment; and HeerKlein gave me my letters all decked with flowers, and wished“vrolyke tydings, Mevrouw”, mostheartily.’  She has a keen eye for the fine shades ofnational character, and the modifications that spring fromdifferences of upbringing: the English farmer, ‘educated inBelgium’, the young Dutch doctor with English manners, theGerman basket-maker’s wife in Cape Town.  A wholechapter might be written on her friendship with the Malays, whosehearts she won as completely as she afterwards did those of theirMohammedan brothers in Egypt.  Mr. Ian Colvin has sinceopened up afresh the field she was here almost the first tosurvey.  In another direction, in her remarks on the EasternProvince Jew of 1860, Lady Duff Gordon has given us some noteswhich are of distinct value for social history.  Thefollowing passage, for example, deserves to be quoted as a‘point de repère’ in the evolution of atype.  ‘These Colonial Jews’—says thewriter—‘are a new Erscheinungto me. They have the features of their race, but many of theirpeculiarities are gone.  Mr. L—, who is very handsomeand gentlemanly, eats ham and patronises a good breed of pigs onthe “model farm” on which he spends his money. He is (he says) a thorough Jew in faith, and evidently incharitable works; but he wants to say his prayers in English andnot to p.vii“dress himself up” in a veil andphylacteries for the purpose; and he and his wife talk of Englandas “home”, and care as much for Jerusalem as theirneighbours.  They have not forgotten the old persecutions,and are civil to the coloured people, and speak of them in quitea different tone from other English colonists.  Moreover,they are far better mannered and more ‘human’, in theGerman sense of the word, in all respects; in short, less“colonial”.’  It was a lady of this partywho described Prince Albert’s funeral to Lady DuffGordon.  ‘The people mourned for him’—shesaid—‘as much as for Hezekiah; and, indeed, hedeserved it a great deal better.’

There is not much attempt to describe scenery in Lady DuffGordon’s Letters, but just enough to show that her eye wasas sensitive to landscape as to the shades of racial characterand feeling.  She indicates delicately yet effectively thedifference between the atmosphere at the coast and thatinland.  ‘It is the difference between a prettypompadour beauty and a Greek statue.  Those pale opalmountains as distinct in every detail as the map on your tableand so cheerful and serene; no melodramatic effects of clouds andgloom.’  But, as a rule, it is the human pageant thatengrosses her, and here her sense of values is extraordinarilykeen.  There is no better instance than the portrait of theGerman basket-maker’s wife, who confided to the writer hertimidity on landing in Africa.  p. viii‘I had never—shesaid—been out of the city of Berlin and knewnothing.’  She spoke of the natives as well-bred(anständig), and Lady Duff Gordon’s comment is:‘The use of the word was characteristic.  She couldrecognize an Anständigkeitnot ofBerlin.’  But one might quote from every second pageof these letters.  Lady Duff Gordon was less than a year inSouth Africa; but in that time she brought more happiness tothose around her than many have done in a lifetime.  And herbounties live after her.

A last remark may not be out of place here, although it willdoubtless occur to every reader who approaches these letters withsympathy and discretion.  They must be read as true lettersand the spontaneous delineation of a personality, and not as aconsidered contribution to South African history.  Freereven than Stevenson himself from ‘le romantisme despoitrinaires’, and singularly clear-sighted in all thatcomes under her personal observation, Lady Duff Gordon does notwholly escape the nemesis which overtakes the traveller whoaccepts his history from hearsay.  And in South Africa, aswe know, such nemesis is well-nigh unfailing.  Few, however,have been the travellers, as the following pages will show, whocould meet such a charge with so great evidence of candour,disinterestedness, and love of human nature in its simplest andmost innocent forms.

J. P.

p.1INTRODUCTORY

The following letters were written,as the reader will readily perceive, without the remotest view topublication.  They convey in the most unreserved manner thefresh and vivid impressions of the moment, to the two personswith whom, of all others, the writer felt the least necessity forreserve in the expression of her thoughts, or care about the formin which those thoughts were conveyed.

Such letters cannot be expected to be free frommistakes.  The writer is misinformed; or her imagination,powerfully acted upon by new and strange objects, colours andmagnifies, to a certain extent, what she sees.  If these arevalid objections, they are equally so to every description of acountry that has not been corrected by long experience.

It has been thought, however, that their obvious and absolutegenuineness, and a certain frank and high-toned originality,hardly to be found in what is written for the public, wouldrecommend them to the taste of many.

But this was not the strongest motive to theirpublication.

The tone of English travellers is too frequently p. 2arrogant andcontemptuous, even towards peoples whose pretensions on the scoreof civilization are little inferior to their own.  When theycome in contact with communities or races inferior to them innatural organization or in acquired advantages, the feeling of acommon humanity often seems entirely to disappear.  Noattempt is made to search out, under external differences, theproofs of a common nature; no attempt to trace the streams ofhuman affections in their course through channels unlike thosemarked out among ourselves; no attempt to discover what there maybe of good mingled with obvious evil, or concealed underappearances which excite our surprise and antipathy.

It is the entire absence of the exclusive and superciliousspirit which characterizes dominant races; the rare power ofentering into new trains of thought, and sympathizing withunaccustomed feelings; the tender pity for the feeble andsubject, and the courteous respect for their prejudices; thelarge and purely human sympathies;—these, far more than anyliterary or graphic merits, are the qualities which have inducedthe possessors of the few following letters to give them to thepublic.

They show, what a series of letters from Egypt, since receivedfrom the same writer, prove yet more conclusively; that evenamong so-called barbarians p. 3are to be found hearts that open toevery touch of kindness, and respond to every expression ofrespect and sympathy.

If they should awaken any sentiments like those which inspiredthem, on behalf of races of men who come in contact withcivilization only to feel its resistless force and its haughtyindifference or contempt, it will be some consolation to thosewho are enduring the bitterness of the separation to which theyowe their existence.

SarahAustin.

Weybridge,
      Feb.24, 1864.

p. 4LETTERI
THE VOYAGE

Wednesday, 24th July.
Off the Scilly Isles, 6 P.M.

When I wrote last Sunday, we putour pilot on shore, and went down Channel.  It soon came onto blow, and all night was squally and rough.  Captain ondeck all night.  Monday, I went on deck at eight. Lovely weather, but the ship pitching as you never saw a shippitch—bowsprit under water.  By two o’clock agale came on; all ordered below.  Captain left dinner, and,about six, a sea struck us on the weather side, and washed a goodmany unconsidered trifles overboard, and stove in three windowson the poop; nurse and four children in fits; Mrs. T— andbabies afloat, but good-humoured as usual.  Army-surgeon andI picked up children and bullied nurse, and helped to balecabin.  Cuddy window stove in, and we were wetted. Went to bed at nine; could not undress, it pitched so, and had tocall doctor to help me into cot; slept sound.  The galecontinues.  My cabin is water-tight as to big splashes, butdamp and dribbling.  I am almost ashamed to like suchmiseries so much.  The forecastle is under water with everylurch, and the motion quite incredible to one only acquaintedwith steamers.  If one can sit this ship, which bounds likea tiger, one should sit a leap over a haystack.  Evidently,I can never be sea-sick; but holding on is hard work, and writingharder.

Life is thus:—Avery—my cuddy boy—brings teafor S—, and milk for me, at six.  S— turns out;when she is dressed, I turn out, and sing out for Avery, whotakes down my cot, and brings a bucket of salt water, in which Iwash with vast danger and difficulty; get dressed, and go on deckat eight.  Ladies not allowed there earlier.  Breakfastsolidly at nine.  Deck again; gossip; pretend to read. Beer and biscuit at twelve.  The faithful Avery brings mineon deck.  Dinner at four.  Do a little carpentering incabin, all the outfitters’ work having broken loose. I am now in the captain’s cabin, writing.  We have thewind as ever, dead against us; and as soon as we get unpleasantlynear Scilly, we shall tack and stand back to the French coast,where we were last night.  Three soldiers able to answerroll-call, all the rest utterly sick; three middieshelpless.  Several of crew, ditto.  Passengers veryfairly plucky; but only I and one other woman, who never was atsea before, well.  The food on board our ship is good as tomeat, bread, and beer; everything else bad.  Port and sherryof British manufacture, and the water with an incredibleborachio, essence of tar; so that tea and coffee are butderisive names.

To-day, the air is quite saturated with wet, and I put on myclothes damp when I dressed, and have felt so ever since.  Iam so glad I was not persuaded out of my cot; it is the wholedifference between rest, and holding on for life.  No one ina bunk slept at all on Monday night; but then it blew as heavy agale as it can blow, and we had the Cornish coast under ourlee.  So we tacked and tumbled all night.  The shipbeing new, too, has the rigging all wrong; and the confusion anddisorder are beyond description.  The ship’s officersare very good fellows.  The mizen is entirely worked by the‘young gentlemen’; so we never see the sailors, and,at present, are not allowed to go forward.  All lights areput out at half-past ten, and no food allowed in the cabin; butthe latter article my friend Avery makes light of, and brings meanything when I am laid up.  The young soldier-officers bawlfor him with expletives; but he says, with a snigger, to me,‘They’ll just wait till their betters, the ladies, islooked to.’  I will write again some day soon, andtake the chance of meeting a ship; you may be amused by a littlescrawl, though it will probably be very stupid and ill-written,for it is not easy to see or to guide a pen while I hold on tothe table with both legs and one arm, and am first on my back andthen on my nose.  Adieu, till next time.  I have had agood taste of the humours of the Channel.

29thJuly, 4 Bells, i.e. 2o’clock, p.m.—When I wrote last, Ithought we had had our share of contrary winds and foulweather.  Ever since, we have beaten about the bay with thevariety of a favourable gale one night for a few hours, and adead calm yesterday, in which we almost rolled our masts out ofthe ship.  However, the sun was hot, and I sat and basked ondeck, and we had morning service.  It was a striking sight,with the sailors seated on oars and buckets, covered with signalflags, and with their clean frocks and faces.  To-day is socold that I dare not go on deck, and am writing in my black-holeof a cabin, in a green light, with the sun blinking through thewaves as they rush over my port and scuttle.  The captain ismuch vexed at the loss of time.  I persist in thinking it avery pleasant, but utterly lazy life.  I sleep a great deal,but don’t eat much, and my cough has been bad; but,considering the real hardship of the life—damp, cold, queerfood, and bad drink—I think I am better.  When we canget past Finisterre, I shall do very well, I doubt not.

The children swarm on board, and cry unceasingly.  Apassenger-ship is no place for children.  Our poor ship willlose her character by the weather, as she cannot fetch up tendays’ lost time.  But she is evidently arace-horse.  We overhaul everything we see, at a wonderfulrate, and the speed is exciting and pleasant; but the next longvoyage I make, I’ll try for a good wholesome old‘monthly’ tub, which will roll along on the top ofthe water, instead of cutting through it, with the waves curlingin at the cuddy skylights.  We tried to signal a barqueyesterday, and send home word ‘all well’; but thebrutes understood nothing but Russian, and excited ourindignation by talking ‘gibberish ‘ to us; which weresented with true British spirit, as became us.

It is now blowing hard again, and we have just been takenright aback.  Luckily, I had lashed my desk to mywashing-stand, or that would have flown off, as I did off mychair.  I don’t think I shall know what to make ofsolid ground under my feet.  The rolling and pitching of aship of this size, with such tall masts, is quite unlike thelittle niggling sort of work on a steamer—it is thedifference between grinding along a bad road in a four-wheeler,and riding well to hounds in a close country on a goodhunter.  I was horribly tired for about five days, but now Irather like it, and never know whether it blows or not in thenight, I sleep so soundly.  The noise is beyond all belief;the creaking, trampling, shouting, clattering; it is an incessantstorm.  We have not yet got our masts quite safe; the newwire-rigging stretches more than was anticipated (of course), andour main-topmast is shaky.  The crew have very hard work, asincessant tacking is added to all the extra work incident to anew ship.  On Saturday morning, everybody was shouting forthe carpenter.  My cabin was flooded by a leak, and Isuperintended the baling and swabbing from my cot, and dressedsitting on my big box.  However, I got the leak stopped andcabin dried, and no harm done, as I had put everything up off thefloor the night before, suspicious of a dribble which camein.  Then my cot frame was broken by my cuddy boy and Ilurching over against S—’s bunk, in taking itdown.  The carpenter has given me his own, and takes mybroken one for himself.  Board ship is a famous place fortempers.  Being easily satisfied, I get all I want, andplenty of attention and kindness; but I cannot prevail on mycuddy boy to refrain from violent tambourine-playing with a tintray just at the ear of a lady who worries him.  The youngsoldier-officers, too, I hear mentioned as ‘them lazygunners’, and they struggle for water and tea in themorning long after mine has come.  We have now been ten daysat sea, and only three on which we could eat without the‘fiddles’ (transverse pieces of wood to prevent thedishes from falling off).  Smooth water will seem quitestrange to me.  I fear the poor people in the forecastlemust be very wet and miserable, as the sea is constantly over it,not in spray, but in tons of green water.

3dAug.—We had two days of dead calm, thenone or two of a very light, favourable breeze, and yesterday weran 175 miles with the wind right aft.  We saw severalships, which signalled us, but we would not answer, as we had ourspars down for repairs and looked like a wreck, and fancied itwould be a pity to frighten you all with a report to thateffect.

Last night we got all right, and spread out immensestudding-sails.  We are now bowling along, wind right aft,dipping our studding-sail booms into the water at everyroll.  The weather is still surprisingly cold, though veryfine, and I have to come below quite early, out of the eveningair.  The sun sets before seven o’clock.  I stillcough a good deal, and the bad food and drink are trying. But the life is very enjoyable; and as I have the run of thecharts, and ask all sorts of questions, I get plenty ofamusement.  S— is an excellent traveller; nogrumbling, and no gossiping, which, on board a ship like ours, isa great merit, for there is ad nauseamof both.

Mr. — is writing a charade, in which I have agreed totake a part, to prevent squabbling.  He wanted to start adaily paper, but the captain wisely forbade it, as it must haveled to personalities and quarrels, and suggested a playinstead.  My little white Maltese goat is very well, andgives plenty of milk, which is a great resource, as the tea andcoffee are abominable.  Avery brings it me at six, in a tinpannikin, and again in the evening.  The chief officer iswell-bred and agreeable, and, indeed, all the young gentlemen arewonderfully good specimens of their class.  The captain is aburly foremast man in manner, with a heart of wax and everyfeeling of a gentleman.  He was in California,‘hide droghing’ with Dana, and he says everyline of Two Years before the Mastis true.  He wentthrough it all himself.  He says that I am a great help tohim, as a pattern of discipline and punctuality.  People aremuch inclined to miss meals, and then want things at odd hours,and make the work quite impossible to the cook andservants.  Of course, I get all I want in double-quick time,as I try to save my man trouble; and the carpenter leaves myscuttle open when no one else gets it, quite willing to get up inhis time of sleep to close it, if it comes on to blow.  Amaid is really a superfluity on board ship, as the men ratherlike being ‘aux petits soins’.  Theboatswain came the other day to say that he had a nice carpet anda good pillow; did I want anything of the sort?  He would beproud that I should use anything of his.  You would delightin Avery, my cuddy man, who is as quick as ‘greasedlightning’, and full of fun.  His misery is my want ofappetite, and his efforts to cram me are very droll.  Thedays seem to slip away, one can’t tell how.  I sit ondeck from breakfast at nine, till dinner at four, and then againtill it gets cold, and then to bed.  We are now about 100miles from Madeira, and shall have to run inside it, as we werethrown so far out of our course by the foul weather.

9thAug.—Becalmed, under a verticalsun.  Lat. 17°, or thereabouts.  We saw Madeira ata distance like a cloud; since then, we had about four days tradewind, and then failing or contrary breezes.  We have sailedso near the African shore that we get little good out of thetrades, and suffer much from the African climate.  Fancy asky like a pale February sky in London, no sun to be seen, and aheat coming, one can’t tell from whence.  To-day, thesun is vertical and invisible, the sea glassy and heaving. I have been ill again, and obliged to lie still yesterday and theday before in the captain’s cabin; to-day in my own, as wehave the ports open, and the maindeck is cooler than theupper.  The men have just been holystoning here, singingaway lustily in chorus.  Last night I got leave to sling mycot under the main hatchway, as my cabin must have killed me fromsuffocation when shut up.  Most of the men stayed on deck,but that is dangerous after sunset on this African coast, onaccount of the heavy dew and fever.  They tell me that theopen sea is quite different; certainly, nothing can look dullerand dimmer than this specimen of the tropics.  The few daysof trade wind were beautiful and cold, with sparkling sea, andfresh air and bright sun; and we galloped along merrily.

We are now close to the Cape de Verd Islands, and shall goinside them.  About lat. 4° N. we expect to catch theS.E. trade wind, when it will be cold again.  In lat.24°, the day before we entered the tropics, I sat on deck ina coat and cloak; the heat is quite sudden, and only lasts a weekor so.  The sea to-day is littered all round the ship withour floating rubbish, so we have not moved at all.

I constantly long for you to be here, though I am not sure youwould like the life as well as I do.  All your ideas of itare wrong; the confinement to the poop and the stringentregulations would bore you.  But then, sitting on deck infine weather is pleasure enough, without anything else.  Ina Queen’s ship, a yacht, or a merchantman with fewerpassengers, it must be a delightful existence.

17thAug.—Since I wrote last, we got intothe south-west monsoon for one day, and I sat up by the steersmanin intense enjoyment—a bright sun and glittering blue sea;and we tore along, pitching and tossing the water up likemad.  It was glorious.  At night, I was calmly reposingin my cot, in the middle of the steerage, just behind the mainhatchway, when I heard a crashing of rigging and a violent noiseand confusion on deck.  The captain screamed out orderswhich informed me that we were in the thick of acollision—of course I lay still, and waited till the row,or the ship, went down.  I found myself next day looked uponas no better than a heathen by all the women, because I had beencool, and declined to get up and make a noise.  Presentlythe officers came and told me that a big ship had borne down onus—we were on the starboard tack, and allright—carried off our flying jib-boom and whisker (the sortof yard to the bowsprit).  The captain says he was never insuch imminent danger in his life, as she threatened to swinground and to crush into our waist, which would have been certaindestruction.  The little dandy soldier-officer behavedcapitally; he turned his men up in no time, and had them allready.  He said, ‘Why, you know, I must see that myfellows go down decently.’  S— was as cool as anicicle, offered me my pea-jacket, &c., which I declined, asit would be of no use for me to go off in boats, even supposingthere were time, and I preferred going down comfortably in mycot.  Finding she was of no use to me, she took a yellingmaid in custody, and was thought a brute for begging her to holdher noise.  The first lieutenant, who looks on passengers asodious cargo, has utterly mollified to me since thisadventure.  I heard him report to the captain that I was‘among ’em all, and never sung out, nor asked aquestion the while’.  This he called‘beautiful’.

Next day we got light wind S.W. (which ought to be the S.E.trades), and the weather has been, beyond all description, lovelyever since.  Cool, but soft, sunny and bright—inshort, perfect; only the sky is so pale.  Last night thesunset was a vision of loveliness, a sort of Pompadour paradise;the sky seemed full of rose-crowned amorini, and the moonwore a rose-coloured veil of bright pink cloud, all so light, soairy, so brilliant, and so fleeting, that it was a kind ofintoxication.  It is far less grand than northern colour,but so lovely, so shiny.  Then the flying fish skimmed likesilver swallows over the blue water.  Such a sight! Also, I saw a whale spout like a very tiny garden fountain. The Southern Cross is a delusion, and the tropical moon no betterthan a Parisian one, at present.  We are now in lat. 31°about, and have been driven halfway to Rio by this sweet southernbreeze.  I have never yet sat on deck without a cloth jacketor shawl, and the evenings are chilly.  I no longer believein tropical heat at sea.  Even during the calm it was not sohot as I have often felt it in England—and that, under avertical sun.  The ship that nearly ran us and herself down,must have kept no look-out, and refused to answer our hail. She is supposed to be from Glasgow by her looks.  We mayspeak a ship and send letters on board; so excuse scrawl andconfusion, it is so difficult to write at all.

30thAugust.—About 25° S. lat. andvery much to the west.  We have had all sorts ofweather—some beautiful, some very rough, but alwayscontrary winds—and got within 200 miles of the coast ofSouth America.  We now have a milder breeze from thesoftN.E., after a bitterS.W., with Cape pigeonsand mollymawks (a small albatross), not to compare with ourgulls.  We had private theatricals last night—illacted, but beautifully got up as far as the sailors wereconcerned.  I did not act, as I did not feel well enough,but I put a bit for Neptune into the Prologue and made theboatswain’s mate speak it, to make up for the absence ofany shaving at the Line, which the captain prohibited altogether;I thought it hard the men should not get their‘tips’.  The boatswain’s mate dressed andspoke it admirably; and the old carpenter sang a famous comicsong, dressed to perfection as a ploughboy.

I am disappointed in the tropics as to warmth.  Ourthermometer stood at 82° one day only, under the verticalsun, N. of the Line; onthe Line at 74°; and at sea itfeels10° colder than it is.  I have never beenhot, except for two days 4° N. of the Line, and now it isvery cold, but it is very invigorating.  All day long itlooks and feels like early morning; the sky is pale blue, withlight broken clouds; the sea an inconceivably pure opaqueblue—lapis lazuli, but far brighter.  I saw a lovelydolphin three days ago; his body five feet long (some said more)is of a fieryblue-green, and his huge tail goldenbronze.  I was glad he scorned the bait and escaped thehook; he was so beautiful.  This is the sea from which Venusrose in her youthful glory.  All is young, fresh, serene,beautiful, and cheerful.

We have not seen a sail for weeks.  But the life at seamakes amends for anything, to my mind.  I am never tired ofthe calms, and I enjoy a stiff gale like a Mother Carey’schicken, so long as I can be on deck or in the captain’scabin.  Between decks it is very close and suffocating inrough weather, as all is shut up.  We shall be still threeweeks before we reach the Cape; and now the sun sets with asudden plunge before six, and the evenings are growing too coldagain for me to go on deck after dinner.  As long as Icould, I spent fourteen hours out of the twenty-four in my quietcorner by the wheel, basking in the tropical sun.  Neveragain will I believe in the tales of a burning sun; the verticalsun just kept me warm—no more.  In two days we shallbe bitterly cold again.

Immediately after writing the above it began to blow a gale(favourable, indeed, but more furious than the captain had everknown in these seas),—about lat. 34° S. and long.25°.  For three days we ran under close-reefed (fourreefs) topsails, before a sea.  The gale in the Bay ofBiscay was a little shaking up in a puddle (a dirty one) comparedto that glorious South Atlantic in all its majestic fury. The intense blue waves, crowned with fantastic crests of brightemeralds and with the spray blowing about like wild dishevelledhair, came after us to swallow us up at a mouthful, but took usup on their backs, and hurried us along as if our ship were acork.  Then the gale slackened, and we had a dead calm,during which the waves banged us about frightfully, and our mastswere in much jeopardy.  Then a foul wind, S.E., increasedinto a gale, lasting five days, during which orders were given indumb show, as no one’s voice could be heard; through it wefought and laboured and dipped under water, and I only had my drycorner by the wheel, where the kind pleasant little third officerlashed me tight.  It was far more formidable than the firstgale, but less beautiful; and we made so much lee-way that welost ten days, and only arrived here yesterday.  I recommenda fortnight’s heavy gale in the South Atlantic as a curefor a blaséstate of mind.  It cannot bedescribed; the sound, the sense of being hurled along without thesmallest regard to ‘this side uppermost’; the beautyof the whole scene, and the occasional crack and bear-away ofsails and spars; the officer trying to ‘sing out’,quite in vain, and the boatswain’s whistle scarcelyaudible.  I remained near the wheel every day for as long asI could bear it, and was enchanted.

