Yesterday was a real African summer's day. The D-s had a tent and an awning, one for food and the other for drink, on the ground where the shooting took place. At twelve o'clock Mrs. D- went down to sell cold chickens, &c., and I went with her, and sat under a tree in the bed of the little stream, now nearly dry. The sun was such as in any other climate would strike you down, but here coup de soleil is unknown. It broils you till your shoulders ache and your lips crack, but it does not make you feel the least languid, and you perspire very little; nor does it tan the skin as you would expect. The light of the sun is by no means 'golden'—it is pure white—and the slightest shade of a tree or bush affords a delicious temperature, so light and fresh is the air. They said the thermometer was at about 130 degrees 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 came in to shoot, and did but moderately, I thought. The longest range was five hundred yards, and at that they shot well; at shorter ranges, poorly enough. The best man made ten points. But oh! what figures were there of negroes and coloured people! I longed for a photographer. Some coloured lads were exquisitely graceful, and composed beautiful tableaux vivants, after Murillo's beggar-boys.

A poor little, very old Bosjesman crept up, and was jeered and bullied. I scolded the lad who abused him for being rude to an old man, whereupon the poor little old creature squatted on the ground close by (for which he would have been kicked but for me), took off his ragged hat, and sat staring and nodding his small grey woolly head at me, and jabbering some little soliloquy very sotto voce. There was something shocking in the timidity with which he took the plate of food I gave him, and in the way in which he ate it, with the WRONG side of his little yellow hand, like a monkey. A black, who had helped to fetch the hamper, suggested to me to give him wine instead of meat and bread, and make him drunk FOR FUN (the blacks and Hottentots copy the white man's manners TO THEM, when they get hold of a Bosjesman to practise upon); but upon this a handsome West Indian black, who had been cooking pies, fired up, and told him he was a 'nasty black rascal, and a Dutchman to boot', to insult a lady and an old man at once. If you could see the difference between one negro and another, you would be quite convinced that education (i.e. circumstances) makes the race. It was hardly conceivable that the hideous, dirty, bandy-legged, ragged creature, who looked down on the Bosjesman, and the well- made, smart fellow, with his fine eyes, jaunty red cap, and snow- white shirt and trousers, alert as the best German Kellner, were of the same blood; nothing but the colour was alike.

Then came a Dutchman, and asked for six penn'orth of 'brood en kaas', and haggled for beer; and Englishmen, who bought chickens and champagne without asking the price. 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 was beaten by a little red-haired Scotchman, and his fiddle smashed. The Hottentot hit at his aggressor, who then declared he HAD BEEN a policeman, and insisted on taking him into custody and to the 'Tronk' (prison) on his own authority, but was in turn sent flying by a gigantic Irishman, who 'wouldn't see the poor baste abused'. The Irishman was a farmer; I never saw such a Hercules—and beaming with fun and good nature. He was very civil, and answered my questions, and talked like an intelligent man; but when Captain D- asked him with an air of some anxiety, if he was coming to the hotel, he replied, 'No, sir, no; I wouldn't be guilty of such a misdemeanour. I am aware that I was a disgrace and opprobrium to your house, sir, last time I was there, sir. No, sir, I shall sleep in my cart, and not come into the presence of ladies.' Hereupon he departed, and I was informed that he had been drunk for seventeen days, sans desemparer, on his last visit to Caledon. However, he kept quite sober on this occasion, and amused himself by making the little blackies scramble for halfpence in the pools left in the bed of the river. Among our customers was a very 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 delight in. They are what the rough boers and Hottentots wear, buff-hide barbarously tanned and shaped, and as soft as woollen socks. 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 in Belgium, came and ordered a bottle of champagne, and shyly begged me to drink a glass, whereupon we talked of crops and the like; and an excellent specimen of a colonist he appeared: very gentle and unaffected, with homely good sense, and real good breeding—such a contrast to the pert airs and vulgarity of Capetown and of the people in (colonial) high places. Finding we had no carriage, he posted off and borrowed a cart of one man and harness of another, and put his and his son's riding horses to it, to take Mrs. D- and me home. As it was still early, he took us a 'little drive'; and oh, ye gods! what a terrific and dislocating pleasure was that! At a hard gallop, Mr. M- (with the mildest and steadiest air and with perfect safety) took us right across country. It is true there were no fences; but over bushes, ditches, lumps of rock, watercourses, we jumped, flew, and bounded, and up every hill we went racing pace. I arrived at home much bewildered, and feeling more like Burger's Lenore than anything else, till I saw Mr. M-'s steady, pleasant face quite undisturbed, and was informed that such was the way of driving of Cape farmers.

We found the luckless Jack in such a state of furious drunkenness that he had to be dismissed on the spot, not without threats of the 'Tronk', and once more Kleenboy fills the office of boots. He returned in a ludicrous state of penitence and emaciation, frankly admitting that it was better to work hard and get 'plenty grub', than to work less and get none;—still, however, protesting against work at all.

January 