Then the mortal perils of eating, drinking, moving, sitting,lying; standing can’t be done, even by the sailors, withoutholding on.  Thenight of the gale, my cot twicetouched the beams of the ship above me.  I asked the captainif I had dreamt it, but he said it was quite possible; he hadnever seen a ship so completely on her beam ends come up allright, masts and yards all sound.

There is a middy about half M—’s size, a very tinyten-year-older, who has been my delight; he is so completely‘the officer and the gentleman’.  My maternalentrails turned like old Alvarez, when that baby lay out on thevery end of the cross-jack yard to reef, in the gale; it wasquite voluntary, and the other newcomers all declined.  Ialways called him ‘Mr. —, sir’, and asked hisleave gravely, or, on occasions, his protection and assistance;and his little dignity was lovely.  He is polite to theladies, and slightly distant to the passenger-boys, bigger thanhimself, whom he orders off dangerous places; ‘Children,come out of that; you’ll be overboard.’

A few days before landing I caught a bad cold, and kept mybed.  I caught this cold by ‘sleeping with a damp manin my cabin’, as some one said.  During the last gale,the cabin opposite mine was utterly swamped, and I found theIrish soldier-servant of a little officer of eighteen in despair;the poor lad had got ague, and eight inches of water in his bed,and two feet in the cabin.  I looked in and said, ‘Hecan’t stay there—carry him into my cabin, and lay himin the bunk’; which he did, with tears running down hishonest old face.  So we got the boy into S—’sbed, and cured his fever and ague, caught under canvas in RomneyMarsh.  Meantime S— had to sleep in a chair and toundress in the boy’s wet cabin.  As a token ofgratitude, he sent me a poodle pup, born on board, veryhandsome.  The artillery officers were generallywell-behaved; the men, deserters and ruffians, sent out asdrivers.  We have had five courts-martial and two floggingsin eight weeks, among seventy men.  They were pampered withfood and porter, and would not pull a rope, or get up at six toair their quarters.  The sailors are an excellent set ofmen.  When we parted, the first lieutenant said to me,‘Weel, ye’ve a wonderful idee of discipline for aleddy, I will say.  You’ve never been reported butonce, and that was on sick leave, for your light, and all inorder.’

Cape Town, Sept. 18.

We anchored yesterday morning, and Captain J—, the PortCaptain, came off with a most kind letter from Sir BaldwinWalker, his gig, and a boat and crew for S— and thebaggage.  So I was whipped over the ship’s side in achair, and have come to a boarding house where the J—slive.  I was tired and dizzy and landsick, and lay down andwent to sleep.  After an hour or so I woke, hearing a littlegazouillement, like that of chimney swallows.  Onopening my eyes I beheld four demons, ‘sons of the obedientJinn’, each bearing an article of furniture, and holdingconverse over me in the language of Nephelecoecygia.  Whyhas no one ever mentioned the curious little soft voices of thesecoolies?—you can’t hear them with the naked ear,three feet off.  The most hideous demon (whose complexionhad not only the colour, but the precise metallic lustre of anill black-leaded stove) at last chirruped a wish for orders,which I gave.  I asked the pert, active, cockney housemaidwhat I ought to pay them, as, being a stranger, they mightovercharge me.  Her scorn was sublime, ‘Them nastyblacks never asks more than their regular charge.’  SoI asked the black-lead demon, who demanded ‘two shillingeach horse in waggon’, and a dollar each ‘coolieman’.  He then glided with fiendish noiselessnessabout the room, arranged the furniture to his own taste, andfinally said, ‘Poor missus sick’; then morechirruping among themselves, and finally a fearful gesture ofincantation, accompanied by ‘God bless poor missus. Soon well now’.  The wrath of the cockney housemaidbecame majestic: ‘There, ma’am; you see how saucythey have grown—a nasty black heathen Mohamedan a blessingof a white Christian!’

These men are the Auvergnats of Africa.  I was assuredthat bankers entrust them with large sums in gold, which theycarry some hundred and twenty miles, by unknown tracks, for asmall gratuity.  The pretty, graceful Malays are no honesterthan ourselves, but are excellent workmen.

To-morrow, my linen will go to a ravine in the giant mountainat my back, and there be scoured in a clear spring by brownwomen, bleached on the mountain top, and carried back all thoselong miles on their heads, as it went up.

My landlady is Dutch; the waiter is an Africander, half Dutch,half Malay, very handsome, and exactly like a French gentleman,and as civil.

Enter ‘Africander’ lad with a nosegay; only oneflower that I know—heliotrope.  The vegetation islovely; the freshness of spring and the richness of summer. The leaves on the trees are in all the beauty of spring. Mrs. R— brought me a plate of oranges, ‘justgathered’, as soon as I entered the house—and, oh!how good they were! better even than the Maltese.  They aregoing out, and dearnow—two a penny, very large anddelicious.  I am wild to get out and see the gloriousscenery and the hideous people.  To-day the wind has been acold south-wester, and I have not been out.  My windows lookN. and E. so I get all the sun and warmth.  The beauty ofTable Bay is astounding.  Fancy the Undercliff in the Isleof Wight magnified a hundred-fold, with clouds floating halfwayup the mountain.  The Hottentot mountains in the distancehave a fantastic jagged outline, which hardly looks real. The town is like those in the south of Europe; flat roofs, andall unfinished; roads are simply non-existent.  At the doorssat brown women with black hair that shone like metal, veryhandsome; they are Malays, and their men wear conical hats a-topof turbans, and are the chief artisans.  At the end of thepier sat a Mozambique woman in white drapery and the mostmajestic attitude, like a Roman matron; her features large andstrong and harsh, but fine; and her skin blacker than night.

I have got a couple of Cape pigeons (the storm-bird of theSouth Atlantic) for J—’s hat.  They followed usseveral thousand miles, and were hooked for their pains. The albatrosses did not come within hail.

The little Maltese goat gave a pint of milk night and morning,and was a great comfort to the cow.  She did not like theland or the grass at first, and is to be thrown out of milknow.  She is much admired and petted by the youngAfricander.  My room is at least eighteen feet high, andcontains exactly a bedstead, one straw mattrass, one ricketytable, one wash-table, two chairs, and broken looking-glass; nocarpet, and a hiatus of three inches between the floor and thedoor, but all very clean; and excellent food.  I have notmade a bargain yet, but I dare say I shall stay here.

Friday.—I have just received your letter; whereit has been hiding, I can’t conceive.  To-day is coldand foggy, like a baddish day in June with you; no colder, if socold.  Still, I did not venture out, the fog rolls soheavily over the mountain.  Well, I must send off this yarn,which is as interminable as the ‘sinnet’ and‘foxes’ which I twisted with the mids.

p. 26LETTERII

Cape Town, Oct. 3.

I came on shore on a very fine day,but the weather changed, and we had a fortnight of cold and dampand S.W. wind (equivalent to our east wind), such as the‘oldest inhabitant’ never experienced; and I have hadas bad an attack of bronchitis as ever I remember, having been inbed till yesterday.  I had a very good doctor, half Italian,half Dane, born at the Cape of Good Hope, and educated atEdinburgh, named Chiappini.  He has a son studying medicinein London, whose mother is Dutch; such is the mixture of bloodshere.

Yesterday, the wind went to the south-east; the blessed sunshone out, and the weather was lovely at once.  The mountainthrew off his cloak of cloud, and all was bright and warm. I got up and sat in the verandah over the stoep (a kind ofterrace in front of every house here).  They brought me atortoise as big as half a crown and as lively as a cricket tolook at, and a chameleon like a fairy dragon—a greenfellow, five inches long, with no claws on his feet, but suckerslike a fly—the most engaging little beast.  He sat onmy finger, and caught flies with great delight and dexterity, andI longed to send him to M—.  To-day, I went a longdrive with Captain and Mrs. J—: we went to Rondebosch andWynberg—lovely country; rather like Herefordshire; redearth and oak-trees.  Miles of the road were likeGainsborough-lane, [27] on a large scale, and looked quiteEnglish; only here and there a hedge of prickly pear, or the bigwhite aruns in the ditches, told a different tale; and thescarlet geraniums and myrtles growing wild puzzled one.

And then came rattling along a light, rough, but well-poisedcart, with an Arab screw driven by a Malay, in a great hat on hiskerchiefed head, and his wife, with her neat dress, glossy blackhair, and great gold earrings.  They were coming with fish,which he had just caught at Kalk Bay, and was going to sell forthe dinners of the Capetown folk.  You pass neat villas,with pretty gardens and stoeps, gay with flowers, and at thedoors of several, neat Malay girls are lounging.  They arethe best servants here, for the emigrants mostly drink. Then you see a group of children at play, some as black as coals,some brown and very pretty.  A little black girl, aboutR—’s age, has carefully tied what little petticoatshe has, in a tight coil round her waist, and displays the mostdarling little round legs and behind, which it would be a realpleasure to slap; it is so shiny and round, and she runs andstands so strongly and gracefully.

Here comes another Malay, with a pair of baskets hanging froma stick across his shoulder, like those in Chinese pictures,which his hat also resembles.  Another cart full of workingmen, with a Malay driver; and inside are jumbled some red-haired,rosy-cheeked English navvies, with the ugliest Mozambiques,blacker than Erebus, and with faces all knobs and corners, like acrusty loaf.  As we drive home we see a span of sixteennoble oxen in the market-place, and on the ground squats theHottentot driver.  His face no words can describe—hischeek-bones are up under his hat, and his meagre-pointed chinhalfway down to his waist; his eyes have the dull look of aviper’s, and his skin is dirty and sallow, but not darkerthan a dirty European’s.

Capetown is rather pretty, but beyond words untidy and out ofrepair.  As it is neither drained nor paved, it won’tdo in hot weather; and I shall migrate ‘up country’to a Dutch village.  Mrs. J—, who is Dutch herself,tells me that one may board in a Dutch farm-house very cheaply,and with great comfort (of course eating with the family), andthat they will drive you about the country and tend your horsesfor nothing, if you are friendly, and don’t treat them withEngelsche hoog-moedigheid.

Oct.19th.—The packet came in last night,but just in time to save the fine of 50l.per diem, and Igot your welcome letter this morning.  I have been coughingall this time, but I hope I shall improve.  I came out atthe very worst time of year, and the weather has been (of course)‘unprecedentedly’ bad and changeable.  But whenit isfine it is quite celestial; so clear, so dry, solight.  Then comes a cloud over Table Mountain, like thesugar on a wedding-cake, which tumbles down in splendidwaterfalls, and vanishes unaccountably halfway; and then you runindoors and shut doors and windows, or it portends a‘south-easter’, i.e. a hurricane, and Capetowndisappears in impenetrable clouds of dust.  But this windcoming off the hills and fields of ice, is the Cape doctor, andkeeps away cholera, fever of every sort, and all malignant orinfectious diseases.  Most of them are unknown here. Never was so healthy a place; but the remedy is of the heroicnature, and very disagreeable.  The stones rattle againstthe windows, and omnibuses are blown over on the Rondeboschroad.

A few days ago, I drove to Mr. V—’s farm. Imagine St. George’s Hill, [30] and the mostbeautiful bits of it, sloping gently up to Table Mountain, withits grey precipices, and intersected with Scotch burns, whichwater it all the year round, as they come from the living rock;and sprinkled with oranges, pomegranates, and camelias inabundance.  You drive through a mile or two as described,and arrive at a square, planted with rows of fine oaks closetogether; at the upper end stands the house, all on theground-floor, but on a high stoep: rooms eighteen feet high; theold slave quarters on each side; stables, &c., opposite; thesquare as big as Belgrave Square, and the buildings in the oldFrench style.

We then went on to Newlands, a still more beautifulplace.  Immense trenching and draining going on—theforeman a Caffre, black as ink, six feet three inches high, andbroad in proportion, with a staid, dignified air, and Englishmenworking under him!  At the streamlets there are theinevitable groups of Malay women washing clothes, and brownbabies sprawling about.  Yesterday, I should have bought ablack woman for her beauty, had it been still possible.  Shewas carrying an immense weight on her head, and was far gone withchild; but such stupendous physical perfection I never evenimagined.  Her jet black face was like the Sphynx, with thesame mysterious smile; her shape and walk were goddess-like, andthe lustre of her skin, teeth, and eyes, showed the fulness ofhealth;—Caffre of course.  I walked after her as faras her swift pace would let me, in envy and admiration of suchstately humanity.

The ordinary blacks, or Mozambiques, as they call them, arehideous.  Malay here seems equivalent to Mohammedan. They were originally Malays, but now they include every shade,from the blackest nigger to the most blooming Englishwoman.  Yes, indeed, the emigrant-girls have been known toturn ‘Malays’, and get thereby husbands who know notbilliards and brandy—the two diseases of Capetown. They risked a plurality of wives, and professed Islam, but theygot fine clothes and industrious husbands.  They wear a verypretty dress, and all have a great air of independence andself-respect; and the real Malays are very handsome.  I amgoing to see one of the Mollahs soon, and to look at theirschools and mosque; which, to the distraction of the Scotch, theycall their ‘Kerk.’

I asked a Malay if he would drive me in his cart with the sixor eight mules, which he agreed to do for thirty shillings andhis dinner (i.e. a share of my dinner) on the road.  When Iasked how long it would take, he said, ‘Allah isgroot’, which meant, I found, that it depended on the stateof the beach—the only road for half the way.

The sun, moon, and stars are different beings from those welook upon.  Not only are they so large and bright, but youseethat the moon and stars are balls, and that thesky is endless beyond them.  On the other hand, the clear,dry air dwarfs Table Mountain, as you seem to see every detail ofit to the very top.

Capetown is very picturesque.  The old Dutch buildingsare very handsome and peculiar, but are falling to decay and dirtin the hands of their present possessors.  The few Dutchladies I have seen are very pleasing.  They are gentle andsimple, and naturally well-bred.  Some of the Malay womenare very handsome, and the little children are darlings.  Alittle parti-coloured group of every shade, from ebony to goldenhair and blue eyes, were at play in the street yesterday, and themajority were pretty, especially the half-castes.  Most ofthe Caffres I have seen look like the perfection of humanphysical nature, and seem to have no diseases.  Two days agoI saw a Hottentot girl of seventeen, a housemaid here.  Youwould be enchanted by her superfluity of flesh; the face was veryqueer and ugly, and yet pleasing, from the sweet smile and therosy cheeks which please one much, in contrast to all the paleyellow faces—handsome as some of them are.

I wish I could send the six chameleons which a good-naturedparson brought me in his hat, and a queer lizard in hispocket.  The chameleons are charming, so monkey-like and so‘caressants’.  They sit on my breakfasttray and catch flies, and hang in a bunch by their tails, andreach out after my hand.

I have had a very kind letter from Lady Walker, and shall goand stay with them at Simon’s Bay as soon as I feel up tothe twenty-two miles along the beaches and bad roads in themail-cart with three horses.  The teams of mules (I begpardon, spans) would delight you—eight, ten, twelve, evensixteen sleek, handsome beasts; and oh, such oxen! noble beastswith humps; and hump is very good to eat too.

Oct.21st.—The mail goes out to-morrow, soI must finish this letter.  I feel better to-day than I haveyet felt, in spite of the south-easter.

Yours, &c.

p. 34LETTERIII

28thOct.—Since I wrote, we have had morereally cold weather, but yesterday the summer seems to havebegun.  The air is as light and clear as if there werenone, and the sun hot; but I walk in it, and do not find itoppressive.  All the household groans and perspires, but Iam very comfortable.

Yesterday I sat in the full broil for an hour or more, in thehot dust of the Malay burial-ground.  They buried the headbutcher of the Mussulmans, and a most strange poetical scene itwas.  The burial-ground is on the side of the LionMountain—on the Lion’s rump—and overlooks thewhole bay, part of the town, and the most superb mountainpanorama beyond.  I never saw a view within miles of it forbeauty and grandeur.  Far down, a fussy English steamer camepuffing and popping into the deep blue bay, and the‘Hansom’s’ cabs went tearing down to thelanding place; and round me sat a crowd of grave brown menchanting ‘Allah il Allah’ to the most monotonous butmusical air, and with the most perfect voices.  The chantseemed to swell, and then fade, like the wind in the trees.

I went in after the procession, which consisted of a biercovered with three common Paisley shawls of gay colours; no onelooked at me; and when they got near the grave, I kept at adistance, and sat down when they did.  But a man came up andsaid, ‘You are welcome.’  So I went close, andsaw the whole ceremony.  They took the corpse, wrapped in asheet, out of the bier, and lifted it into the grave, where twomen received it; then a sheet was held over the grave till theyhad placed the dead man; and then flowers and earth were thrownin by all present, the grave filled in, watered out of a brasskettle, and decked with flowers.  Then a fat old man, inprinted calico shirt sleeves, and a plaid waistcoat and corduroytrousers, pulled off his shoes, squatted on the grave, andrecited endless ‘Koran’, many reciting afterhim.  Then they chanted ‘Allah-il-Allah’ fortwenty minutes, I think: then prayers, with ‘Ameens’and ‘Allah il-Allahs’ again.  Then all jumped upand walked off.  There were eighty or a hundred men, nowomen, and five or six ‘Hadjis’, draped in beautifulEastern dresses, and looking very supercilious.  The wholeparty made less noise in moving and talking than twoEnglishmen.

A white-complexioned man spoke to me in excellent English(which few of them speak), and was very communicative andcivil.  He told me the dead man was his brother-in-law, andhe himself the barber.  I hoped I had not taken aliberty.  ‘Oh, no; poor Malays were proud when nobleEnglish persons showed such respect to their religion.  Theyoung Prince had done so too, and Allah would not forget toprotect him.  He also did not laugh at their prayers, praisebe to God!’  I had already heard that Prince Alfred isquite the darling of the Malays.  He insisted on acceptingtheir fête, which the Capetown people hadsnubbed.  I have a friendship with one Abdul Jemaalee andhis wife Betsy, a couple of old folks who were slaves to Dutchowners, and now keep a fruit-shop of a rough sort, with‘Betsy, fruiterer,’ painted on the back of an old tintray, and hung up by the door of the house.  Abdul firstbought himself, and then his wife Betsy, whose‘missus’ generously threw in her bed-riddenmother.  He is a fine handsome old man, and has confided tome that £5,000 would not buy what he is worth now.  Ihave also read the letters written by his, son, young AbdulRachman, now a student at Cairo, who has been away fiveyears—four at Mecca.  The young theologian writes tohis ‘hoog eerbare moeder’ a fond request formoney, and promises to return soon.  I am invited to thefeast wherewith he will be welcomed.  Old Abdul Jemaaleethinks it will divert my mind, and prove to me that Allah willtake me home safe to my children, about whom he and his wifeasked many questions.  Moreover, he compelled me to drinkherb tea, compounded by a Malay doctor for my cough.  Ideclined at first, and the poor old man looked hurt, gravelyassured me that it was not true that Malays always poisonedChristians, and drank some himself.  Thereupon I wasobliged, of course, to drink up the rest; it certainly did megood, and I have drunk it since with good effect; it is intenselybitter and rather sticky.  The white servants and the Dutchlandlady where I lodge shake their heads ominously, and hope itmayn’t poison me a year hence.  ‘Them nastyMalays can make it work months after you take it.’ They also possess the evil eye, and a talent for lovepotions.  As the men are very handsome and neat, I inclineto believe that part of it.

Rathfelder’s Halfway House, 6thNovember.—I drove out here yesterday in CaptainT—’s drag, which he kindly brought into Capetown forme.  He and his wife and children came for a change of airfor whooping cough, and advised me to come too, as my coughcontinues, though less troublesome.  It is a lovely spot,six miles from Constantia, ten from Capetown, and twelve fromSimon’s Bay.  I intend to stay here a little while,and then to go to Kalk Bay, six miles from hence.  This innwas excellent, I hear, ‘in the old Dutchtimes’.  Now it is kept by a young Englishman,Cape-born, and his wife, and is dirty and disorderly.  I paytwelve shillings a day for S— and self, without asitting-room, and my bed is a straw paillasse; but the food isplentiful, and not very bad.  That is the cheapest rate ofliving possible here, and every trifle costs double what it wouldin England, except wine, which is very fair at fivepence abottle—a kind of hock.  The landlord pays £1 aday rent for this house, which is the great resort of theCapetown people for Sundays, and for change of air,&c.—a rude kind of Richmond.  His cook gets£3 10s.a month, besides food for himself and wife,and beer and sugar.  The two (white) housemaids get £115s.and £1 10s.respectively (everything bythe month).  Fresh butter is 3s.6d.a pound,mutton 7d.; washing very dear; cabbages my host sells at3d.a piece, and pumpkins 8d.  He has a finegarden, and pays a gardener 3s.6d.a day, andblack labourers 2s.  Theywork three days aweek; then they buy rice and a coarse fish, and lie in the suntill it is eaten; while their darling little fat black babiesplay in the dust, and their black wives make battues in thecovers in their woolly heads.  But the little black girl whocleans my room is far the best servant, and smiles and speakslike Lalage herself, ugly as the poor drudge is.  The voiceand smile of the negroes here is bewitching, though they arehideous; and neither S— nor I have yet heard a black childcry, or seen one naughty or quarrelsome.  You would want tolay out a fortune in woolly babies.  Yesterday I had adreadful heartache after my darling, on her little birthday, andeven the lovely ranges of distant mountains, coloured like opalsin the sunset, did not delight me.  This is a dreary placefor strangers.  Abdul Jemaalee’s tisanne, and a bananawhich he gave me each time I went to his shop, are the sole offerof ‘Won’t you take something?’ or even the soleattempt at a civility that I have received, except from theJ—s, who, are very civil and kind.

When I have done my visit to Simon’s Bay, I will go‘up country’, to Stellenbosch, Paarl and Worcester,perhaps.  If I can find people going in a bullock-waggon, Iwill join them; it costs £1 a day, and goes twentymiles.  If money were no object, I would hire one withCaffres to hunt, as well as outspan and drive, and take asaddle-horse.  There is plenty of pleasure to be had intravelling here, if you can afford it.  The scenery is quitebeyond anything you can imagine in beauty.  I went to acountry house at Rondebosch with the J—s, and I never sawso lovely a spot.  The possessor had done his best to spoilit, and to destroy the handsome Dutch house and fountains andaqueducts; but Nature was too much for him, and the place lovelyin neglect and shabbiness.

Now I will tell you my impressions of the state of societyhere, as far as I have been able to make out by playing theinquisitive traveller.  I dare say the statements areexaggerated, but I do not think they are wholly devoid oftruth.  The Dutch round Capetown (I don’t knowanything of ‘up country’) are sulky and dispirited;they regret the slave days, and can’t bear to pay wages;they have sold all their fine houses in town to merchants,&c., and let their handsome country places go to pieces, andtheir land lie fallow, rather than hire the men they used toown.  They hate the Malays, who were their slaves, and whose‘insolent prosperity’ annoys them, and theydon’t like the vulgar, bustling English.  The Englishcomplain that the Dutch won’t die, and that they are thecurse of the colony (a statement for which they can never give areason).  But they, too, curse the emancipation, long toflog the niggers, and hate the Malays, who work harder anddon’t drink, and who are the only masons, tailors, &c.,and earn from 4s.6d.to 10s.a day. The Malays also have almost a monopoly of cart-hiring andhorse-keeping; an Englishman charges £4 10s.or£5 for a carriage to do what a Malay will do quicker in alight cart for 30s.  S— says, ‘TheEnglish here think the coloured people ought to do the work, andthey to get the wages.  Nothing less would satisfythem.’  Servants’ wages are high, but otherwages not much higher than in England; yet industrious peopleinvariably make fortunes, or at least competencies, even whenthey begin with nothing.  But few of the English will doanything but lounge; while they abuse the Dutch as lazy, and theMalays as thieves, and feel their fingers itch to be at theblacks.  The Africanders (Dutch and negro mixed in variousproportions) are more or less lazy, dirty, and dressy, and thebeautiful girls wear pork-pie hats, and look very winning andrather fierce; but to them the philanthropists at home haveprovided formidable rivals, by emptying a shipload of youngladies from a ‘Reformatory’ into the streets ofCapetown.

I am puzzled what to think of the climate here forinvalids.  The air is dry and clear beyond conception, andlight, but the sun is scorching; while the south-east wind blowsan icy hurricane, and the dust obscures the sky.  Thesewinds last all the summer, till February or March.  I amtold when they don’t blow it is heavenly, though still coldin the mornings and evenings.  No one must be out at, orafter sunset, the chill is so sudden.  Many of the peoplehere declare that it is death to weak lungs, and send theirpoitrinairesto Madeira, or the south of France. They also swear the climate is enervating, but their looks, andabove all the blowsy cheeks and hearty play of the Englishchildren, disprove that; and those who come here consumptive getwell in spite of the doctors, who won’t allow itpossible.  I believe it is a climate which requires greatcare from invalids, but that, with care, it is good, because itis bracing as well as warm and dry.  It is not nearly sowarm as I expected; the southern icebergs are at no greatdistance, and they ice the south-east wind for us.  If itwere not so violent, it would be delicious; and there are nounhealthy winds—nothing like our east wind.  Thepeople here grumble at the north-wester, which sometimes bringsrain, and call it damp, which, as they don’t know what dampis, is excusable; it feels like a drysouth-wester inEngland.  It is, however, quite a delusion to think ofliving out of doors, here; the south-easters keep one in nearly,if not quite, half one’s time, and in summer they say thesun is too hot to be out except morning and evening.  But Idoubt that, for they make an outcry about heat as soon as it isnot cold.  The transitions are so sudden, that, with thethermometer at 76°, you must not go out without taking athick warm cloak; you may walk into a south-easter round thefirst spur of the mountain, and be cut in two.  In short,the air is cold and bracing, and the sun blazing hot; those whomthat suits, will do well.  I should like a softer air, but Imay be wrong; when there is only a moderate wind, it isdelicious.  You walk in the hot sun, which makes youperspire a very little; but you dry as you go, the air is so dry;and you come in untired.  I speak of slow walking. There are no hot-climate diseases; no dysentery, fever,&c.

Simon’s Bay, 18thNov.—I cameon here in a cart, as I felt ill from the return of the coldweather.  While at Rathfelder we had a superb day, and theJ—s drove me over to Constantia, which deserves all itsreputation for beauty.  What a divine spot!—suchkloofs, with silver rills running down them!  It is uselessto describe scenery.  It was a sort of glorified Scotland,with sunshine, flowers, and orange-groves.  We got homehungry and tired, but in great spirits.  Alas! next day camethe south-easter—blacker, colder, more cutting, thanever—and lasted a week.

The Walkers came over on horseback, and pressed me to go tothem.  They are most kind and agreeable people.  Thedrive to Simon’s Bay was lovely, along the coast and acrossfive beaches of snow-white sand, which look like winterlandscapes; and the mountains and bay are lovely.

Living is very dear, and washing, travelling, chemist’sbills—all enormous.  Thirty shillings a cart and horsefrom Rathfelder here—twelve miles; and then the youngEnglish host wanted me to hire another cart for one box and onebath!  But I would not, and my obstinacy was stoutest. If I want cart or waggon again, I’ll deal with a Malay,only the fellows drive with forty Jehu-power up and down themountains.

A Madagascar woman offered to give me her orphan grandchild, asweet brown fairy, six years old, with long silky black hair, andgorgeous eyes.  The child hung about me incessantly all thetime I was at Rathfelder, and I had a great mind to her. She used to laugh like baby, and was like her altogether, onlyprettier, and very brown; and when I told her she was like my ownlittle child, she danced about, and laughed like mad at the ideathat she could look like ‘pretty white Missy’. She was mighty proud of her needlework and A B Cperformances.

It is such a luxury to sleep on a real mattrass—notstuffed with dirty straw; to eat clean food, and live in a niceroom.  But my cough is very bad, and the cruel wind blows onand on.  I saw the doctor of the Naval Hospital hereto-day.  If I don’t mend, I will try his advice, andgo northward for warmth.  If you can find an old Mulreadyenvelope, send it here to Miss Walker, who collects stamps andhas not got it, and write and thank dear good Lady Walker for herkindness to me.

You will get this about the new year.  God bless you all,and send us better days in 1862.

p. 46LETTERIV
JOURNEY TO CALEDON

Caledon, Dec. 10th.

I did not feel at all well atSimon’s Bay, which is a land of hurricanes.  We had a‘south-easter’ for fourteen days, without anhour’s lull; even the flag-ship had no communication withthe shore for eight days.  The good old naval surgeon thereordered me to start off for this high ‘up-country’district, and arranged my departure for the first possibleday.  He made a bargain for me with a Dutchman, for a lightMalay cart (a capital vehicle with two wheels) and four horses,for 30s.a day—three days to Caledon fromSimon’s Bay, about a hundred miles or so, and one day ofback fare to his home in Capetown.

Luckily, on Saturday the wind dropped, and we started at nineo’clock, drove to a place about four miles from Capetown,when we turned off on the ‘country road’, andoutspanned at a post-house kept by a nice old German with a Dutchwife.  Once well out of Capetown, people are civil, butinquisitive; I was strictly cross-questioned, and proved sosatisfactory, that the old man wished to give me some Englishporter gratis.  We then jogged along again at a very goodpace to another wayside public, where we outspanned again andate, and were again questioned, and again made much of.  Bysix o’clock we got to the Eerste River, having gone fortymiles or so in the day.  It was a beautiful day, and verypleasant travelling.  We had three good little half-Arabbays, and one brute of a grey as off-wheeler, who fell downcontinually; but a Malay driver works miracles, and no harm cameof it.  The cart is small, with a permanent tilt at top, andmoveable curtains of waterproof all round; harness of rawleather, very prettily put together by Malay workmen.  Wesat behind, and our brown coachman, with his mushroom hat, infront, with my bath and box, and a miniature of himself aboutseven years old—a nephew,—so small and handy that hewould be worth his weight in jewels as a tiger.  At EersteRiver we slept in a pretty old Dutch house, kept by an Englishwoman, and called the Fox and Hound, ‘to sound like home,my lady.’  Very nice and comfortable it was.

I started next day at ten; and never shall I forget thatday’s journey.  The beauty of the country exceeds alldescription.  Ranges of mountains beyond belief fantastic inshape, and between them a rolling country, desolate and wild, andcovered with gorgeous flowers among the‘scrub’.  First we came to Hottentot’sHolland (now called Somerset West), the loveliest little oldDutch village, with trees and little canals of bright clearmountain water, and groves of orange and pomegranate, and whitehouses, with incredible gable ends.  We tried to stop here;but forage was ninepence a bundle, and the true Malay wouldrather die than pay more than he can help.  So we pushed onto the foot of the mountains, and bought forage (forage is oatsau natural, straw and all, the only feed known here, wherethere is no grass or hay) at a farm kept by English people, whoall talked Dutch together; only one girl of the family couldspeak English.  They were very civil, asked us in, and gaveus unripe apricots, and the girl came down with seven flounces,to talk with us.  Forage was still ninepence—half adollar a bundle—and Choslullah Jaamee groaned over it, andsaid the horses must have less forage and ‘more plentyroll’ (a roll in the dust is often the only refreshmentoffered to the beasts, and seems to do great good).

We got to Caledon at eleven, and drove to the place the Doctorrecommended—formerly a country house of the DutchGovernor.  It is in a lovely spot; but do you remember theSchloss in Immermann’s Neuer Münchausen?  Well,it is that.  A ruin;—windows half broken and boardedup, the handsome steps in front fallen in, and all ensuite.  The rooms I saw were large and airy; but mudfloors, white-washed walls, one chair, one stump bedstead, andpræterea nihil.  It has a sort of wild,romantic look; I hear, too, it is wonderfully healthy, and not sobad as it looks.  The long corridor is like the entrance toa great stable, or some such thing; earth floors and open to allwinds.  But you can’t imagine it, however I maydescribe; it is so huge and strange, and ruinous.  Findingthat the mistress of the house was ill, and nothing ready for ourreception, I drove on to the inn.  Rain, like a Scotch mist,came on just as we arrived, and it is damp and chilly, to thedelight of all the dwellers in the land, who love badweather.  It makes me cough a little more; but they say itis quite unheard of, and can’t last.  Altogether, Isuppose this summer here is as that of ’60 was inEngland.

I forgot, in describing my journey, the regal-looking Caffrehousemaid at Eerste River.  ‘Such a dear, goodcreature,’ the landlady said; and, oh, such a ‘noblesavage’!—with a cotton handkerchief folded tight likea cravat and tied round her head with a bow behind, and the shortcurly wool sticking up in the middle;—it looked like aroyal diadem on her solemn brow; she stepped like Juno, with ahuge tub full to the brim, and holding several pailfuls, on herhead, and a pailful in each hand, bringing water for the stablesfrom the river, across a large field.  There is nothing likea Caffre for power and grace; and the face, though very African,has a sort of grandeur which makes it utterly unlike that of thenegro.  That woman’s bust and waist were beautyitself.  The Caffres are also very clean and very clever asservants, I hear, learning cookery, &c., in a wonderfullyshort time.  When they have saved money enough to buy cattlein Kaffraria, off they go, cast aside civilization and clothes,and enjoy life in naked luxury.

I can’t tell you how I longed for you in myjourney.  You would have been so delighted with the countryand the queer turn-out—the wild little horses, and thepolite and delicately-clean Moslem driver.  His descriptionof his sufferings from ‘louses’, when he slept in aDutch farm, were pathetic, and ever since, he sleeps in his cart,with the little boy; and they bathe in the nearest river, and eattheir lawful food and drink their water out of doors.  Theydeclined beer, or meat which had been unlawfully killed.  InCapetown allmeat is killed by Malays, and has the properprayer spoken over it, and they will eat no other.  I wasoffered a fowl at a farm, but Choslullah thought it ‘toomuch money for Missus’, and only accepted some eggs. He was gratified at my recognising the propriety of his saying‘Bismillah’ over any animal killed for food. Some drink beer, and drink a good deal, but Choslullah thought it‘very wrong for Malay people, and not good for Christianpeople, to be drunk beasties;—little wine or beer good forChristians, but not too plenty much.’  I gave him tenshillings for himself, at which he was enchanted, and againbegged me to write to his master for him when I wanted to leaveCaledon, and to be sure to say, ‘Mind send samecoachman.’  He planned to drive me back throughWorcester, Burnt Vley, Paarl, and Stellenbosch—a longerround; but he could do it in three days well, so as ‘notcost Missus more money’, and see a different country.

This place is curiously like Rochefort in the Ardennes, onlythe hills are mountains, and the sun is far hotter; not so theair, which is fresh and pleasant.  I am in a very nice inn,kept by an English ex-officer, who went through the Caffre war,and found his pay insufficient for the wants of a numerousfamily.  I quite admire his wife, who cooks, cleans, nursesher babes, gives singing and music lessons,—all as merrilyas if she liked it.  I dine with them at two o’clock,and Captain D— has a table d’hôteatseven for travellers.  I pay only 10s.6d.aday for myself and S—; this includes all but wine orbeer.  The air is very clear and fine, and my cough isalready much better.  I shall stay here as long as it suitsme and does me good, and then I am to send for Choslullah again,and go back by the road he proposed.  It rains here now andthen, and blows a good deal, but the wind has lost its bitterchill, and depressing quality.  I hope soon to ride a littleand see the country, which is beautiful.

The water-line is all red from the iron stone, and there arehot chalybeate springs up the mountain which are very good forrheumatism, and very strengthening, I am told.  The bootshere is a Mantatee, very black, and called Kleenboy, because heis so little; he is the only sleek black I have seen here, butlooks heavy and downcast.  One maid is Irish (they make thebest servants here), a very nice clean girl, and the other, abrown girl of fifteen, whose father is English, and married toher mother.  Food here is scarce, all but bread and mutton,both good.  Butter is 3s.a pound; fruit andvegetables only to be had by chance.  I miss the oranges andlemons sadly.  Poultry and milk uncertain.  The breadis good everywhere, from the fine wheat: in the country it isbrownish and sweet.  The wine here is execrable; this isowing to the prevailing indolence, for there is excellent winemade from the Rhenish grape, rather like Sauterne, with asoupçonof Manzanilla flavour.  The sweetConstantia is also very good indeed; not the expensive sort,which is made from grapes half dried, and is a liqueur, but alight, sweet, straw-coloured wine, which even I liked.  Wedrank nothing else at the Admiral’s.  The kind oldsailor has given me a dozen of wine, which is coming up here in awaggon, and will be most welcome.  I can’t tell youhow kind he and Lady Walker were; I was there three weeks, andhope to go again when the south-easter season is over and I canget out a little.  I could not leave the house at all; andeven Lady Walker and the girls, who are very energetic, got outbut little.  They are a charming family.

I have no doubt that Dr. Shea was right, and that one mustleave the coast to get a fine climate.  Here it seems to menearly perfect—too windy for my pleasure, but then the sunwould be overpowering without a fresh breeze.  Every oneagrees in saying that the winter in Capetown isdelicious—like a fine English summer.  In November thesouth-easters begin, and they are ‘fiendish’; thisyear they began in September.  The mornings here are alwaysfresh, not to say cold; the afternoons, from one to three,broiling; then delightful till sunset, which is deadly cold forthree-quarters of an hour; the night is lovely.  The windrises and falls with the sun.  That is the general course ofthings.  Now and then it rains, and this year there is alittle south-easter, which is quite unusual, and not odious, asit is near the sea; and there is seldom a hot wind from thenorth.  I am promised that on or about Christmas-day; thendoors and windows are shut, and you gasp.  Hitherto we havehad nothing nearly so hot as Paris in summer, or as the summer of1859 in England; and they say it is no hotter, except when thehot wind blows, which is very rare.  Up here, snow sometimeslies, in winter, on the mountain tops; but ice is unknown, andTable Mountain is never covered with snow.  The flies arepestilent—incredibly noisy, intrusive, anddisgusting—and oh, such swarms!  Fleas and bugs nothalf so bad as in France, as far as my experience goes, and Ihave poked about in queer places.

I get up at half-past five, and walk in the early morning,before the sun and wind begin to be oppressive; it is then dry,calm, and beautiful; then I sleep like a Dutchman in the middleof the day.  At present it tires me, but I shall get used toit soon.  The Dutch doctor here advised me to do so, toavoid the wind.

When all was settled, we climbed the Hottentot’smountains by Sir Lowry’s Pass, a long curve round twohill-sides; and what a view!  Simon’s Bay opening outfar below, and range upon range of crags on one side, with a widefertile plain, in which lies Hottentot’s Holland, atone’s feet.  The road is just wide enough for onewaggon, i.e. very narrow.  Where the smooth rock camethrough, Choslullah gave a little grunt, and the three bays wentoff like hippogriffs, dragging the grey with them.  By thistime my confidence in his driving was boundless, or I should haveexpected to find myself in atoms at the bottom of theprecipice.  At the top of the pass we turned a sharp cornerinto a scene like the crater of a volcano, only reaching milesaway all round; and we descended a very little and drove on alonggreat rolling waves of country, with the mountain tops, all cragsand ruins, to our left.  At three we reached Palmiet River,full of palmettos and bamboos, and there the horses had ‘alittle roll’, and Choslullah and his miniature washed inthe river and prayed, and ate dry bread, and drank their tepidwater out of a bottle with great good breeding andcheerfulness.  Three bullock-waggons had outspanned, and theDutch boers and Bastaards (half Hottentots) were all drunk. We went into a neat little ‘public’, and had porterand ham sandwiches, for which I paid 4s.6d.to amiserable-looking English woman, who was afraid of her tipsycustomers.  We got to Houw Hoek, a pretty valley at theentrance of a mountain gorge, about half-past five, and drove upto a mud cottage, half inn, half farm, kept by a German and hiswife.  It looked mighty queer, but Choslullah said the hostwas a good old man, and all clean.  So we cheered up, andasked for food.  While the neat old woman was cooking it, upgalloped five fine lads and two pretty flaxen-haired girls, withreal German faces, on wild little horses; and one girl tucked upher habit, and waited at table, while another waved a green boughto drive off the swarms of flies.  The chops were excellent,ditto bread and butter, and the tea tolerable.  The parlourwas a tiny room with a mud floor, half-hatch door into the front,and the two bedrooms still tinier and darker, each with two hugebeds which filled them entirely.  But Choslullah was right;they were perfectly clean, with heaps of beautiful pillows; andnot only none of the creatures of which he spoke with infiniteterror, but even no fleas.  The man was delighted to talk tome.  His wife had almost forgotten German, and the childrendid not know a word of it, but spoke Dutch and English.  Afine, healthy, happy family.  It was a pretty picture ofemigrant life.  Cattle, pigs, sheep, and poultry, andpigeons innumerable, all picked up their own living, and costnothing; and vegetables and fruit grow in rank abundance wherethere is water.  I asked for a book in the evening, and theman gave me a volume of Schiller.  A goodbreakfast,—and we paid ninepence for all.

This morning we started before eight, as it looked gloomy, andcame through a superb mountain defile, out on to a rich hillockycountry, covered with miles of corn, all being cut as far as theeye could reach, and we passed several circular threshing-floors,where the horses tread out the grain.  Each had a few mudhovels near it, for the farmers and men to live in duringharvest.  Altogether, I was most lucky, had two beautifuldays, and enjoyed the journey immensely.  It was most‘abentheuerlich’; the light two-wheeled cart,with four wild little horses, and the marvellous brown driver,who seemed to be always going to perdition, but made the horsesdo apparently impossible things with absolute certainty; and thepretty tiny boy who came to help his uncle, and was so clever,and so preternaturally quiet, and so very small: then the roadthrough the mountain passes, seven or eight feet wide, with aprecipice above and below, up which the little horses scrambled;while big lizards, with green heads and chocolate bodies, lookedpertly at us, and a big bright amber-coloured cobra, as handsomeas he is deadly, wriggled across into a hole.

Nearly all the people in this village are Dutch.  Thereis one Malay tailor here, but he is obliged to be a Christian atCaledon, though Choslullah told me with a grin, he was a verygood Malay when he went to Capetown.  He did not seem muchshocked at this double religion, staunch Mussulman as he washimself.  I suppose the blacks ‘up country’ arewhat Dutch slavery made them—mere animals—cunning andsulky.  The real Hottentot is extinct, I believe, in theColony; what one now sees are all ‘Bastaards’, theDutch name for their own descendants by Hottentot women. These mongrel Hottentots, who do all the work, are an afflictionto behold—debased and shrivelledwith drink, anddrunk all day long; sullen wretched creatures—so unlike thebright Malays and cheery pleasant blacks and browns of Capetown,who never pass you without a kind word and sunny smile or broadAfrican grin, selontheir colour and shape of face. I look back fondly to the gracious soft-looking Malagasse womanwho used to give me a chair under the big tree near Rathfelders,and a cup of ‘bosjesthée’ (herb tea), and talkso prettily in her soft voice;—it is such a contrast tothese poor animals, who glower at one quite unpleasantly. All the hovels I was in at Capetown were very fairly clean, and Iwent into numbers.  They almost all contained a handsomebed, with, at least, eight pillows.  If you only look at thedoor with a friendly glance, you are implored to come in and sitdown, and usually offered a ‘coppj’ (cup) of herbtea, which they are quite grateful to one for drinking.  Inever saw or heard a hint of ‘backsheesh’, nor did Iever give it, on principle and I was always recognised andinvited to come again with the greatest eagerness. ‘An indulgence of talk’ from an English‘Missis’ seemed the height of gratification, and thepride and pleasure of giving hospitality a sufficientreward.  But here it is quite different.  I suppose thebenefits of the emancipation were felt at Capetown sooner than inthe country, and the Malay population there furnishes a strongelement of sobriety and respectability, which sets an example tothe other coloured people.

Harvest is now going on, and the so-called Hottentots areearning 2s.6d.a day, with rations and wine. But all the money goes at the ‘canteen’ in drink, andthe poor wretched men and women look wasted and degraded. The children are pretty, and a few of them are half-breed girls,who do very well, unless a white man admires them; and then theythink it quite an honour to have a whitey-brown child, whichhappens at about fifteen, by which age they look full twenty.

We had very good snipe and wild duck the other day, whichCapt. D— brought home from a shooting party.  I havegot the moth-like wings of a golden snipe for R—’shat, and those of a beautiful moor-hen.  They got no‘boks’, because of the violent south-easter whichblew where they were.  The game is fast decreasing, butstill very abundant.  I saw plenty of partridges on theroad, but was not early enough to see boks, who only show atdawn; neither have I seen baboons.  I will try to bring homesome cages of birds—Cape canaries and ‘roodebekjes’ (red bills), darling little things.  Thesugar-birds, which are the humming-birds of Africa, could not befed; but Caffre finks, which weave the pendent nests, are hardyand easily fed.

To-day the post for England leaves Caledon, so I must concludethis yarn.  I wish R— could have seen the ‘klipspringer’, the mountain deer of South Africa, which Capt.D— brought in to show me.  Such a lovely little beast,as big as a small kid, with eyes and ears like a hare, and a noseso small and dainty.  It was quite tame and saucy, andbelonged to some man en routefor Capetown.

p. 61LETTERV
CALEDON

Caledon, Dec. 29th.

I am beginning now really to feelbetter: I think my cough is less, and I eat a great dealmore.  They cook nice clean food here, and have some goodclaret, which I have been extravagant enough to drink, much to myadvantage.  The Cape wine is all so fiery.  The climateis improving too.  The glorious African sun blazes androasts one, and the cool fresh breezes prevent one from feelinglanguid.  I walk from six till eight or nine, breakfast atten, and dine at three; in the afternoon it is generallypracticable to saunter again, now the weather is warmer.  Isleep from twelve till two.  On Christmas-eve it was so warmthat I lay in bed with the window wide open, and the starsblazing in.  Such stars! they are much brighter than ourmoon.  The Dutchmen held high jinks in the hall, and dancedand made a great noise.  On New Year’s-eve they willhave another ball, and I shall look in.  Christmas-day wasthe hottest day—indeed, the only hotday we havehad—and I could not make it out at all, or fancy you allcold at home.

I wish you were here to see the curious ways and new aspect ofeverything.  This village, which, as I have said, is verylike Rochefort, but hardly so large, is the chef lieuof adistrict the size of one-third of England.  A civilcommander resides here, a sort of préfet; and thereis an embryo market-place, with a bell hanging in a brickarch.  When a waggon arrives with goods, it draws up there,they ring the bell, everybody goes to see what is for sale, andthe goods are sold by auction.  My host bought potatoes andbrandy the other day, and is looking out for ostrich feathers forme, out of the men’s hats.

The other day, while we sat at dinner, all the bells began toring furiously, and Capt. D— jumped up and shouted‘Brand!’ (fire), rushed off for a stoutleather hat, and ran down the street.  Out came all thepopulation, black, white, and brown, awfully excited, for it wasblowing a furious north-wester, right up the town, and the firewas at the bottom; and as every house is thatched with a drybrown thatch, we might all have to turn out and see the place inashes in less than an hour.  Luckily, it was put outdirectly.  It is supposed to have been set on fire by aHottentot girl, who has done the same thing once before, on beingscolded.  There is no water but what runs down the streetsin the sloot, a paved channel, which brings the water fromthe mountain and supplies the houses and gardens.  A gardenis impossible without irrigation, of course, as it never rains;but with it, you may have everything, all the year round. The people, however, are too careless to grow fruit andvegetables.

How the cattle live is a standing marvel to me.  Thewhole veld(common), which extends all over the country(just dotted with a few square miles of corn here and there), iscovered with a low thin scrub, about eighteen inches high, calledrhenoster-bosch—looking like meagre arbor vitæor pale juniper.  The cattle and sheep will not touch thisnor the juicy Hottentot fig; but under each little bush, I fancy,they crop a few blades of grass, and on this they keep in verygood condition.  The noble oxen, with their huge horns (nineor ten feet from tip to tip), are never fed, though they workhard, nor are the sheep.  The horses get a little forage(oats, straw and all).  I should like you to see eight orten of these swift wiry little horses harnessed to awaggon,—a mere flat platform on wheels.  In frontstands a wild-looking Hottentot, all patches and feathers, anddrives them best pace, all ‘in hand’, using a whiplike a fishing-rod, with which he touches them, not savagely, butwith a skill which would make an old stage-coachman burst withenvy to behold.  This morning, out on the veld, I watchedthe process of breaking-in a couple of colts, who were harnessed,after many struggles, second and fourth in a team of ten. In front stood a tiny foal cuddling its mother, one of theleaders.  When they started, the foal had its neck throughthe bridle, and I hallooed in a fright; but the Hottentot onlylaughed, and in a minute it had disengaged itself quite coollyand capered alongside.  The colts tried to plunge, but werewhisked along, and couldn’t, and then they stuck out allfour feet and skiddedalong a bit; but the rhenosterbushes tripped them up (people drive regardless of roads), andthey shook their heads and trotted along quite subdued, without ablow or a word, for the drivers never speak to the horses, onlyto the oxen.  Colts here get no other breaking, andtherefore have no paces or action to the eye, but their speed andendurance are wonderful.  There is no such thing as acock-tail in the country, and the waggon teams of wiry littlethoroughbreds, half Arab, look very strange to our eyes, goingfull tilt.  There is a terrible murrain, called thelung-sickness, among horses and oxen here, every four or fiveyears, but it never touches those that are stabled, howeverexposed to wet or wind on the roads.

I must describe the house I inhabit, as all are muchalike.  It is whitewashed, with a door in the middle and twowindows on each side; those on the left are Mrs. D—’sbed and sitting rooms.  On the right is a large room, whichis mine; in the middle of the house is a spacious hall, withdoors into other rooms on each side, and into the kitchen,&c.  There is a yard behind, and a staircase up to thezolderor loft, under the thatch, with partitions, wherethe servants and children, and sometimes guests, sleep. There are no ceilings; the floor of the zolder is made of yellowwood, and, resting on beams, forms the ceiling of my room, andthe thatch alone covers that.  No moss ever grows on thethatch, which is brown, with white ridges.  In front is astoep, with ‘blue gums’ (Australian gum-trees) infront of it, where I sit till twelve, when the sun comes onit.  These trees prevail here greatly, as they want neitherwater nor anything else, and grow with incredible rapidity.

We have got a new ‘boy’ (all coloured servants are‘boys,’—a remnant of slavery), and he is thetype of the nigger slave.  A thief, a liar, a glutton, adrunkard—but you can’t resent it; he has anaïf, half-foolish, half-knavish buffoonery, a totalwant of self-respect, which disarms you.  I sent him to thepost to inquire for letters, and the postmaster had been tipsyover-night and was not awake.  Jack came back splutteringthreats against ‘dat domned Dutchman.  Me nowant(like) him; me go and kick up dom’d row. What for he no give Missis letter?’ &c.  I beggedhim to be patient; on which he bonneted himself in a violent way,and started off at a pantomime walk.  Jack is the product ofslavery: he pretends to be a simpleton in order to do less workand eat and drink and sleep more than a reasonable being, and heknows his buffoonery will get him out of scrapes.  Withal,thoroughly good-natured and obliging, and perfectly honest,except where food and drink are concerned, which he pilfers likea monkey.  He worships S—, and won’t allow herto carry anything, or to dirty her hands, if he is in the way todo it.  Some one suggested to him to kiss her, but hedeclined with terror, and said he should be hanged by my ordersif he did.  He is a hideous little negro, with amonstrous-shaped head, every colour of the rainbow on hisclothes, and a power of making faces which would enchant aschoolboy.  The height of his ambition would be to go toEngland with me.

An old ‘bastaard’ woman, married to the Malaytailor here, explained to me my popularity with the colouredpeople, as set forth by ‘dat Malay boy’, mydriver.  He told them he was sure I was a ‘very greatMissis’, because of my ‘plenty good behaviour’;that I spoke to him just as to a white gentleman, and did not‘laugh and talk nonsense talk’.  ‘Neversay “Here, you black fellow”, datMisses.’  The English, when they mean to begood-natured, are generally offensively familiar, and ‘talknonsense talk’, i.e. imitate the Dutch English of theMalays and blacks; the latter feel it the greatest compliment tobe treated au sérieux, and spoken to in goodEnglish.  Choslullah’s theory was that I must berelated to the Queen, in consequence of my not ‘knowing badbehaviour’.  The Malays, who are intelligent andproud, of course feel the annoyance of vulgar familiarity morethan the blacks, who are rather awe-struck by civility, thoughthey like and admire it.

Mrs. D— tells me that the coloured servant-girls, withall their faults, are immaculately honest in these parts; and,indeed, as every door and window is always left open, even whenevery soul is out, and nothing locked up, there must be nothieves.  Captain D— told me he had been in remoteDutch farmhouses, where rouleaux of gold were ranged under thethatch on the top of the low wall, the doors being always leftopen; and everywhere the Dutch boers keep their money by them, incoin.

Jan.3d.—We have had tremendousfestivities here—a ball on New Year’s-eve, andanother on the 1st of January—and the shooting for PrinceAlfred’s rifle yesterday.  The difficulty of music forthe ball was solved by the arrival of two Malay bricklayers tobuild the new parsonage, and I heard with my own ears the proofof what I had been told as to their extraordinary musicalgifts.  When I went into the hall, a Dutchman wasscreechinga concertina hideously.  Presently inwalked a yellow Malay, with a blue cotton handkerchief on hishead, and a half-bred of negro blood (very dark brown), with ared handkerchief, and holding a rough tambourine.  Thehandsome yellow man took the concertina which seemed sodiscordant, and the touch of his dainty fingers transformed it toharmony.  He played dances with a precision and feelingquite unequalled, except by Strauss’s band, and a varietywhich seemed endless.  I asked him if he could read music,at which he laughed heartily, and said, music came into the ears,not the eyes.  He had picked it all up from the bands inCapetown, or elsewhere.

It was a strange sight,—the picturesque group, and thecontrast between the quiet manners of the true Malay and thegrotesque fun of the half-negro.  The latter made histambourine do duty as a drum, rattled the bits of brass so as toproduce an indescribable effect, nodded and grinned in wildexcitement, and drank beer while his comrade took water. The dancing was uninteresting enough.  The Dutchmen dancedbadly, and said not a word, but plodded on so as to get all thedancing they could for their money.  I went to bed athalf-past eleven, but the ball went on till four.

Next night there was genteeler company, and I did not go in,but lay in bed listening to the Malay’s playing.  Hehad quite a fresh set of tunes, of which several were from the‘Traviata’!

Yesterday was a real African summer’s day.  TheD—s had a tent and an awning, one for food and the otherfor drink, on the ground where the shooting took place.  Attwelve o’clock Mrs. D— went down to sell coldchickens, &c., and I went with her, and sat under a tree inthe bed of the little stream, now nearly dry.  The sun wassuch as in any other climate would strike you down, but herecoup de soleilis unknown.  It broils you till yourshoulders ache and your lips crack, but it does not make you feelthe least languid, and you perspire very little; nor does it tanthe skin as you would expect.  The light of the sun is by nomeans ‘golden’—it is pure white—and theslightest shade of a tree or bush affords a delicioustemperature, so light and fresh is the air.  They said thethermometer was at about 130° where I was walking yesterday,but (barring the scorch) I could not have believed it.

It was a very amusing day.  The great tall Dutchmen camein to shoot, and did but moderately, I thought.  The longestrange was five hundred yards, and at that they shot well; atshorter ranges, poorly enough.  The best man made tenpoints.  But oh! what figures were there of negroes andcoloured people!  I longed for a photographer.  Somecoloured lads were exquisitely graceful, and composed beautifultableaux vivants, after Murillo’s beggar-boys.

A poor little, very old Bosjesman crept up, and was jeered andbullied.  I scolded the lad who abused him for being rude toan old man, whereupon the poor little old creature squatted onthe ground close by (for which he would have been kicked but forme), took off his ragged hat, and sat staring and nodding hissmall grey woolly head at me, and jabbering some little soliloquyvery sotto voce.  There was something shocking in thetimidity with which he took the plate of food I gave him, and inthe way in which he ate it, with the wrongside of hislittle yellow hand, like a monkey.  A black, who had helpedto fetch the hamper, suggested to me to give him wine instead ofmeat and bread, and make him drunk for fun(the blacks andHottentots copy the white man’s manners to them,when they get hold of a Bosjesman to practise upon); but uponthis a handsome West Indian black, who had been cooking pies,fired up, and told him he was a ‘nasty black rascal, and aDutchman to boot’, to insult a lady and an old man atonce.  If you could see the difference between one negro andanother, you would be quite convinced that education (i.e.circumstances) makes the race.  It was hardly conceivablethat the hideous, dirty, bandy-legged, ragged creature, wholooked down on the Bosjesman, and the well-made, smart fellow,with his fine eyes, jaunty red cap, and snow-white shirt andtrousers, alert as the best German Kellner, were of the sameblood; nothing but the colour was alike.

Then came a Dutchman, and asked for six penn’orth of‘brood en kaas’, and haggled for beer; andEnglishmen, who bought chickens and champagne without asking theprice.  One rich old boer got three lunches, and then‘trekked’ (made off) without paying at all. Then came a Hottentot, stupidly drunk, with a fiddle, and wasbeaten by a little red-haired Scotchman, and his fiddlesmashed.  The Hottentot hit at his aggressor, who thendeclared he had beena policeman, and insisted on takinghim into custody and to the ‘Tronk’ (prison) on hisown authority, but was in turn sent flying by a giganticIrishman, who ‘wouldn’t see the poor basteabused’.  The Irishman was a farmer; I never saw sucha Hercules—and beaming with fun and good nature.  Hewas very civil, and answered my questions, and talked like anintelligent man; but when Captain D— asked him with an airof some anxiety, if he was coming to the hotel, he replied,‘No, sir, no; I wouldn’t be guilty of such amisdemeanour.  I am aware that I was a disgrace andopprobrium to your house, sir, last time I was there, sir. No, sir, I shall sleep in my cart, and not come into the presenceof ladies.’  Hereupon he departed, and I was informedthat he had been drunk for seventeen days, sansdésemparer, on his last visit to Caledon. However, he kept quite sober on this occasion, and amused himselfby making the little blackies scramble for halfpence in the poolsleft in the bed of the river.  Among our customers was avery handsome black man, with high straight nose, deep-set eyes,and a small mouth, smartly dressed in a white felt hat, paletot,and trousers.  He is the shoemaker, and is making a pair of‘Veldschoen’ for you, which you will delightin.  They are what the rough boers and Hottentots wear,buff-hide barbarously tanned and shaped, and as soft as woollensocks.  The Othello-looking shoemaker’s name is Moor,and his father told him he came of a ‘good breed’;that was all he knew.

A very pleasing English farmer, who had been educated inBelgium, came and ordered a bottle of champagne, and shyly beggedme to drink a glass, whereupon we talked of crops and the like;and an excellent specimen of a colonist he appeared: very gentleand unaffected, with homely good sense, and real goodbreeding—such a contrast to the pert airs and vulgarity ofCapetown and of the people in (colonial) high places. Finding we had no carriage, he posted off and borrowed a cart ofone man and harness of another, and put his and his son’sriding horses to it, to take Mrs. D— and me home.  Asit was still early, he took us a ‘little drive’; andoh, ye gods! what a terrific and dislocating pleasure wasthat!  At a hard gallop, Mr. M— (with the mildest andsteadiest air and with perfect safety) took us right acrosscountry.  It is true there were no fences; but over bushes,ditches, lumps of rock, watercourses, we jumped, flew, andbounded, and up every hill we went racing pace.  I arrivedat home much bewildered, and feeling more likeBürger’s Lenore than anything else, till I saw Mr.M—’s steady, pleasant face quite undisturbed, and wasinformed that such was the way of driving of Cape farmers.

We found the luckless Jack in such a state of furiousdrunkenness that he had to be dismissed on the spot, not withoutthreats of the ‘Tronk’, and once more Kleenboy fillsthe office of boots.  He returned in a ludicrous state ofpenitence and emaciation, frankly admitting that it was better towork hard and get ‘plenty grub’, than to work lessand get none;—still, however, protesting against work atall.

January7th.—For the last four days it hasagain been blowing a wintry hurricane.  Every one says thatthe continuance of these winds so late into the summer (thisanswers to July) is unheard of, and mustcease soon. In Table Bay, I hear a good deal of mischief has been done to theshipping.

I hope my long yarns won’t bore you.  I put downwhat seems new and amusing to me at the moment, but by the timeit reaches you, it will seem very dull and commonplace.  Ihear that the Scotchman who attacked poor Aria, the crazyHottentot, is a ‘revival lecturer’, and was‘simply exhorting him to break his fiddle and come toChrist’ (the phrase is a clergyman’s, I beg toobserve); and the saints are indignant that, after executing thepious purpose as far as the fiddle went, he was prevented by thechief constable from dragging him to the Tronk.  The‘revival’ mania has broken out rather violently insome places; the infection was brought from St. Helena, I amtold.  At Capetown, old Abdool Jemaalee told me that EnglishChristians were getting more like Malays, and had begun to hold‘Kalifahs’ at Simon’s Bay.  These arefestivals in which Mussulman fanatics run knives into theirflesh, go into convulsions, &c, to the sound of music, likethe Arab described by Houdin.  Of course the poor blacks goquite demented.

I intend to stay here another two or three weeks, and then togo to Worcester—stay a bit; Paarl, ditto; Stellenbosch,ditto—and go to Capetown early in March, and in April toembark for home.

January15th.—No mail in yet.  Wehave had beautiful weather the last three days.  CaptainD— has been in Capetown, and bought a horse, which he rodehome seventy-five miles in a day and a half,—the beast nonethe worse nor tired.  I am to ride him, and so shall see thecountry if the vile cold winds keep off.

This morning I walked on the Veld, and met a young blackshepherd leading his sheep and goats, and playing on a guitarcomposed of an old tin mug covered with a bit of sheepskin and ahandle of rough wood, with pegs, and three strings ofsheep-gut.  I asked him to sing, and he flung himself at myfeet in an attitude that would make Watts crazy with delight, andcroonedqueer little mournful ditties.  I gave himsixpence, and told him not to get drunk.  He said, ‘Ohno; I will buy bread enough to make my belly stiff—I almostnever had my belly stiff.’  He likewise informed me hehad just been in the Tronk (prison), and on my asking why,replied: ‘Oh, for fighting, and telling lies;’ Dieliebe Unschuld!  (Dear innocence!)

Hottentot figs are rather nice—a green fig-shaped thing,containing about a spoonful of salt-sweetinsipid glue,which you suck out.  This does not sound nice, but itis.  The plant has a thick, succulent, triangular leaf,creeping on the ground, and growing anywhere, without earth orwater.  Figs proper are common here, but tasteless; and thepeople pick all their fruit green, and eat it so too.  Thechildren are all crunching hard peaches and plums just now,particularly some little half-breeds near here, who arefrightfully ugly.  Fancy the children of a black woman and ared-haired man; the little monsters are as black as the mother,and have redwool—you never saw so diabolical anappearance.  Some of the coloured people are very pretty;for example, a coal-black girl of seventeen, and my washerwoman,who is brown.  They are wonderfully slender and agile, andquite old hard-working women have waists you could span. They never grow thick and square, like Europeans.

I could write a volume on Cape horses.  Such valiantlittle beasts, and so composed in temper, I never saw.  Theyare nearly all bays—a few very dark grey, which areesteemed; veryfew white or light grey.  I have seenno black, and only one dark chestnut.  They are not cobs,and look ‘very little of them’, and have no beauty;but one of these little brutes, ungroomed, half-fed, seldomstabled, will carry a six-and-a-half-foot Dutchman sixty miles aday, day after day, at a shuffling easy canter, six miles anhour.  You ‘off saddle’ every three hours, andlet him roll; you also let him drink all he can get; his coatshines and his eye is bright, and unsoundness is very rare. They are never properly broke, and the soft-mouthed colts aresometimes made vicious by the cruel bits and heavy hands; but bynature their temper is perfect.

Every morning all the horses in the village are turned loose,and a general gallop takes place to the water tank, where theydrink and lounge a little; and the young ones are fetched home bytheir niggers, while the old stagers know they will be wanted,and saunter off by themselves.  I often attend the Houyhnhnmconversazioneat the tank, at about seven o’clock,and am amused by their behaviour; and I continually wish I couldsee Ned’s face on witnessing many equine proceedingshere.  To see a farmer outspan and turn the team of activelittle beasts loose on the boundless veld to amuse themselves foran hour or two, sure that they will all be there, would astonishhim a little; and then to offer a horse nothing but a roll in thedust to refresh himself withal!

One unpleasant sight here is the skeletons of horses and oxenalong the roadside; or at times a fresh carcase surrounded by aconvocation of huge serious-looking carrion crows, with neatwhite neck-cloths.  The skeletons look like wrecks, and makeyou feel very lonely on the wide veld.  In this district,and in most, I believe, the roads are mere tracks over the hard,level earth, and very good they are.  When one gets rutty,you drive parallel to it, till the bush is worn out and a newtrack is formed.

January17th.—Lovely weather all theweek.  Summer well set in.

p. 79LETTERVI
CALEDON

Caledon, January 19th.

Dearest Mother,

Till this last week, the weather was pertinaciously cold andwindy; and I had resolved to go to Worcester, which lies in a‘Kessel’, and is really hot.  But now theglorious African summer is come, and I believe this is theweather of Paradise.  I got up at four this morning, whenthe Dutchmen who had slept here were starting in their carts andwaggons.  It was quite light; but the moon shone brilliantlystill, and had put on a bright rose-coloured veil, borrowed fromthe rising sun on the opposite horizon.  The freshness(without a shadow of cold or damp) of the air wasindescribable—no dew was on the ground.  I went up thehill-side, along the ‘Sloot’ (channel, which suppliesall our water), into the ‘Kloof’ between themountains, and clambered up to the ‘Venster Klip’,from which natural window the view is very fine.  Theflowers are all gone and the grass all dead.  Rhenosterboschjes and Hottentot fig are green everywhere, and among therocks all manner of shrubs, and far too much ‘Wacht eenbeetje’ (Wait a bit), a sort of series of naturalfish-hooks, which try the robustest patience.  Between sevenand eight, the sun gets rather hot, and I came in andtubbed, and sat on the stoep (a sort of terrace, in frontof every house in South Africa).  I breakfast at nine, siton the stoep again till the sun comes round, and then retreatbehind closed shutters from the stinging sun.  Theairis fresh and light all day, though the sun istremendous; but one has no languid feeling or desire to lieabout, unless one is sleepy.  We dine at two or half-past,and at four or five the heat is over, and one puts on a shawl togo out in the afternoon breeze.  The nights are cool, so asalways to want one blanket.  I still have a cough; but it isgetting better, so that I can always eat and walk.  Minehost has just bought a horse, which he is going to try with apetticoat to-day, and if he goes well I shall ride.

I like this inn-life, because I see all the‘neighbourhood’—farmers and traders—whomI like far better than the gentilityof Capetown.  Ihave given letters to England to a ‘boer’, who is‘going home’, i.e. to Europe, the first of hisrace since the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, when somepoor refugees were inveigled hither by the Dutch Governor, andoppressed worse than the Hottentots.  M. de Villiers has hadno education at all, and has worked, and traded, andfarmed,—but the breed tells; he is a pure and thoroughFrenchman, unable to speak a word of French.  When I went into dinner, he rose and gave me a chair with a bow which, with hisappearance, made me ask, ‘Monsieur vientd’arriver?’  This at once put him out andpleased him.  He is very unlike a Dutchman.  If youthink that any of the French will feel as I felt to thisfar-distant brother of theirs, pray give him a few letters; butremember that he can speak only English and Dutch, and a littleGerman.  Here his name is called‘Filljee’, but I told him to drop that barbarism inEurope; De Villiers ought to speak for itself.  He says theycame from the neighbourhood of Bordeaux.

The postmaster, Heer Klein, and his old Pylades, Heer Ley, aregreat cronies of mine—stout old greybeards, toddling downthe hill together.  I sometimes go and sit on the stoep withthe two old bachelors, and they take it as a great compliment;and Heer Klein gave me my letters all decked with flowers, andwished ‘Vrolyke tydings, Mevrouw,’ mostheartily.  He has also made his tributary mail-cartHottentots bring from various higher mountain ranges thebeautiful everlasting flowers, which will make pretty wreaths forJ—.  When I went to his house to thank him, I found ahandsome Malay, with a basket of ‘Klipkaus’, ashell-fish much esteemed here.  Old Klein told me they weresent him by a Malay who was born in his father’s house, aslave, and had been his‘boy’ andplay-fellow.  Now, the slave is far richer than the oldyoung master, and no waggon comes without a littlegift—oranges, fish, &c.—for‘Wilhem’.  When Klein goes to Capetown, the oldMalay seats him in a grand chair and sits on a little woodenstool at his feet; Klein begs him, as ‘Huisheer’, tosit properly; but, ‘Neen Wilhem, Ik zal niet; ik kan nietvergeten.’  ‘Good boy!’ said old Klein;‘good people the Malays.’  It is a relief, afterthe horrors one has heard of Dutch cruelty, to see such an‘idyllisches Verhältniss’.  I have heardother instances of the same fidelity from Malays, but they wereutterly unappreciated, and only told to prove the excellence ofslavery, and ‘how well the rascals must have beenoff’.

I have fallen in love with a Hottentot baby here.  Hermother is all black, with a broad face and soft spaniel eyes, andthe father is Bastaard; but the baby (a girl, nine months old),has walked out of one of Leonardo da Vinci’spictures.  I never saw so beautiful a child.  She hashuge eyes with the spiritual look he gives to them, and isexquisite in every way.  When the Hottentot blood ishandsome, it is beautiful; there is a delicacy and softness aboutsome of the women which is very pretty, and the eyes are those ofa gooddog.  Most of them are hideous, and nearly alldrink; but they are very clean and honest.  Their cottagesare far superior in cleanliness to anything out of England,except in picked places, like some parts of Belgium; and theywash as much as they can, with the bad water-supply, and theEnglish outcry if they strip out of doors to bathe. Compared to French peasants, they are very clean indeed, and eventhe children are far more decent and cleanly in their habits thanthose of France.  The woman who comes here to clean andscour is a model of neatness in her work and her person (quiteblack), but she gets helplessly drunk as soon as she has a pennyto buy a glass of wine; for a penny, a half-pint tumbler of verystrong and remarkably nasty wine is sold at the canteens.

I have many more ‘humours’ to tell, but A—can show you all the long story I have written.  I hope itdoes not seem very stale and decies repetita.  Allbeing new and curious to the eye here, one becomes long-windedabout mere trifles.

One small thing more.  The first few shillings that acoloured woman has to spend on her cottage go in—what doyou think?—A grand toilet table of worked muslin over pink,all set out with little ‘objets’—such asthey are: if there is nothing else, there is that here, as atCapetown, and all along to Simon’s Bay.  Now, what isthe use or comfort of a duchesseto a Hottentotfamily?  I shall never see those toilets again withoutthinking of Hottentots—what a baroque association ofideas!  I intend, in a day or two, to go over to‘Gnadenthal’, the Moravian missionary station,founded in 1736—the ‘blühende Gemeinde vonHottentoten’.  How little did I think to see it, whenwe smiled at the phrase in old Mr. Steinkopf’s sermon yearsago in London!  The missionarizedHottentots are not,as it is said, thought well of—being even tipsier than therest; but I may see a full-blood one, and even a true Bosjesman,which is worth a couple of hours’ drive; and the place issaid to be beautiful.

This climate is evidently a styptic of great power, I shallwrite a few lines to the Lancetabout Caledon and its hotbaths—‘Bad Caledon’, as the Germans at HouwHoek call it.  The baths do not concern me, as they arechalybeate; but they seem very effectual in many cases.  YetEnglish people never come here; they stay at Capetown, which mustbe a furnace now, or at Wynberg, which is damp and chill(comparatively); at most, they get to Stellenbosch.  I meanvisitors, not settlers; theyare everywhere.  I lookthe colour of a Hottentot.  Now I mustleave off.

Your most affectionate
L. D. G.

p. 85LETTERVII
GNADENTHAL

Caledon, Jan. 28th.

Well, I have been to Gnadenthal,and seen the ‘blooming parish’, and a lovely spot itis.  A large village nestled in a deep valley, surrounded byhigh mountains on three sides, and a lower range in front. We started early on Saturday, and drove over a mighty queer road,and through a river.  Oh, ye gods! what a shaking andpounding!  We were rattled up like dice in a box. Nothing but a Cape cart, Cape horses, and a Hottentot driver,above all, could have accomplished it.  Captain D—rode, and had the best of it.  On the road we passed threeor four farms, at all which horses were galloping outthegrain, or men were winnowing it by tossing it up with woodenshovels to let the wind blow away the chaff.  We did thetwenty-four miles up and down the mountain roads in two hours anda half, with our valiant little pair of horses; it is incrediblehow they go.  We stopped at a nice cottage on the hillsidebelonging to a ci-devantslave, one Christian Rietz, awhiteman, with brown woolly hair, sharp features, greyeyes, and notwoolly moustaches.  He said he was a‘Scotch bastaard’, and ‘le bon sangparlait—très-haut même’, for a morethriving, shrewd, sensible fellow I never saw.  Hisfatherand master had had to let him go when all slaveswere emancipated, and he had come to Gnadenthal.  He keeps alittle inn in the village, and a shop and a fine garden. The cottage we lodged in was on the mountain side, and had beenbuilt for his son, who was dead; and his adopted daughter, apretty coloured girl, exactly like a southern Frenchwoman, waitedon us, assisted by about six or seven other women, who camechiefly to stare.  Vrouw Rietz was as black as a coal, butsopretty!—a dear, soft, sleek, old lady, withbeautiful eyes, and the kind pleasant ways which belong to niceblacks; and, though old and fat, still graceful and lovely inface, hands, and arms.  The cottage was thus:—Onelarge hall; my bedroom on the right, S—’s on theleft; the kitchen behind me; Miss Rietz behind S—; mudfloors daintily washed over with fresh cow-dung; ceiling of bigrafters, just as they had grown, on which rested bamboo canesclose together acrossthe rafters, and bound togetherbetween each, with transverse bamboo—a prettybeehiveyeffect; at top, mud again, and then a highthatched roof and a loft or zolder for forage, &c.; the wallsof course mud, very thick and whitewashed.  The bedroomstiny; beds, clean sweet melies (maize) straw, with clean sheets,and eight good pillows on each; glass windows (a greatdistinction), exquisite cleanliness, and hearty civility; goodfood, well cooked; horrid tea and coffee, and hardly any milk; noend of fruit.  In all the gardens it hung on the treesthicker than the leaves.  Never did I behold such aprofusion of fruit and vegetables.

But first I must tell what struck me most, I asked one of theHerrenhut brethren whether there were any realHottentots,and he said, ‘Yes, one;’ and next morning, as I satwaiting for early prayers under the big oak-trees in the Plaats(square), he came up, followed by a tiny old man hobbling alongwith a long stick to support him.  ‘Here’, saidhe, ‘is the lastHottentot; he is a hundred andseven years old, and lives all alone.’  I looked onthe little, wizened, yellow face, and was shocked that he shouldbe dragged up like a wild beast to be stared at.  A feelingof pity which felt like remorse fell upon me, and my eyes filledas I rose and stood before him, so tall and like a tyrant andoppressor, while he uncovered his poor little old snow-whitehead, and peered up in my face.  I led him to the seat, andhelped him to sit down, and said in Dutch, ‘Father, I hopeyou are not tired; you are old.’  He saw and heard aswell as ever, and spoke good Dutch in a firm voice. ‘Yes, I am above a hundred years old, and alone—quitealone.’  I sat beside him, and he put his head on oneside, and looked curiously up at me with his faded, but stillpiercing little wild eyes.  Perhaps he had a perception ofwhat I felt—yet I hardly think so; perhaps he thought I wasin trouble, for he crept close up to me, and put one tiny brownpaw into my hand, which he stroked with the other, and asked(like most coloured people) if I had children.  I said,‘Yes, at home in England;’ and he patted my handagain, and said, ‘God bless them!’  It was arelief to feel that he was pleased, for I should have felt like amurderer if my curiosity had added a moment’s pain to sotragic a fate.

This may sound like sentimentalism; but you cannot conceivethe effect of looking on the last of a race once the owners ofall this land, and now utterly gone.  His look was not quitehuman, physically speaking;—a good head, small wild-beasteyes, piercing and restless; cheek-bones strangely high andprominent, nose quiteflat, mouth rather wide; thinshapeless lips, and an indescribably small, long, pointed chin,with just a very little soft white woolly beard; his head coveredwith extremely short close white wool, which ended round the pollin little ringlets.  Hands and feet like an English child ofseven or eight, and person about the size of a child ofeleven.  He had all his teeth, and though shrunk to nothing,was very little wrinkled in the face, and not at all in thehands, which were dark brown, while his face was yellow. His manner, and way of speaking were like those of an old peasantin England, only his voice was clearer and stronger, and hisperceptions not blunted by age.  He had travelled with oneof the missionaries in the year 1790, or thereabouts, andremained with them ever since.

I went into the church—a large, clean, rather handsomebuilding, consecrated in 1800—and heard a very good sort ofLitany, mixed with such singing as only black voices canproduce.  The organ was beautifully played by a Bastaardlad.  The Herrenhuters use very fine chants, and the perfectear and heavenly voices of a large congregation, about sixhundred, all coloured people, made music more beautiful than anychorus-singing I ever heard.

Prayers lasted half an hour; then the congregation turned outof doors, and the windows were opened.  Some of the peoplewent away, and others waited for the ‘allgemeinePredigt’.  In a quarter of an hour a much largercongregation than the first assembled, the girls all withnet-handkerchiefs tied round their heads so as to look exactlylike the ancient Greek head-dress with a double fillet—thevery prettiest and neatest coiffure I ever saw.  The gownswere made like those of English girls of the same class, but farsmarter, cleaner, and gayer in colour—pink, and green, andyellow, and bright blue; several were all in white, with whitegloves.  The men and women sit separate, and thewomen’s side was a bed of tulips.  The young fellowswere very smart indeed, with muslin or gauze, either white, pink,or blue, rolled round their hats (that is universal here, onaccount of the sun).  The Hottentots, as they arecalled—that is, those of mixed Dutch and Hottentot origin(correctly, ‘bastaards’)—have a sort ofblackguard elegance in their gait and figure which is peculiar tothem; a mixture of negro or Mozambique blood alters italtogether.  The girls have the elegance without theblackguard look; allare slender, most are tall; allgraceful, all have good hands and feet; some few are handsome inthe face and many very interesting-looking.  The complexionis a pale olive-yellow, and the hair more or less woolly, faceflat, and cheekbones high, eyes small and bright.  These areby far the most intelligent—equal, indeed, to whites. A mixture of black blood often gives real beauty, but takes offfrom the ‘air’, and generally from the talent; butthen the blacks are so pleasant, and the Hottentots are taciturnand reserved.  The old women of this breed are the grandesthags I ever saw; they are clean and well dressed, and tie uptheir old faces in white handkerchiefs like corpses,—faceslike those of Andrea del Sarto’s old women; they aresplendid.  Also, they are very clean people, addicted totubbing more than any others.  The maid-of-all-work, wholounges about your breakfast table in rags and dishevelled hair,has been in the river before you were awake, or, if that was toofar off, in a tub.  They are also far cleaner in their hutsthan any but the very bestEnglish poor.

The ‘Predigt’ was delivered, after more singing,by a missionary cabinet-maker, in Dutch, very ranting, and notvery wise; the congregation was singularly decorous andattentive, but did not seem at all excited orimpressed—just like a well-bred West-end audience, onlyrather more attentive.  The service lasted three-quarters ofan hour, including a short prayer and two hymns.  The peoplecame out and filed off in total silence, and very quickly, thetall graceful girls draping their gay silk shawlsbeautifully.  There are seven missionaries, all in ordersbut one, the blacksmith, and all married, except the residentdirector of the boys’ boarding-school; there is a doctor, acarpenter, a cabinet-maker, a shoe-maker, and astorekeeper—a very agreeable man, who had been missionaryin Greenland and Labrador, and interpreter to MacClure. There is one ‘Studirter Theolog’.  All areGermans, and so are their wives.  My friend the storekeepermarried without having ever beheld his wife before they met atthe altar, and came on board ship at once with her.  He saidit was as good a way of marrying as any other, and that they werehappy together.  She was lying in, so I did not seeher.  At eight years old, their children are all sent hometo Germany to be educated, and they seldom see them again. On each side of the church are schools, and next to them themissionaries’ houses on one side of the square, and on theother a row of workshops, where the Hottentots are taught allmanner of trades.  I have got a couple of knives, made atGnadenthal, for the children.  The girls occupy the schoolin the morning, and the boys in the afternoon; half a day isfound quite enough of lessons in this climate.  The infantschool was of both sexes, but a different set morning andafternoon.  The missionaries’ children were in theinfant school; and behind the little blonde German‘Mädels’ three jet black niggerlings rolled overeach other like pointer-pups, and grinned, and didn’t carea straw for the spelling; while the dingy yellow little bastaardswere straining their black eyes out, with eagerness to answer themaster’s questions.  He and the mistress were bothBastaards, and he seemed an excellent teacher.  The girlswere learning writing from a master, and Bible history from amistress, also people of colour; and the stupid set (mostlyblack) were having spelling hammered into their thick skulls byanother yellow mistress, in another room.  At the boardingschool were twenty lads, from thirteen up to twenty, in trainingfor school-teachers at different stations.  Gnadenthalsupplies the Church of England with them, as well as their ownstations.  There were Caffres, Fingoes, a Mantatee, one boyevidently of some Oriental blood, with glossy, smooth hair and acopper skin—and the rest Bastaards of various hues, somemixed with black, probably Mozambique.  The Caffre lads weresplendid young Hercules’.  They had just printed thefirst book in the Caffre language (I’ve got it for Dr.Hawtrey,)—extracts from the New Testament,—and I madethem read the sheets they were going to bind; it is a beautifullanguage, like Spanish in tone, only with a queer‘click’ in it.  The boys drew, like Chinese,from ‘copies’, and wrote like copper-plate; they sangsome of Mendelssohn’s choruses from ‘St. Paul’splendidly, the Caffres rolling out soft rich bass voices, likemelodious thunder.  They are clever at handicrafts, and fondof geography and natural history, incapable of mathematics, quickat languages, utterly incurious about other nations, and wouldall rather work in the fields than learn anything but music; goodboys, honest, but ‘trotzig’.  So much forCaffres, Fingoes, &c.  The Bastaards are as clever aswhites, and more docile—so the ‘rector’ toldme.  The boy who played the organ sang the‘Lorelei’ like an angel, and played us a number ofwaltzes and other things on the piano, but he was too shy totalk; while the Caffres crowded round me, and chattered awaymerrily.  The Mantatees, whom I cannot distinguish fromCaffres, are scattered all over the colony, and rival the Englishas workmen and labourers—fine stalwart, industriousfellows.  Our little ‘boy’ Kleenboy hires a roomfor fifteen shillings a month, and takes in his compatriots aslodgers at half a crown a week—the usurious littlerogue!  His chief, one James, is a bricklayer here, andlooks and behaves like a prince.  It is fine to see hisblack arms, ornamented with silver bracelets, hurling huge stonesabout.

All Gnadenthal is wonderfully fruitful, being well watered,but it is not healthy for whites; I imagine, too hot anddamp.  There are three or four thousand coloured peoplethere, under the control of the missionaries, who allow nocanteens at all.  The people may have what they please athome, but no public drinking-place is allowed, and we had to takeour own beer and wine for the three days.  The gardens andburial-ground are beautiful, and the square is entirely shaded byabout ten or twelve superb oaks; nothing prettier can beconceived.  It is not popular in the neighbourhood. ‘You see it makes the d-d niggers cheeky’ to havehomes of their own—and the girls are said to beimmoral.  As to that, there are no so-called‘morals’ among the coloured people, and how or whyshould there?  It is an honour to one of these girls to havea child by a white man, and it is a degradation to him to marry adark girl.  A pious stiff old Dutchwoman who came here theother day for the Sacrament (which takes place twice a year), hadone girl with her, big with child by her son, who also came forthe Sacrament, and two in the straw at home by the other son;this caused her exactly as much emotion as I feel when my catkittens.  No one takes any notice, either to blame or tonurse the poor things—they scramble through it as pussydoes.  The English are almost equally contemptuous; butthere is one great difference.  My host, for instance,always calls a black ‘a d-d nigger’; but if thatnigger is wronged or oppressed he fights for him, or bails himout of the Tronk, and an English jury gives a just verdict; whilea Dutch one simply finds for a Dutchman, against any one else,and alwaysagainst a dark man.  I believe this to betrue, from what I have seen and heard; and certainly the colouredpeople have a great preference for the English.

I am persecuted by the ugliest and blackest Mozambiquer I haveyet seen, a bricklayer’s labourer, who can speak English,and says he was servant to an English Captain—‘Oh, agood fellow he was, only he’s dead!’  He nowinsists on my taking him as a servant.  ‘I dessay yourman at home is a good chap, and I’ll be a good boy, andcook very nice.’  He is thick-set and short andstrong.  Nature has adorned him with a cock eye and a yardof mouth, and art, with a prodigiously tall white chimney-pot hatwith the crown out, a cotton nightcap, and a wondrous congeriesof rags.  He professes to be cook, groom, and‘walley’, and is sure you would be pleased with hisattentions.

Well, to go back to Gnadenthal.  I wandered all over thevillage on Sunday afternoon, and peeped into the cottages. All were neat and clean, with good dressers of crockery, theverypoorest, like the worst in Weybridge sandpits; butthey had no glass windows, only a wooden shutter, and no doors; acalico curtain, or a sort of hurdle supplying its place. The people nodded and said ‘Good day!’ but took nofurther notice of me, except the poor old Hottentot, who wasseated on a doorstep.  He rose and hobbled up to meet me andtake my hand again.  He seemed to enjoy being helped alongand seated down carefully, and shook and patted my handrepeatedly when I took leave of him.  At this the peoplestared a good deal, and one woman came to talk to me.

In the evening I sat on a bench in the square, and saw thepeople go in to ‘Abendsegen’.  The church waslighted, and as I sat there and heard the lovely singing, Ithought it was impossible to conceive a more romanticscene.  On Monday I saw all the schools, and then looked atthe great strong Caffre lads playing in the square.  One ofthem stood to be pelted by five or six others, and as the stonescame, he twisted and turned and jumped, and was hardly ever hit,and when he was, he didn’t care, though the others hurledlike catapults.  It was the most wonderful display ofactivity and grace, and quite incredible that such a huge fellowshould be so quick and light.  When I found how comfortabledear old Mrs. Rietz made me, I was sorry I had hired the cart andkept it to take me home, for I would gladly have stayed longer,and the heat did me no harm; but I did not like to throw away apound or two, and drove back that evening.  Mrs. Rietz, toldme her mother was a Mozambiquer.  ‘And yourfather?’ said I.  ‘Oh, I don’t know. My mother was only a slave.’  She, too, was aslave, but said she ‘never knew it’, her‘missus’ was so good; a Dutch lady, at a farm I hadpassed, on the road, who had a hundred and fifty slaves.  Iliked my Hottentot hut amazingly, and the sweet brown bread, andthe dinner cooked so cleanly on the bricks in the kitchen. The walls were whitewashed and adorned with wreaths ofeverlasting flowers and some quaint old prints fromLoutherburg—pastoral subjects, not exactly edifying.

Well, I have prosed unconscionably, so adieu for thepresent.

February3d.—Many happy returns of yourbirthday, dear —.  I had a bottle of champagne todrink your health, and partly to swell the bill, which these goodpeople make so moderate, that I am half ashamed.  I geteverything that Caledon can furnish for myself and S— for15l.a month.

On Saturday we got the sad news of Prince Albert’sdeath, and it created real consternation here.  What athoroughly unexpected calamity!  Every one is alreadydressed in deep mourning.  It is more general than in avillage of the same size at home—(how I have caught thecolonial trick of always saying ‘home’ forEngland!  Dutchmen who can barely speak English, and neverdid or will see England, equally talk of ‘news fromhome’).  It also seems, by the papers of the 24th ofDecember, which came by a steamer the other day, that war isimminent.  I shall have to wait for convoy, I suppose, as Iobject to walking the plank from a Yankee privateer.  Ishall wait here for the next mail, and then go back to Capetown,stopping by the way, so as to get there early in March, andarrange for my voyage.  The weather had a relapse into cold,and an attempt at rain.  Pity it failed, for the drought isdreadful this year, chiefly owing to the unusual quantity ofsharp drying winds—a most unlucky summer for the countryand for me.

My old friend Klein, who told me several instances of thekindness and gratitude of former slaves, poured out to me themisery he had undergone from the ‘ingratitude’ of acertain Rosina, a slave-girl of his.  She was in her youthhandsome, clever, the best horsebreaker, bullock-trainer anddriver, and hardest worker in the district.  She had twochildren by Klein, then a young fellow; six by another white man,and a few more by two husbands of her own race!  But she wasof a rebellious spirit, and took to drink.  After theemancipation, she used to go in front of Klein’s windowsand read the statute in a loud voice on every anniversary of theday; and as if that did not enrage him enough, she pertinaciously(whenever she was a little drunk) kissed him by main force everytime she met him in the street, exclaiming, ‘Aha! when Iyoung and pretty slave-girl you make kiss me then; now I ugly,drunk, dirty old devil and free woman, I kiss you!’ Frightful retributive justice!  I struggled hard to keep mycountenance, but the fat old fellow’s good-humoured, ruefulface was too much for me.  His tormentor is dead, but heretains a painful impression of her ‘ingratitude‘.

Our little Mantatee ‘Kleenboy’ has again, likeJeshurun, ‘waxed fat and kicked’, as soon as he hadeaten enough to be once more plump and shiny.  After hishungry period, he took to squatting on the stoep, just in frontof the hall-door, and altogether declining to do anything; so heis superseded by an equally ugly little red-headedEnglishman.  The Irish housemaid has married the Germanbaker (a fine match for her!), and a dour little ScotchPresbyterian has come up from Capetown in her place.  Suchare the vicissitudes of colonial house-keeping!  The only‘permanency’ is the old soldier of CaptainD—’s regiment, who is barman in the canteen, and notlikely to leave ‘his honour’, and the coloured girl,who improves on acquaintance.  She wants to ingratiateherself with me, and get taken to England.  Her father is anEnglishman, and of course the brown mother and her large familyalways live in the fear of his ‘going home’ andignoring their existence; a marriagewith the mother ofhis children would be too much degradation for him to submitto.  Few of the coloured people are ever married, but theydon’t separate oftener than reallymarriedfolks.  Bill, the handsome West Indian black, married mypretty washerwoman Rosalind, and was thought rather assumingbecause he was asked in church and lawfully married; and she worea handsome lilac silk gown and a white wreath and veil, and verywell she looked in them.  She had a child of two years old,which did not at all disconcert Bill; but he continues to bedignified, and won’t let her go and wash clothes in theriver, because the hot sun makes her ill, and it is not fit workfor women.

Sunday, 9th.—Last night a dance took placein a house next door to this, and a party of boers attempted togo in, but were repulsed by a sortie of the young menwithin.  Some of the more peaceable boers came in here andwanted ale, which was refused, as they were already veryvinous; so they imbibed ginger-beer, whereof one drankthirty-four bottles to his own share!  Inspired by thisdrink, they began to quarrel, and were summarily turnedout.  They spent the whole night, till five this morning,scuffling and vociferating in the street.  The constablesdiscreetly stayed in bed, displaying the true Dogberry spirit,which leads them to take up Hottentots, drunk or sober, to showtheir zeal, but carefully to avoid meddling with stalwart boers,from six to six and a half feet high and strong inproportion.  The jabbering of Dutch brings to mindDemosthenes trying to outroar a stormy sea with his mouth full ofpebbles.  The hardest blows are those given with the tongue,though much pulling of hair and scuffling takes place. ‘Verdomde Schmeerlap!’—‘Donder andBliksem! am I a verdomde Schmeerlap?’—‘Ja, uis,’ &c., &c.  I could not help laughingheartily as I lay in bed, at hearing the gambols of these Titancubs; for this is a boer’s notion of enjoyinghimself.  This morning, I hear, the street was strewn withthe hair they had pulled out of each other’s heads. All who come here make love to S—; not by describing theirtender feelings, but by enumerating the oxen, sheep, horses,land, money, &c., of which they are possessed, and whereof,by the law of this colony, she would become half-owner onmarriage.  There is a fine handsome Van Steen, who is verypersevering; but S— does not seem to fancy becoming Mevrouwat all.  The demand for English girls as wives is wonderfulhere.  The nasty cross little ugly Scotch maid has had threeoffers already, in one fortnight!

February18th.—I expect to receive theletters by the English mail to-morrow morning, and to go toWorcester on Thursday.  On Saturday the youngdoctor—good-humoured, jolly, big, youngDutchman—drove me, with his pretty little greys, over totwo farms; at one I ate half a huge melon, and at the other,uncounted grapes.  We poor Europeans don’t know whatfruit can be, I must admit.  The melon was aforetaste of paradise, and the grapes made one’s fingers assticky as honey, and had a muscat fragrance quiteinconceivable.  They looked like amber eggs.  The bestof it is, too, that in this climate stomach-aches are not. We all eat grapes, peaches, and figs, all day long.  OldKlein sends me, for my own daily consumption, about thirtypeaches, three pounds of grapes, and apples, pears, and figsbesides—‘just a little taste of fruits’; onlyhere they will pick it all unripe.

February19th.—The post came in late lastnight, and old Klein kindly sent me my letters at nearmidnight.  The post goes out this evening, and the hot windis blowing, so I can only write to you, and a line to mymother.  I feel really better now.  I think theconstant eating of grapes has done me much good.

The Dutch cart-owner was so extortionate, that I am going towait a few days, and write to my dear Malay to come up and driveme back.  It is better than having to fight the Dutchmonopolist in every village, and getting drunken drivers and badcarts after all.  I shall go round all the same.  Theweather has been beautiful; to-day there is a wind, which comesabout two or three times in the year: it is not depressing, buthot, and a bore, because one must shut every window or be stifledwith dust.

The people are burning the veld all about, and the lurid smokeby day and flaming hill-sides by night are very striking. The ashes of the Bosh serve as manure for the young grass, whichwill sprout in the autumn rains.  Such nights!  Such amoon!  I walk out after dark when it is mild and clear, andcan read any print by the moonlight, and see the distantlandscape as well as by day.

Old Klein has just sent me a haunch of bok, and the skin andhoofs, which are pretty.

p.105LETTER VIII

Caledon, Sunday.

You must have fallen into secondchildhood to think of printingsuch rambling hasty scrawlsas I write.  I never could write a good letter; and unless Igallop as hard as I can, and don’t stop to think, I can saynothing; so all is confused and unconnected: only I fancyyouwill be amused by some of my‘impressions’.  I have written to my mother anaccurate account of my health.  I am dressed and out ofdoors never later than six, now the weather makes itpossible.  It is surprising how little sleep onewants.  I go to bed at ten and often am up at four.

I made friends here the other day with a lively dried-uplittle old Irishman, who came out at seven years old apauper-boy.  He has made a fortune by ‘going onTogt’ (German, Tausch), as thus; hecharters two waggons, twelve oxen each, and two Hottentots toeach waggon, leader and driver.  The waggons he fills withcotton, hardware, &c., &c.—an ambulatory village‘shop’,—and goes about fifteen miles a day, onand on, into the far interior, swapping baftas (calico), punjums(loose trowsers), and voerschitz (cotton gownpieces), pronounced‘foossy’, against oxen and sheep.  When all isgone he swaps his waggons against more oxen and a horse, and heand his four ‘totties’ drive home the spoil; and hehas doubled or trebled his venture.  En routehome,each day they kill a sheep, and eat it all. ‘What!’ says I; ‘the whole?’ ‘Every bit.  I always take one leg and the liver formyself, and the totties roast the rest, and melt all the fat andentrails down in an iron pot and eat it with a woodenspoon.’  Je n’en revenais pas. ‘What! the whole leg and liver at one meal?’ ‘Every bit; ay, and you’d do the same, ma’am,if you were there.’  No bread, no salt, nonothing—mutton and water.  The old fellow was quitepoetic and heroic in describing the joys and perils ofTogt.  I said I should like to go too; and he bewailedhaving settled a year ago in a store at Swellendam, ‘elsehe’d ha’ fitted up a waggon all nice and snug for me,and shown me what going on togt was like.  Nothing like itfor the health, ma’am; and beautiful shooting.’ My friend had 700l.in gold in a carpet bag, without alock, lying about on the stoep.  ‘All right; nobodysteals money or such like here.  I’m going to paybills in Capetown.’

Tell my mother that a man would get from 2l.to4l.a month wages, with board, lodging, &c., allfound, and his wife from 1l.10s.to 2l.amonth and everything found, according to abilities andtestimonials.  Wages are enormous, and servants at famineprice; emigrant ships are cleared offin three days, andevery ragged Irish girl in place somewhere.  Four pounds amonth, and food for self, husband, and children, is no uncommonpay for a good cook; and after all her cookery may be poorenough.  My landlady at Capetown gave that.  Thehousemaid had only1l.5s.a month, but toldme herself she had taken 8l.in one week in‘tips’.  She was an excellent servant.  Upcountry here the wages are less, but the comfort greater, and thechances of ‘getting on’ much increased.  But Ibelieve Algoa Bay or Grahamstown are by far the best fields fornew colonists, and (I am assured) the best climate for lungdiseases.  The wealthy English merchants of Port Elizabeth(Algoa Bay) pay best.  It seems to me, as far as I canlearn, that every really workingman or woman can thrivehere.

My German host at Houw Hoek came out twenty-three years ago,he told me, without a ‘heller’, and is now the ownerof cattle and land and horses to a large amount.  But thenthe Germans work, while the Dutch dawdle and the Englishdrink.  ‘New wine’ is a penny a glass (half apint), enough to blow your head off, and ‘Cape smoke’(brandy, like vitriol) ninepence a bottle—that is the realcalamity.  If the Cape had the grape disease as badly asMadeira, it would be the making of the colony.

I received a message from my Malay friends, Abdool Jemaaleeand Betsy, anxious to know ‘if the Misses had good news ofher children, for bad news would make her sick’.  OldBetsy and I used to prose about young Abdurrachman and hisstudies at Mecca, and about my children, with more realheartiness than you can fancy.  We were not afraid of boringeach other; and pious old Abdool sat and nodded and said,‘May Allah protect them all!’ as arefrain;—‘Allah, il Allah!’

p.109LETTER IX

Caledon, Feb. 21st.

This morning’s post broughtyour packet, and the announcement of an extra mailto-night—so I can send you a P.S.  I hear thatCapetown has been pestilential, and as hot as Calcutta.  Itis totally undrained, and the Mozambiquers are beginning toobject to acting as scavengers to each separate house.  The‘vidanges’ are more barbarous even than inParis.  Without the south-easter (or ‘Capedoctor’) they must have fevers, &c.; and though toorough a practitioner for me, he benefits the generalhealth.  Next month the winds abate, but last week anomnibus was blown over on the Rondebosch road, which is the mostsheltered spot, and inhabited by Capetown merchants.  I havereceived all the Saturday Reviewsquite safe, likewise thebooks, Mendelssohn’s letters, and the novel.  I havewritten for my dear Choslullah to fetch me.  The Dutchfarmers don’t know how to charge enough; moreover, theHottentot drivers get drunk, and for two lone women that is notthe thing.  I pay my gentle Malay thirty shillings a day,which, for a cart and four and such a jewel of a driver, is notoutrageous; and I had better pay that for the few days I wait onthe road, than risk bad carts, tipsy Hottentots, and extortionateboers.

This intermediate country between the ‘Central Africanwilderness’ and Capetown has been little frequented. I went to the Church Mission School with the English clergymanyesterday.  You know I don’t believe in every kind ofmissionaries, but I do believe that, in these districts, kind,judicious English clergymen are of great value.  The Dutchpastors still remember the distinction between‘Christenmenschen’ and ‘Hottentoten’; butthe Church Mission Schools teach the Anglican Catechism to everychild that will learn, and the congregation is as piebald asHarlequin’s jacket.  A pretty, coloured lad, abouteleven years old, answered my questions in geography with greatquickness and some wit.  I said, ‘Show me the countryyou belong to.’  He pointed to England, and when Ilaughed, to the cape.  ‘This is where we are, but thatis the country I belong to.’  I asked him howwe were governed, and he answered quite right.  ‘Howis the Cape governed?’  ‘Oh, we have aParliament too, and Mr. Silberbauer is the man wesend.’  Boys and girls of all ages were mixed, but noblacks.  I don’t think they will learn, except oncompulsion, as at Gnadenthal.

I regret to say that Bill’s wife has broken his headwith a bottle, at the end of the honeymoon.  I fear theinnovation of being married at churchhas not had a goodeffect, and that his neighbours may quote Mr. Peachum.

I was offered a young lion yesterday, but I hardly think itwould be an agreeable addition to the household at Esher.

I hear that Worcester, Paarl, and Stellenbosch are beautiful,and the road very desolate and grand: one mountain pass takes sixhours to cross.  I should not return to Capetown so early,but poor Captain J— has had his leg smashed and amputated,so I must look out for myself in the matter of ships. Whenever it is hot, I am well, for the heat here is solightand dry.  The wind tries me, but we have littlehere compared to the coast.  I hope that the voyage homewill do me still more good; but I will not sail till April, so asto arrive in June.  May, in the Channel, would not do.

How I wish I could send you the fruit now on mytable—amber-coloured grapes, yellow waxen apples streakedwith vermillion in fine little lines, huge peaches, and tinygreen figs!  I must send dear old Klein a little presentfrom England, to show that I don’t forget my Dutchadorer.  I wish I could bring you the ‘Biltong ‘he sent me—beef or bok dried in the sun in strips, andslightly salted; you may carry enough in your pocket to live onfor a fortnight, and it is very good as a little‘relish’.  The partridges also have beenwelcome, and we shall eat the tiny haunch of bok to-day.

Mrs. D— is gone to Capetown to get servants (the Scotchgirl having carried on her amours too flagrantly), and willreturn in my cart.  S— is still keeping housemeanwhile, much perturbed by the placid indolence of the browngirl.  The stableman cooks, and very well too.  This iscolonial life—a series of makeshifts and difficulties; butthe climate is fine, people feel well and make money, and I thinkit is not an unhappy life.  I have been most fortunate in myabode, and can say, without speaking cynically, that I have found‘my warmest welcome at an inn’.  Mine host is arough soldier, but the very soul of good nature and good feeling;and his wife is a very nice person—so cheerful, clever, andkindhearted.

I should like to bring home the little Madagascar girl fromRathfelders, or a dear little mulatto who nurses a brown babyhere, and is so clean and careful and ‘prettybehaved’,—but it would be a great risk.  Thebrown babies are ravishing—so fat and jolly and funny.

One great charm of the people here is, that no one expectsmoney or gifts, and that all civility is gratis.  Many atime I finger small coin secretly in my pocket, and refrain fromgiving it, for fear of spoiling this innocence.  I have notonce seen a lookimplying ‘backsheesh’, andbegging is unknown.  But the people are reserved and silent,and have not the attractive manners of the darkies of Capetownand the neighbourhood.

p.114LETTER X

Caledon, Feb. 22d.

Yesterday Captain D— gave me a very nice caross ofblessbok skins, which he got from some travelling trader. The excellence of the Caffre skin-dressing and sewing is, Ifancy, unequalled; the bok-skins are as soft as a kid glove, andhave no smell at all.

In the afternoon the young doctor drove me, in his littlegig-cart and pair (the lightest and swiftest of conveyances), tosee a wine-farm.  The people were not at work, but we sawthe tubs and vats, and drank ‘most’.  The grapesare simply trodden by a Hottentot, in a tub with a sort ofstrainer at the bottom, and then thrown—skins, stalks, andall—into vats, where the juice ferments for twicetwenty-four hours; after which it is run into casks, which areleft with the bung out for eight days; then the wine is drawn offinto another cask, a little sulphur and brandy are added to it,and it is bunged down.  Nothing can be conceived sobarbarous.  I have promised Mr. M— to procure and sendhim an exact account of the process in Spain.  It might be areal service to a most worthy and amiable man.  Dr. M—also would be glad of a copy.  They literally know nothingabout wine-making here, and with such matchless grapes I am sureit ought to be good.  Altogether, ‘der alteSchlendrian’ prevails at the Cape to an incredibledegree.

If two ‘Heeren M—’ call on you, please becivil to them.  I don’t know them personally, buttheir brother is the doctor here, and the most good-natured youngfellow I ever saw.  If I were returning by Somerset insteadof Worcester, I might put up at their parents’ house and besure of a welcome; and I can tell you civility to strangers is byno means of course here.  I don’t wonder at it; forthe old Dutch families are gentlefolksof the good dullold school, and the English colonists can scarcely suitthem.  In the few instances in which I have succeeded inthawinga Dutchman, I have found him wonderfullygood-natured; and the different manner in which I was greetedwhen in company with the young doctor showed the feeling atonce.  The dirt of a Dutch house is not to beconceived.  I have had sights in bedrooms in veryrespectable houses which I dare not describe.  The colouredpeople are just as clean.  The young doctor (who is muchAnglicised) tells me that, in illness, he has to break thewindows in the farmhouses—they are built not to open! The boers are below the English in manners and intelligence, andhate them for their ‘go-ahead’ ways, thoughtheyseem slow enough to me.  As to drink, I fancy itis six of one and half a dozen of the other; but the English aremore given to eternal drams, and the Dutch to solemn drinkingbouts.  I can’t understand either, in this climate,which is so stimulating, that I more often drink ginger-beer orwater than wine—a bottle of sherry lasted me a fortnight,though I was ordered to drink it; somehow, I had no mind toit.

27th.—The cart could not be got till the daybefore yesterday, and yesterday Mrs. D— arrived in it withtwo new Irish maids; it saved her 3l., and I must havepaid equally.  The horses were very tired, having been hardat work carrying Malays all the week to Constantia and back, on apilgrimage to the tomb of a Mussulman saint; so to-day they rest,and to-morrow I go to Villiersdorp.  Choslullah has beenappointed driver of a post-cart; he tried hard to be allowed topay a remplaçant, and to fetch ‘hismissis’, but was refused leave; and so a smaller andblacker Malay has come, whom Choslullah threatened to curseheavily if he failed to take great care of ‘mymissis’ and be a ‘good boy’.  Ramadanbegins on Sunday, and my poor driver can’t even prepare forit by a good feast, as no fowls are to be had here just now, andhe can’t eat profanely-killed meat.  Some piousChristian has tried to burn a Mussulman martyr’s tomb atEerste River, and there were fears the Malays might indulge in alittle revenge; but they keep quiet.  I am to go with mydriver to eat some of the feast (of Bairam, is it not?) at hispriest’s when Ramadan ends, if I am in Capetown, and alsoam asked to a wedding at a relation of Choslullah’s. It was quite a pleasure to hear the kindly Mussulman talk, afterthese silent Hottentots.  The Malays have such agreeablemanners; so civil, without the least cringing or Indianobsequiousness.  I dare say they can be very‘insolent’ on provocation; but I have always foundamong them manners like old-fashioned French ones, but quieter;and they have an affectionate way of saying ‘mymissis’ when they know one, which is very nice tohear.  It is getting quite chilly here already; coldnight and morning; and I shall be glad to descend off thisplateau into the warmer regions of Worcester, &c.  Ihave just bought eightsplendid ostrich feathers for1l.of my old Togthandler friend.  In England theywould cost from eighteen to twenty-five shillings each.  Ihave got a reebok and a klipspringer skin for you; the lattermakes a saddle-cloth which defies sore backs; they were given meby Klein and a farmer at Palmiet River.  The flesh was poorstuff, white and papery.  The Hottentots can’t‘bray’ the skins as the Caffres do; and the woman whodid mine asked me for a trifle beforehand, and got so drunk thatshe let them dry halfway in the process, consequently theydon’t look so well.

Worcester, Sunday, March 2d.

Oh, such a journey!  Such country!  Pearly mountainsand deep blue sky, and an impassable pass to walk down, andbaboons, and secretary birds, and tortoises!  Icouldn’t sleep for it all last night, tired as I was withthe unutterably bad road, or track rather.

Well, we left Caledon on Friday, at ten o’clock, andthough the weather had been cold and unpleasant for two days, Ihad a lovely morning, and away we went to Villiersdorp(pronounced Filjeesdorp).  It is quite a tiny village, in asort of Rasselas-looking valley.  We were four hours on theroad, winding along the side of a mountain ridge, which wefinally crossed, with a splendid view of the sea at thefar-distant end of a huge amphitheatre formed by two ridges ofmountains, and on the other side the descent intoFiljeesdorp.  The whole way we saw no human being orhabitation, except one shepherd, from the time we passedBuntje’s kraal, about two miles out of Caledon.  Thelittle drinking-shop would not hold travellers, so I went to thehouse of the storekeeper (as the clergyman of Caledon had told meI might), and found a most kind reception.  Our host wasEnglish, an old man-of-war’s man, with a gentle, kindlyDutch wife, and the best-mannered children I have seen in thecolony.  They gave us clean comfortable beds and a gooddinner, and wine ten years in the cellar; in short, the best ofhospitality.  I made an effort to pay for the entertainmentnext morning, when, after a good breakfast, we started loadedwith fruit, but the kind people would not hear of it, and bid megood-bye like old friends.  At the end of the valley we wenta little up-hill, and then found ourselves at the top of a passdown into the level below.  S— and I burst out withone voice, ‘How beautiful!’  Sabaal, our driver,thought the exclamation was an ironical remark on the road,which, indeed, appeared to be exclusively intended forgoats.  I suggested walking down, to which, for a wonder,the Malay agreed.  I was really curious to see him get downwith two wheels and four horses, where I had to lay hold fromtime to time in walking.  The track was excessively steep,barely wide enough, and as slippery as a flagstone pavement,being the naked mountain-top, which is bare rock.  However,all went perfectly right.

How shall I describe the view from that pass?  In frontwas a long, long level valley, perhaps three to five miles broad(I can’t judge distance in this atmosphere; a house thatlooks a quarter of a mile off is two miles distant).  At theextreme end, in a little gap between two low brown hills thatcrossed each other, one could just see Worcester—fivehours’ drive off.  Behind it, and on each side theplain, mountains of every conceivable shape and colour; thestrangest cliffs and peaks and crags toppling every way, andtinged with all the colours of opal; chiefly delicate, pale lilacand peach colour, but varied with red brown and Titiangreen.  In spite of the drought, water sparkled on themountain-sides in little glittering threads, and here and therein the plain; and pretty farms were dotted on either side at thevery bottom of the slopes toward the mountain-foot.  The skyof such a blue! (it is deeper now by far than earlier in theyear).  In short, I never did see anything sobeautiful.  It even surpassed Hottentot’sHolland.  On we went, straight along the valley, crossingdrift after drift;—a drift is the bed of a stream more orless dry; in which sometimes you are drowned, sometimes onlypounded, as was our hap.  The track was incrediblybad, except for short bits, where ironstone prevailed. However, all went well, and on the road I chased and captured apair of remarkably swift and handsome little‘Schelpats’.  That you may duly appreciate sucha feat of valour and activity, I will inform you that theirEnglish name is ‘tortoise’.  On the strength ofthis effort, we drank a bottle of beer, as it was very hot andsandy; and our Malay was a wetenough Mussulman to takehis full share in a modest way, though he declined wine or‘Cape smoke Soopjes’ (drams) with aversion.  Nosooner had we got under weigh again, than Sabaal pulled up andsaid, ‘There arethe Baviāans Missis want tosee!’ and so they were.  At some distance by the riverwas a great brute, bigger than a Newfoundland dog, stalking alongwith the hideous baboon walk, and tail vehemently cocked up; atroop followed at a distance, hiding and dodging among thepalmiets.  They were evidently en routeto rob agarden close to them, and had sent a great stout fellow ahead toreconnoitre.  ‘He see Missis, and feel sure she notgot a gun; if man come on horseback, you see ’em run likedevil.’  We had not that pleasure, and left them, onfelonious thoughts intent.

The road got more and more beautiful as we neared Worcester,and the mountains grew higher and craggier.  Presently, ahuge bird, like a stork on the wing, pounced down close byus.  He was a secretary-bird, and had caught sight of asnake.  We passed ‘Brant Vley’ (burntorhot spring), where sulphur-water bubbles up in a basin somethirty feet across and ten or twelve deep.  The water isclear as crystal, and is hot enough just notto boil anegg, I was told.  At last, one reaches the little gapbetween the brown hills which one has seen for four hours, anddrives through it into a wide, wide flat, with still craggier andhigher mountains all round, and Worcester in front at the foot ofa towering cliff.  The town is not so pretty, to my taste,as the little villages.  The streets are too wide, and themarket-place too large, which always looks dreary, but the housesand gardens individually are charming.  Our inn is a verynice handsome old Dutch house; but we have got back to‘civilization’, and the horrid attempts at‘style’ which belong to Capetown.  The landlordand lady are too genteel to appear at all, and the Hottentots,who are disguised, according to their sexes, in pantry jacket andflounced petticoat, don’t understand a word of English orof real Dutch.  At Gnadenthal they understood Dutch, andspoke it tolerably; but here, as in most places, it isthree-parts Hottentot; and then they affect to understandEnglish, and bring everything wrong, and are sulky: but the roomsare very comfortable.  The change of climate iscomplete—the summer was over at Caledon, and here we areinto it again—the most delicious air one can conceive; itmust have been a perfect oven six weeks ago.  The birds aresinging away merrily still; the approach of autumn does notsilence them here.  The canaries have a very pretty song,like our linnet, only sweeter; the rest are very inferior toours.  The sugar-bird is delicious when close by, but hispipe is too soft to be heard at any distance.

To those who think voyages and travels tiresome, my delight inthe new birds and beasts and people must seem very stupid. I can’t help it if it does, and am not ashamed to confessthat I feel the old sort of enchanted wonder with which I used toread Cook’s voyages, and the like, as a child.  It isvery coarse and unintellectual of me; but I would rather see thisnow, at my age, than Italy; the fresh, new, beautiful nature is asecond youth—or childhood—si vousvoulez.  To-morrow we shall cross the highest pass Ihave yet crossed, and sleep at Paarl—then Stellenbosch,then Capetown.  For any one outof health, andinpocket, I should certainly prescribe the purchase of awaggon and team of six horses, and a long, slow progress in SouthAfrica.  One cannot walk in the midday sun, but driving witha very light roof over one’s head is quite delicious. When I looked back upon my dreary, lonely prison at Ventnor, Iwondered I had survived it at all.

Capetown, March 7th.

After writing last, we drove out, on Sunday afternoon, to adeep alpine valley, to see a new bridge—a greatmarvel apparently.  The old Spanish Joe Miller about sellingthe bridge to buy water occurred to me, and made Sabaal laughimmensely.  The Dutch farmers were tearing home from Kerk,in their carts—well-dressed, prosperous-looking folks, withcapital horses.  Such lovely farms, snugly nestled in orangeand pomegranate groves!  It is of no use to describe thisscenery; it is always mountains, and always beautiful opalmountains; quite without the gloom of European mountainscenery.  The atmosphere must make the charm.  I hearthat an English traveller went the same journey and found allbarren from Dan to Beersheba.  I’m sorry for him.

In the morning of Sunday, early, I walked along the road withSabaal, and saw a picture I shall never forget.  A littleMalabar girl had just been bathing in the Sloot, and had put herscanty shift on her lovely little wet brown body; she stood inthe water with the drops glittering on her brown skin and black,satin hair, the perfection of youthful loveliness—a naiadof ten years old.  When the shape and features areperfect, as hers were, the coffee-brown shows it betterthan our colour, on account of its perfectevenness—like the dead white of marble.  Ishall never forget her as she stood playing with the leaves ofthe gum-tree which hung over her, and gazing with her gloriouseyes so placidly.

On Monday morning, I walked off early to the old Drosdy(Landdrost’s house), found an old gentleman, who turned outto be the owner, and who asked me my name and all the rest of theDutch ‘litanei’ of questions, and showed me thepretty old Dutch garden and the house—a very handsomeone.  I walked back to breakfast, and thought Worcester theprettiest place I had ever seen.  We then started for Paarl,and drove through ‘Bain’s Kloof’, a splendidmountain-pass, four hours’ long, constant driving.  Itwas glorious, but more like what one had seen in pictures—adeep, narrow gorge, almost dark in places, and, to my mind,lacked the beautyof the yesterday’s drive, thoughit is, perhaps, grander; but the view which bursts on one at thetop, and the descent, winding down the open mountain-side, is toofine to describe.  Table Mountain, like a giant’sstronghold, seen far distant, with an immense plain, halffertile, half white sand; to the left, Wagenmaker’s Vley;and further on, the Paarl lying scattered on the slope of amountain topped with two domes, just the shape of the cupwhich Lais (wasn’t it?) presented to the temple of Venus,moulded on her breast.  The horses were tired, so we stoppedat Waggon-maker’s Valley (or Wellington, as the English tryto get it called), and found ourselves in a true Flemish village,and under the roof of a jolly Dutch hostess, who gave us divinecoffee and bread-and-butter, which seemed ambrosia after beingdeprived of those luxuries for almost three months.  Alsonew milk in abundance, besides fruit of all kinds in vast heaps,and pomegranates off the tree.  I asked her to buy me a fewto take in the cart, and got a ‘muid’, the third of asack, for a shilling, with a bill, ‘U bekomt 1 muid 28granaeten dat Kostet 1s.’  The old lady wouldwalk out with me and take me into the shops, to show the‘vrow uit Engelland’ to her friends.  It was alovely place, intensely hot, all glowing with sunshine. Then the sun went down, and the high mountains behind us wereprecisely the colour of a Venice ruby glass—really, truly,and literally;—not purple, not crimson, but glowingruby-red—and the quince-hedges and orange-trees belowlooked intenselygreen, and the houses snow-white. It was a transfiguration—no less.

I saw Hottentots again, four of them, from some remote corner,so the race is not quite extinct.  These were youngish, twomen and two women, quite light yellow, not darker than Europeans,and with little tiny black knots of wool scattered over theirheads at intervals.  They are hideous in face, butexquisitely shaped—very, very small though.  One ofthe men was drunk, poor wretch, and looked the picture ofmisery.  You can see the fineness of their senses by the wayin which they dart their glances and prick their ears. Every one agrees that, when tamed, they make the best ofservants—gentle, clever, and honest; but the penny-a-glasswine they can’t resist, unless when caught and tamedyoung.  They work in the fields, or did so as long as anywere left; but even here, I was told, it was a wonder to seethem.

We went on through the Paarl, a sweet pretty place, remindingone vaguely of Bonchurch, and still through fine mountains, withScotch firs growing like Italian stone pines, and farms, andvineyard upon vineyard.  At Stellenbosch we stopped.  Ihad been told it was the prettiest town in the colony, and itisvery pretty, with oak-trees all along the street, likethose at Paarl and Wagenmakkers Vley; but I wasdisappointed.  It was less beautiful than what I hadseen.  Besides, the evening was dull and cold.  Thesouth-easter greeted us here, and I could not go out all theafternoon.  The inn was called ‘Railway Hotel’,and kept by low coarse English people, who gave us a filthydinner, dirty sheets, and an atrocious breakfast, and charged1l.3s.6d.for the same meals and time asold Vrow Langfeldt had charged 12s.for, and had givencivility, cleanliness, and abundance of excellentfood;—besides which, she fed Sabaal gratis, and thesepeople fleeced him as they did me.  So, next morning, we setoff, less pleasantly disposed, for Capetown, over the flat, whichis dreary enough, and had a horrid south-easter.  We startedearly, and got in before the wind became a hurricane, which itdid later.  We were warmly welcomed by Mrs. R—; andhere I am in my old room, looking over the beautiful bay, quiteat home again.  It blew all yesterday, and having rather asore-throat I stayed in bed, and to-day is all bright andbeautiful.  But Capetown looks murky after Caledon andWorcester; there is, to my eyes, quite a haze over the mountains,and they look far off and indistinct.  All is comparative inthis world, even African skies.  At Caledon, the mostdistant mountains, as far as your eye can reach, look as clear inevery detail as the map on your table—an appearance utterlynew to European eyes.

I gave Sabaal 1l.for his eight days’ service asdriver, as a Drinkgelt, and the worthy fellow was in ecstasies ofgratitude.  Next morning early, he appeared with a presentof bananas, and his little girl dressed from head to foot inbrand-new clothes, bought out of my money, with her wool screwedup extremely tight in little knots on her black little head(evidently her mother is the blackest of Caffres orMozambiques).  The child looked like a Caffre, and herfather considers her quite a pearl.  I had her in, andadmired the little thing loud enough for him to hear outside, asI lay in bed.  You see, I too was to have my share in thepleasure of the new clothes.  This readiness to believe thatone will sympathize with them, is very pleasing in theMalays.

March 15.

I went to see my old Malay friends and to buy awater-melon.  They were in all the misery of Ramadan. Betsy and pretty Nassirah very thin and miserable, and the piousold Abdool sitting on a little barrel waiting for‘gun-fire’—i.e. sunset, to fall to on thesupper which old Betsy was setting out.  He was silent, andthe corners of his mouth were drawn down just like—’s at an evening party.

I shall go to-morrow to bid the T—s good-bye, atWynberg.  I was to have spent a few days there, but Wynbergis cold at night and dampish, so I declined that.  She is anice woman—Irish, and so innocent and frank andwell-bred.  She has been at Cold Bokke Veld, and shocked herpuritanical host by admiring the naked Caffres who worked on hisfarm.  He wanted them to wear clothes.

We have been amused by the airs of a naval captain and hiswife, who are just come here.  They complained that themerchant-service officers spoke familiarlyto theirchildren on board.  Quel audace!  When I thinkof the excellent, modest, manly young fellows who talked veryfamiliarly and pleasantly to me on board the St. Lawrence,I long to reprimand these foolish people.

Friday, 21st.—I am just come from prayer,at the Mosque in Chiappini Street, on the outskirts of thetown.  A most striking sight.  A large room, like acounty ball-room, with glass chandeliers, carpeted with commoncarpet, all but a space at the entrance, railed off for shoes;the Caaba and pulpit at one end; over the niche, a crescentpainted; and over the entrance door a crescent, an Arabicinscription, and the royal arms of England!  A fat jollyMollah looked amazed as I ascended the steps; but when I touchedmy forehead and said, ‘Salaam Aleikoom’, he laughedand said, ‘Salaam, Salaam, come in, come in.’ The faithful poured in, all neatly dressed in their loose drabtrousers, blue jackets, and red handkerchiefs on their heads;they left their wooden clogs in company, with my shoes, andproceeded, as it appeared, to strip.  Off went jackets,waistcoats, and trousers, with the dexterity of a pantomimetransformation; the red handkerchief was replaced by a whiteskullcap, and a long large white shirt and full white drawersflowed around them.  How it had all been stuffed into thetrim jacket and trousers, one could not conceive.  Gaysashes and scarves were pulled out of a little bundle in a cleansilk handkerchief, and a towel served as prayer-carpet.  Ina moment the whole scene was as oriental as if the Hansom cab Ihad come in existed no more.  Women suckled their children,and boys played among the clogs and shoes all the time, and I saton the floor in a remote corner.  The chanting was veryfine, and the whole ceremony very decorous and solemn.  Itlasted an hour; and then the little heaps of garments were puton, and the congregation dispersed, each man first laying a pennyon a very curious little old Dutch-looking, heavy, iron-boundchest, which stood in the middle of the room.

I have just heard that the post closes to-night and must sayfarewell—a rivederci.

p.132LETTER XI

Capetown, March 20th.

Dearest Mother,

Dr. Shea says he fears I must not winter in England yet, butthat I am greatly improved—as, indeed, I could tellhim.  He is another of the kind ‘sea doctors’ Ihave met with; he came all the way from Simon’s Bay to seeme, and then said, ‘What nonsense is that?’ when Ioffered him a fee.  This is a very nice place up in the‘gardens’, quite out of the town and verycomfortable.  But I regret Caledon.  A— will showyou my account of my beautiful journey back.  Worcester is afairy-land; and then to catch tortoises walking about, and to see‘baviāans’, and snakes and secretary birdseating them! and then people have the impudence to think I musthave been ‘very dull!’  Sie merken’snicht, that it is theywho are dull.

Dear Dr. Hawtrey! he must have died just as I was packing upthe first Caffre Testament for him!  I felt his death verymuch, in connexion with my father; their regard for each otherwas an honour to both.  I have the letter he wrote me onJ—’s marriage, and a charming one it is.

I took Mrs. A— a drive in a Hansom cab to-day out toWynberg, to see my friends Captain and Mrs. T—, who have acottage under Table Mountain in a spot like the best of St.George’s Hill.  Very dull too; but as she is really alady, it suits her, and Capetown does not.  I was to havestayed with them, but Wynberg is cold at night.  PoorB—’s wife is very ill and won’t leave Capetownfor a day.  The people here are wunderlichforthat.  A lady born here, and with 7,000l.a year, hasnever been further than Stellenbosch, about twenty miles.  Iam asked how I lived and what I ate during my little excursion,as if I had been to Lake Ngami.  If only I had known howeasy it all is, I would have gone by sea to East London and seenthe Knysna and George district, and the primæval Africanforest, the yellow wood, and other giant trees.  However,‘For what I have received,’ &c., &c.  Noone can conceive what it is, after two years of prison and utterlanguor, to stand on the top of a mountain pass, and enjoyphysical existence for a few hours at a time.  I felt as ifit was quite selfish to enjoy anything so much when you were allso anxious about me at home; but as that is the best symptom ofall, I do not repent.

S— has been an excellent travelling servant, and reallya better companion than many more educated people; for she isalways amused and curious, and is friendly with the colouredpeople.  She is quite recovered.  It is a wonderfulclimate—sans que celà paraisse.  Itfeels chilly and it blows horridly, and does not seem genial, butit gives new life.

To-morrow I am going with old Abdool Jemaalee to prayers atthe Mosque, and shall see a school kept by a Malay priest. It is now Ramadan, and my Muslim friends are very thin and lookglum.  Choslullah sent a message to ask, ‘Might he seethe Missis once more?  He should pray all the time she wason the sea.’  Some pious Christians here would expectsuch horrors to sink the ship.  I can’t think whyMussulmans are always gentlemen; the Malay coolies have a gravecourtesy which contrasts most strikingly with both Europeanvulgarity and negro jollity.  It is very curious, for theyonly speak Dutch, and know nothing of oriental manners.  Ifear I shall not see the Walkers again.  Simon’s Bayis too far to go and come in a day, as one cannot go out beforeten or eleven, and must be in by five or half-past.  Thosehours are gloriously bright and hot, but morning and night arecold.

I am so happy in the thought of sailing now so very soon andseeing you all again, that I can settle to nothing for fiveminutes.  I now feel how anxious and uneasy I have been, andhow I shall rejoice to get home.  I shall leave a letter forA—, to go in April, and tell him and you what ship I amin.  I shall choose the slowest, so as not to reachEngland and face the Channel before June, if possible.  Sodon’t be alarmed if I do not arrive till late inJune.  Till then good-bye, and God bless you, dearestmother—Auf frohes Wiedersehn.

p.136LETTER XII

Capetown, Sunday, March 23d.

It has been a realhot day,and threatened an earthquake and a thunderstorm; but nothing hascome of it beyond sheet lightning to-night, which is splendidover the bay, and looks as if repeated in a grand bush-fire onthe hills opposite.  The sunset was glorious.  Thatrarest of insects, the praying mantis, has just dropped upon mypaper.  I am thankful that, not being an entomologist, I amdispensed from the sacred duty of impaling the lovely greencreature who sits there, looking quite wise and human. Fussy little brown beetles, as big as two lady-birds, keep flyinginto my eyes, and the musquitoes are rejoicing loudly in theprospect of a feast.  You will understand by this that bothwindows are wide open into the great verandah,—very unusualin this land of cold nights.

April4th.—I have been trying in vain toget a passage home.  The Camperdownhas notcome.  In short, I am waiting for a chance vessel, and shallpack up now and be ready to go on board at a day’snotice.

I went on the last evening of Ramadan to the Mosque, havingheard there was a grand ‘function’; but there wereonly little boys lying about on the floor, some on theirstomachs, some on their backs, higgledy-piggledy (if it be notprofane to apply the phrase to young Islam), all shouting theirprayers à tue tête.  Priests, men,women, and English crowded in and out in the exteriordivision.  The English behaved àl’Anglaise—pushed each other, laughed, sneered,and made a disgusting display of themselves.  I asked astately priest, in a red turban, to explain the affair to me, andin a few minutes found myself supplied by one Mollah with achair, and by another with a cup of tea—was, in short, inthe midst of a Malay soirée.  They spokeEnglish very little, but made up for it by their usual goodbreeding and intelligence.  On Monday, I am going to see theschool which the priest keeps at his house, and to ‘honourhis house by my presence’.  The delight they show atany friendly interest taken in them is wonderful.  Ofcourse, I am supposed to be poisoned.  A clergyman’swidow here gravely asserts that her husband went mad threeyearsafter drinking a cup of coffee handed to him by aMalay!—and in consequence of drinking it!  It isexactly like the mediæval feeling about the Jews.  Isaw that it was quite a demonstrationthat I drank up thetea unhesitatingly.  Considering that the Malays drank itthemselves, my courage deserves less admiration.  But it wasa quaint sensation to sit in a Mosque, behaving as if at anevening party, in a little circle of poor Moslim priests.

I am going to have a photograph of my cart done.  I wasto have gone to the place to-day, but when Choslullah (whom Isent for to complete the picture) found out what I wanted, heimplored me to put it off till Monday, that he might be betterdressed, and was so unhappy at the notion of being immortalizedin an old jacket, that I agreed to the delay.  Such ahandsome fellow may be allowed a little vanity.

The colony is torn with dissensions as to Sunday trains. Some of the Dutch clergy are even more absurd than our own onthat point.  A certain Van der Lingen, at Stellenbosch,calls Europe ‘one vast Sodom’, and so forth. There is altogether a nice kettle of religious hatred brewinghere.  The English Bishop of Capetown appoints all theEnglish clergy, and is absolute monarch of all he surveys; and heand his clergy are carrying matters with a high hand.  TheBishop’s chaplain told Mrs. J— that she could nothope for salvation in the Dutch Church, since her clergy were notordained by any bishop, and therefore they could only administerthe sacrament ‘unto damnation’.  All thephysicians in a body, English as well as Dutch, have withdrawnfrom the Dispensary, because it was used as a means of pressureto draw the coloured people from the Dutch to the EnglishChurch.

This High-Church tyranny cannot go on long.  Catholicsthere are few, but their bishop plays the same game; and it is alosing one.  The Irish maid at the Caledon inn was driven byher bishop to be married at the Lutheran church, just as a youngEnglishman I know (though a fervent Puseyite) was driven to bemarried at the Scotch kirk.  The colonial bishops aredespots in their own churches, and there is no escape from theirtyranny but by dissent.  The Admiral and his family havebeen anathematized for going to a fancy bazaar given by theWesleyans for their chapel.

April8th.—Yesterday, I failed about mycart photograph.  First, the owner had sent away the cart,and when Choslullah came dressed in all his best clothes, with alovely blue handkerchief setting off his beautiful orange-tawnyface, he had to rush off to try to borrow another cart.  Asill luck would have it, he met a ‘serious young man’,with no front teeth, and a hideous wen on his eyebrow, whoinformed the priest of Choslullah’s impious purpose, andcame with him to see that he did notsit for hisportrait.  I believe it was half envy; for my handsomedriver was as pleased, and then as disappointed, as a young ladyabout her first ball, and obviously had no religious scruples ofhis own on the subject.  The weather is very delightfulnow—hot, but beautiful; and the south-easters, thoughviolent, are short, and not cold.  As in all othercountries, autumn is the best time of year.

April15th.—Your letters arrivedyesterday, to my great delight.  I have been worrying abouta ship, and was very near sailing to-day by the Queen of theSouthat twenty-four hours’ notice, but I have resolvedto wait for the Camperdown.  The Queen of theSouthis a steamer,—which is odious, for they pitch thecoal all over the lower deck, so that you breathe coal-dust forthe first ten days; then she was crammed—only one cabinvacant, and that small, and on the lower deck—and fifty-twochildren on board.  Moreover, she will probably get toEngland too soon, so I resign myself to wait.  TheCamperdownhas only upper-deck cabins, and I shall havefresh air.  I am not as well as I was at Caledon, so I amall the more anxious to have a voyage likely to do me goodinstead of harm.

I got my cart and Choslullah photographed after all. Choslullah came next day (having got rid of his pious friend),quite resolved that ‘the Missis’ should take hisportrait, so I will send or bring a few copies of my belovedcart.  After the photograph was done, we drove round theKloof, between Table and Lion Mountain.  The road is cut onthe side of Lion Mountain, and overhangs the sea at a greatheight.  Camp Bay, which lies on the further side of the‘Lion’s Head’, is most lovely; never was sea sodeeply blue, rocks so warmly brown, or sand and foam soglittering white; and down at the mountain-foot the bright greenof the orange and pomegranate trees throws it all out in greaterrelief.  But the atmosphere here won’t do after thatof the ‘Ruggings’, as the Caledon line of country iscalled.  I shall never lose the impression of the view I hadwhen Dr. Morkel drove me out on a hill-side, where the viewseemed endless and without a vestige of life; and yet in everyvalley there were farms; but it looked a vast, utter solitude,and without the least haze.  You don’t know what thatutter clearness means—the distinctness is quiteawful.  Here it is always slightly hazy; very pretty andwarm, but it takes off from the grandeur.  It is thedifference between a pretty Pompadour beauty and a Greekstatue.  Those pale opal mountains, as distinct in everydetail as the map on your table, are so cheerful and serene; nomelodramatic effects of clouds and gloom.  I suppose it isnot really so beautiful as it seemed to me, for other people sayit is bare and desolate, and certainly it is; but it seemed to meanything but dreary.

I am persuaded that Capetown is not healthy; indeed, the towncan’t be, from its stench and dirt; but I believe the wholeseashore is more or less bad, compared to the upper plateaux, ofwhich I know only the first.  I should have gone back toPaarl, only that ships come and go within twenty-four hours, soone has the pleasure of living in constant expectation, withpacked trunks, wondering when one shall get away.  A cleverMr. M—, who has lived all overIndia, and is goingback to Singapore, with his wife and child, are now in the house;and some very pleasant Jews, bound for BritishCaffraria—one of them has a lovely little wife and threechildren.  She is very full of Prince Albert’s death,and says there was not a dry eye in the synagogues in London,which were all hung with black on the day of his funeral, andprayer went on the whole day.  ‘The peoplemourned for him as much as for Hezekiah; and, indeed, he deservedit a great deal better,’ was her rather unorthodoxconclusion.  These colonial Jews are a new‘Erscheinung’ to me.  They have the features oftheir race, but many of their peculiarities are gone.  Mr.L—, who is very handsome and gentlemanly, eats ham andpatronises a good breed of pigs on the ‘model farm’on which he spends his money.  He is (he says) a thoroughJew in faith, and evidently in charitable works; but he wants tosay his prayers in English and not to ‘dress himselfup’ in a veil and phylacteries for the purpose; and he andhis wife talk of England as ‘home’, and care as muchfor Jerusalem as their neighbours.  They have not forgottenthe old persecutions, and are civil to the coloured people, andspeak of them in quite a different tone from other Englishcolonists.  Moreover, they are far better mannered, and more‘human’, in the German sense of the word, inall respects;—in short, less ‘colonial’.

I have bought some Cape ‘confeyt’; apricots,salted and then sugared, called‘mebos’—delicious!  Also pickled peaches,‘chistnee’, and quince jelly.  I have a notionof some Cherupiga wine for ourselves.  I will inquire thecost of bottling, packing, &c.; it is about one shilling andfourpence a bottle here, sweet red wine, unlike any other I everdrank, and I think very good.  It is very tempting to bringa few things so unknown in England.  I have a glorious‘Velcombers’ for you, a blanket of nine Damarasheepskins, sewn by the Damaras, and dressed so that moths andfleas won’t stay near them.  It will make a grandrailway rug and ‘outside car’ covering.  Thehunters use them for sleeping out of doors.  I have boughtthree, and a springbok caross for somebody.

April17th.—The winter has set into-day.  It rains steadily, at the rate of the heaviest bitof the heaviest shower in England, and is as cold as a bad dayearly in September.  One can just sit without a fire. Presently, all will be green and gay; for winter is here theseason of flowers, and the heaths will cover the country with avast Turkey carpet.  Already the green is appearing whereall was brown yesterday.  To-day is Good Friday; and ifChristmas seemed odd at Midsummer, Easter in autumn seemspositively unnatural.  Our Jewish party made their exodusto-day, by the little coasting steamer, to Algoa Bay.  Irather condoled with the pretty little woman about her long roughjourney, with three babies; but she laughed, and said they hadhad time to get used to it ever since the days of Moses. All she grieved over was not being able to keep Passover, and shedescribed their domestic ceremonies quite poetically.  Weheard from our former housemaid, Annie, the other day, announcingher marriage and her sister’s.  She wrote such apretty, merry letter to S—, saying ‘the more shetried not to like him, the better she loved him, and had to say,“Aha, Annie, you’re caught atlast.”’  A year and a half is a long time toremain single in this country.

Monday, April21st, EasterMonday.—The mail goes out in an hour, so I will justadd, good-bye.  The winter is now fairly set in, and I longto be off.  I fear I shall have a desperately cold week orso at first sailing, till we catch the south-east trades. This weather is beautiful in itself, but I feel it from thesuddenness of the change.  We passed in one night from hotsummer to winter, which is like fineEnglish April, orOctober, only brighter than anything in Europe.  There isproperly, no autumn or spring here; only hot, dry, brown summer,with its cold wind at times, and fresh green winter, allfragrance and flowers, and much less wind.  Mr. M—, ofwhom I told you, has been in every corner of the farEast—Java, Sumatra, everywhere—and is extremelyamusing.  He has brought his wife here for her health, andis as glad to talk as I am.  The conversation of aneducated, clever person, is quite a new and delightful sensationto me now.  He appears to have held high posts under theEast India Company, is learned in Oriental languages, and waslast resident at Singapore.  He says that no doubt Java isParadise, it is so lovely, and such a climate; but he does notlook as if it had agreed with him.  I feel quite heart-sickat seeing these letters go off before me, instead of leaving thembehind, as I had hoped.

Well, I must say good-bye—or rather, ‘aufWiedersehn’—and God knows how glad I shall bewhen that day comes!

p.147LETTER XIII

Capetown, April 19th.

Dearest Mother,

Here I am, waiting for a ship; the steamer was too horrid: andI look so much to the good to be gained by the voyage that I didnot like to throw away the chance of two months at sea at thisfavourable time of year, and under favourable circumstances; so Imade up my mind to see you all a month later.  The sea justoff the Cape is very, very cold; less so now than in spring, Idare say.  The weather to-day is just like verywarmApril at home—showery, sunshiny, and fragrant; mostlovely.  It is so odd to see an autumn without dead leaves:only the oaks lose theirs, the old ones drop without turningbrown, and the trees bud again at once.  The rest put on adarker green dress for winter, and now the flowers willbegin.  I have got a picture for you of my ‘cart andfour’, with sedate Choslullah and dear littleMohammed.  The former wants to go with me,‘anywhere’, as he placidly said, ‘to be themissis’ servant’.  What a sensation histhatchlike hat and handsome orange-tawny face would make atEsher!  Such a stalwart henchman would be verycreditable.  I shall grieve to think I shall never see myMalay friends again; they are the only people here who are reallyinteresting.  I think they must be like the Turks in manner,as they have all the eastern gentlemanly‘Gelassenheit’ (ease) and politeness, and no eastern‘Geschmeidigkeit’ (obsequiousness), and no idea ofBaksheesh; withal frugal, industrious, and money-making, to anastonishing degree.  The priest is a bit of a proselytiser,and amused me much with an account of how he had convertedEnglish girls from their evil courses and made them goodMussulwomen.  I never heard a naïfandsincere account of conversions fromChristianity before,and I must own it was much milder than the Exeter Hall style.

I have heard a great many expressions of sorrow for the Queenfrom the Malays, and always with the ‘hope the people willtake much care of her, now she is alone’.  Of coursePrince Albert was only the Queen’s husband to them, and alltheir feeling is about her.  It is very difficult to seeanything of them, for they want nothing of you, and expectnothing but dislike and contempt.  It would take a long timeto make many friends, as they are naturally distrustful.  Ifound that eating or drinking anything, if they offer it, mademost way, as they know they are accused of poisoning allChristians indiscriminately.  Of course, therefore, they areshy of offering things.  I drank tea in the Mosque at theend of Ramadan, and was surrounded by delighted faces as Isipped.  The little boy who waits in this house here hadfollowed us, and was horrified: he is still waiting to see thepoison work.

No one can conceive what has become of all the ships thatusually touch here about this time.  I was promised mychoice of Green’s and Smith’s, and now only the heavyold Camperdownis expected with rice from Moulmein. A lady now here, who has been Heaven only knows where not,praises Alexandria above all other places, after Suez.  Herlungs are bad, and she swears by Suez, which she says is thedreariest and healthiest (for lungs) place in the world. You can’t think how soon one learns to ‘annihilatespace’, if not time, in one’s thoughts, by dailyreading advertisements for every port in India, America,Australia, &c., &c., and conversing with people who havejust come from the ‘ends of the earth’. Meanwhile, I fear I shall have to fly from next winter again, andcertainly will go with J— to Egypt, which seems to me likenext door.

I have run on, and not thanked you for your letter and M.Mignet’s beautiful élogeof Mr. Hallam, whichpleased me greatly.  I wish Englishmen could learn to speakwith the same good taste and mésure.

Mr. Wodehouse, who has been very civil to me, kindly tried toget me a passage home in a French frigate lying here, but invain.  I am now sorry I let the Jack tars here persuade menot to go in the little barque; but they talked so much of theheat and damp of such tiny cabins in an iron vessel, that I gaveher up, though I liked the idea of a good tossing in such a tinycockboat.  I will leave a letter for the May mail, unless Isail within a week of to-morrow, or go by the Jason, whichwould be home far sooner than the mail.  I only hope you andA— won’t be uneasy; the worst that can happen isdelay, and the long voyage will be all gain to health, whichwould not be the case in a steamer.

All I hear of R— makes me wild to see her again. The little darkies are the only pleasing children here, and a fatblack toddling thing is ‘allerliebst’.  I know aboy of four, literally jet black, whom I long to steal as hefollows his mother up to the mountain to wash.  LittleMalays are lovely, but toowell-behaved and quiet.  Itried to get a real ‘tottie’, or‘Hotentotje’, but the people were too drunk toremember where they had left their child.  C’estassez dire, that I should have had no scruple in buying itfor a bottle of ‘smoke’ (the spirit made from grapehusks).  They are clever and affectionate when they have achance, poor things,—and so strange to look at.

By the bye, a Bonn man, Dr. Bleek, called here with‘Grüsse’ from our old friends, ProfessorMendelssohn and his wife.  He is devoting himself toHottentot and aboriginal literature!—and has actuallymastered the Caffre click, which I vainly practised underKleenboy’s tuition.  He wanted to teach me to say‘Tkorkha’, which means ‘you lie’, or‘you have missed’ (in shooting or throwing a stone,&c.)—a curious combination of meanings.  He taughtme to throw stones or a stick at him, which he always avoided,however close they fell, and cried ‘Tkorkha!’ The Caffres ask for a present, ‘Tkzeelah Tabak’,‘a gift for tobacco’.

The Farnese Hercules is a living truth.  I saw himin the street two days ago, and he was a Caffre coolie.  Theproportions of the head and throat were more wonderful in flesh,or muscle rather, than in marble.  I know a Caffre girl ofthirteen, who is a noble model of strength and beauty; such anarm—larger than any white woman’s—with such adimple in her elbow, and a wrist and hand which no glove is smallenough to fit—and a noble countenance too.  She is‘apprenticed’, a name for temporary slavery, and ishighly spoken of as a servant, as the Caffres always are. They are a majestic race, but with just the stupid conceit of acertain sort of Englishmen; the women and girls seemcharming.

Easter Sunday.—The weather continues beautifullyclear and bright, like the finest European spring.  It seemsso strange for the floral season to be the winter.  But asthe wind blows the air is quite cold to-day; nevertheless, I feelmuch better the last two days.  The brewing of the rain madethe air very oppressive and heavy for three weeks, but now it isas light as possible.

I must say good-bye, as the mail closes to-morrowmorning.  Easter in autumn is preposterous, only the autumnlooks like spring.  The consumptive young girl whom I packedoff to the Cape, and her sister, are about to be married—ofcourse.  Annie has had a touch of Algoa Bay fever, a mildkind of ague, but no sign of chest disease, or evendelicacy.  My ‘hurrying her off’, which somepeople thought so cruel, has saved her.  Whoever comessoon enoughrecovers, but for people far gone it is toobracing.

p.153LETTER XIV

Capetown, Saturday, May 3d.

Dearest Mother,

After five weeks of waiting and worry, I have, at last, sentmy goods on board the ship Camperdown, now discharging hercargo, and about to take a small party of passengers from theCape.  I offered to take a cabin in a Swedish ship, boundfor Falmouth; but the captain could not decide whether he wouldtake a passenger; and while he hesitated the oldCamperdowncame in.  I have the best cabin after thestern cabins, which are occupied by the captain and his wife andthe Attorney-General of Capetown, who is much liked.  Theother passengers are quiet people, and few of them, and thecaptain has a high character; so I may hope for a comfortable,though slow passage.  I will let you know the day I sail,and leave this letter to go by post.  I may be looked forthree weeks or so after this letter.  I am crazy to get homenow; after the period was over for which I had made up my mind,home-sickness began.

Mrs. R— has offered me a darling tiny monkey, whichloves me; but I fear A— would send me away again if Ireturned with her in my pocket.  Nassirah, oldAbdool’s pretty granddaughter, brought me a pair of Malayshoes or clogs as a parting gift, to-day.  Mr. M—, theresident at Singapore, tells me that his secretary’s wife,a Malay lady, has made an excellent translation of the ArabianNights, from Arabic into Malay.  Her husband is anIndian Mussulman, who, Mr. M— said, was one of the ablestmen he ever knew.  Curious!

I sat, yesterday, for an hour, in the stall of a poor Germanbasket-maker who had been long in Caffre-land.  His wife, aBerlinerin, was very intelligent, and her account of her lifehere most entertaining, as showing the different Ansichtnatural to Germans.  ‘I had never’, she said,‘been out of the city of Berlin, and knewnothing.’  (Compare with London cockney, orgenuine Parisian.)  Thence her fear, on landing at Algoa Bayand seeing swarms of naked black men, that she had come to acountry where no clothes were to be had; and what should she dowhen hers were worn out?  They had a grant of land at FortPeddie, and she dug while her husband made baskets of cane, andcarried them hundreds of miles for sale; sleeping and eating inCaffre huts.  ‘Yes, they are good, honest people, andvery well-bred (anständig), though they go as nakedas God made them.  The girls are pretty and very delicate(fein), and they think no harm of it, the dearinnocents.’  If their cattle strayed, it was alwaysbrought back; and they received every sort of kindness. ‘Yes, madam, it is shocking how people here treat theblacks.  They call quite an old man ‘Boy’, andspeak so scornfully, and yet the blacks have very nice manners, Iassure you.’  When I looked at the poor littlewizened, pale, sickly Berliner, and fancied him a guest in aCaffre hut, it seemed an odd picture.  But he spoke ascoolly of his long, lonely journeys as possible, and seemed tothink black friends quite as good as white ones.  The use ofthe words anständigand feinby a woman whospoke very good German were characteristic.  She couldrecognise an ‘Anständigkeit’ notof Berlin.  I need not say that the Germans are generallyliked by the coloured people.  Choslullah was astonished andPleased at my talking German; he evidently had a preference forGermans, and put up, wherever he could, at German inns and‘publics’.

I went on to bid Mrs. Wodehouse good-bye.  We talked ofour dear old Cornish friends.  The Governor and Mrs.Wodehouse have been very kind to me.  I dined there twice;last time, with all the dear good Walkers.  I missed seeingthe opening of the colonial parliament by a mistake about aticket, which I am sorry for.

If I could have dreamed of waiting here so long, I would haverun up to Algoa Bay or East London by sea, and had a glimpse ofCaffreland.  Capetown makes me very languid—there issomething depressing in the air—but my cough is muchbetter.  I can’t walk here without feeling knocked-up;and cab-hire is so dear; and somehow, nothing is worth while,when one is waiting from day to day.  So I have spent moremoney than when I was most amused, in being bored.

Mr. J— drove me to the Capetown races, at Green Point,on Friday.  As races, they were nichts, but aqueer-looking little Cape farmer’s horse, ridden by aHottentot, beat the English crack racer, ridden by a first-rateEnglish jockey, in an unaccountable way, twice over.  TheMalays are passionately fond of horse-racing, and the crowd wasfully half Malay: there were dozens of carts crowded with thebright-eyed women, in petticoats of every most brilliant colour,white muslin jackets, and gold daggers in their great coils ofshining black hair.  All most ‘anständig’,as they always are.  Their pleasure is driving about enfamille; the men have no separate amusements.  Everyspare corner in the cart is filled by the little soft round facesof the intelligent-looking quiet children, who seem amused andhappy, and never make a noise or have the fidgets.  I cannotmake out why they are so well behaved.  It favoursA—’s theory of the expediency of utter spoiling, forone never hears any educational process going on.  TinyMohammed never spoke but when he was spoken to, and was alwayshappy and alert.  I observed that his uncle spoke to himlike a grown man, and never ordered him about, or rebuked him inthe least.  I like to go up the hill and meet the blackwomen coming home in troops from the washing place, most of themwith a fat black baby hanging to their backs asleep, and a fewrather older trotting alongside, and if small, holding on by themother’s gown.  She, poor soul, carries a bundle onher head, which few men could lift.  If I admire the babies,the poor women are enchanted;—du reste, if you lookat blacks of any age or sex, they mustgrin and nod, as agood-natured dog must wag his tail; they can’t helpit.  The blacks here (except a very few Caffres) are fromthe Mozambique—a short, thick-set, ugly race, with wool inhuge masses; but here and there one sees a very pretty face amongthe women.  The men are beyond belief hideous.  Thereare all possible crosses—Dutch, Mozambique, Hottentot andEnglish, ‘alles durcheinander’; then here and thereyou see that a Chinese or a Bengalee a passé parlà.  The Malays are also a mixed race, like theTurks—i.e. they marry women of all sorts and colours,provided they will embrace Islam.  A very nice old fellowwho waits here occasionally is married to an Englishwoman,ci-devantlady’s-maid to a Governor’swife.  I fancy, too, they brought some Chinese blood withthem from Java.  I think the population of Capetown must bethe most motley crew in the world.

Thursday, May 8th.—I sail on Saturday, andgo on board to-morrow, so as not to be hurried off in the earlyfog.  How glad I am to be ‘homeward bound’ atlast, I cannot say.  I am very well, and have every prospectof a pleasant voyage.  We are sure to be well found, as theAttorney-General is on board, and is a very great man,‘inspiring terror and respect’ here.

S— says we certainly shallput in at St. Helena,so make up your minds not to see me till I don’t knowwhen.  She has been on board fitting up the cabinto-day.  I have sucha rug for J—! a mosaic ofskins as fine as marqueterie, done by Damara women, and reallybeautiful; and a sheep-skin blanket for you, the essence ofwarmth and softness.  I shall sleep in mine, and dream ofAfrican hill-sides wrapt in a ‘Veld combas’. The poor little water-tortoises have been killed by drought, andI can’t get any, but I have the two of my own catching forM—.

Good-bye, dearest mother.

You would have been moved by poor old Abdool Jemaalee’ssolemn benediction when I took leave to-day.  He accompaniedit with a gross of oranges and lemons.

p.160LETTER XV

Capetown, Thursday, May 8th.

At last, after no end of‘casus’ and ‘discrimina rerum’, I shallsail on Saturday the 10th, per ship Camperdown, for EastIndia Docks.

These weary six weeks have cost no end of money andtemper.  I have been eating my heart out at the delay, butit was utterly impossible to go by any of the Indian ships. They say there have never been so few ships sailing from the Capeas this year, yet crowds were expected on account of theExhibition.  The Attorney-General goes by our ship, so weare sure of good usage; and I hear he is very agreeable.  Ihave the best cabin next to the stern cabin, in both senses ofnext.  S— has come back from the ship, whereshe has spent the day with the carpenter; and I am to go on boardto-morrow.  Will you ask R— to cause inquiries to bemade among the Mollahs of Cairo for a Hadji, by name AbdoolRachman, the son of Abdool Jemaalee, of Capetown, and, ifpossible, to get the inclosed letter sent him?  The poorpeople are in sad anxiety for their son, of whom they have notheard for four months, and that from an old letter.  Henrywill thus have a part of all the blessings which were solemnlyinvoked on me by poor old Abdool, who is getting very infirm, buttoddled up and cracked his old fingers over my head, and invokedthe protection of Allah with all form; besides that Betsy sent metwelve dozen oranges and lemons.  Abdool Rachman is abouttwenty-six, a Malay of Capetown, speaks Dutch and English, and issupposed to be studying theology at Cairo.  The letter iswritten by the prettiest Malay girl in Capetown.

I won’t enter upon my longings to be home again, and tosee you all.  I must now see to my last commissions andthings, and send this to go by next mail.

God bless you all, and kiss my darlings, all three.

p.162LETTER XVI

Friday, May 16th.
On board the good ship Camperdown,
500 miles North-west of Table-Bay.

I embarked this day week, and founda good airy cabin, and all very comfortable.  Next day I gotthe carpenter’s services, by being on board before all therest, and relashed and cleeted everything, which the‘Timmerman’, of course, had left so as to get adriftthe first breeze.  At two o’clock theAttorney-General, Mr. Porter, came on board, escorted by bands ofmusic and all the volunteers of Capetown, quorum pars maximafuit; i.e. Colonel.  It was quite what the Yankees callan ‘ovation’.  The ship was all decked withflags, and altogether there was le diable àquatre.  The consequence was, that three signals wentadrift in the scuffle; and when a Frenchman signalled us, we hadto pass for brutaux Anglais, because we could notreply.  I found means to supply the deficiency by the liningof that very ancient anonymous cloak, which did the red, while abandanna handkerchief of the Captain’s furnished theyellow, to the sailmaker’s immense amusement.  On himI bestowed the blue outside of the cloak for a pair of dungareetrowsers, and in signalling now it is, ‘up go 2.41, and mylady’s cloak, which is 7.’

We have had lovely weather, and on Sunday such a gloriousfarewell sight of Table Mountain and my dear old Hottentot Hills,and of Kaap Goed Hoop itself.  There was little enough windtill yesterday, when a fair southerly breeze sprang up, and weare rolling along merrily; and the fat old Camperdown doesroll like an honest old ‘wholesome’ tub as sheis.  It is quite a bonne fortunefor me to have beenforced to wait for her, for we have had a wonderful spell of fineweather, and the ship is the ne plus ultraofcomfort.  We are only twelve first-class upper-deckpassengers.  The captain is a delightful fellow, with a verycharming young wife.  There is only one child (a greatcomfort), a capital cook, and universal civility andquietness.  It is like a private house compared to a railwayhotel.  Six of the passengers are invalids, more orless.  Mr. Porter, over-worked, going home for health toIreland; two men, both with delicate chests, and one poor youngfellow from Capetown in a consumption, who, I fear, will notoutlive the voyage.  The doctor is very civil, and very kindto the sick; but I stick to the cook, and am quite greedy overthe good fare, after the atrocious food of the Cape.  Saidcook is a Portuguese, a distinguished artist, and a greatbird-fancier.  One can wander all over the ship here,instead of being a prisoner on the poop; and I even have paid myfooting on the forecastle.  S— clambers up like alively youngster.  You may fancy what the weather is, that Ihave only closed my cabin-window once during half of a very dampnight; but no one else is so airy.  The little goat was asrejoiced to be afloat again as her mistress, and is a regular peton board, with the run of the quarter-deck.  She still givesmilk—a perfect Amalthæa.  The butcher, who hasthe care of her, cockers her up with dainties, and she begsbiscuit of the cook.  I pay nothing for her fare. M—’s tortoises are in my cabin, and seem veryhappy.  Poor Mr. Porter is very sick, and so are the two orthree coloured passengers, who won’t ‘make aneffort’ at all.  Mrs. H— (the captain’swife), a young Cape lady, and I are the only ‘femaleladies’ of the party.  The other day we saw a shoal ofporpoises, amounting to many hundreds, if not some thousands, whocame frisking round the ship.  When we first saw them theylooked like a line of breakers; they made such a splash, and theyjumped right out of the water three feet in height, and ten ortwelve in distance, glittering green and bronze in the sun. Such a pretty, merry set of fellows!

We shall touch at St. Helena, where I shall leave this letterto go by the mail steamer, that you may know a few weeks before Iarrive how comfortably my voyage has begun.

We see no Cape pigeons; they only visit outward ships—isnot that strange?—but, en revanche, many morealbatrosses than in coming; and we also enjoy the advantage ofseeing all the homeward-bound ships, as they all passus—a humiliating fact.  The captain laughed heartilybecause I said, ‘Oh, all right; I shall have the more seafor my money’,—when the prospect of a slow voyage wasdiscussed.  It is very provoking to be so much longerseparated from you all than I had hoped, but I really believethat the bad air and discomfort of the other ships would havedone me serious injury; while here I have every chance ofbenefiting to the utmost, and having mild weather the whole way,besides the utmost amount of comfort possible on boardship.  There are some cockroaches, indeed, but that is theonly drawback.  The Camperdownis fourteen years old,and was the crack ship to India in her day.  Now she takescargo and poop-passengers only, and, of course, only getsinvalids and people who care more for comfort than speed.

Monday Evening, May 26th.—Here we are,working away still to reach St. Helena.  We got the tail ofa terrific gale and a tremendous sea all night in our teeth,which broke up the south-east trades for a week.  Now it isall smooth and fair, with a light breeze again right aft; the oldtrade again.  Yesterday a large shark paid us a visit, withhis suite of three pretty little pilot-fish, striped like zebras,who swam just over his back.  He tried on a sailor’scap which fell overboard, tossed it away contemptuously, snuffedat the fat pork with which a hook was baited, and would none ofit, and finally ate the fresh sheep-skin which the butcher had intow to clean it, previous to putting it away as aperquisite.  It is a beautiful fish in shape and verygraceful in motion.

To-day a barque from Algoa Bay came close to us, and talkedwith the speaking trumpet.  She was a pretty, clipper-built,sharp-looking craft, but had made a slower run even thanourselves.  I dare say we shall have her company for a longtime, as she is bound for St. Helena and London.  My poorgoat died suddenly the other day, to the general grief of theship; also one of the tortoises.  The poor consumptive ladis wonderfully better.  But all the passengers were verysick during the rough weather, except S— and I, who arequite old salts.  Last week we saw a young whale, a baby,about thirty feet long, and had a good view of him as he playedround the ship.  We shall probably be at St. Helena onWednesday, but I cannot write from thence, as, if there is time,I shall get a run on shore while the ship takes in water. But this letter will tell you of my well-being so far, and inabout six weeks after the date of it I hope to be with you. I hope you won’t expect too much in the way of improvementin my health.  I look forward, oh, so eagerly, to be withyou again, and with my brats, big and little.  God bless youall.

Yours ever,
L. D. G.

Wednesday, 28th.—Early morning, off St.Helena, James Town.

Such a lovely unrealview of the bold rocks andbaby-house forts on them!  Ship close in.  Washer-womancome on board, and all hurry.

Au revoir.

FOOTNOTES

[27]  A lane near Esher.

[30]  Near Walton-on-Thames.

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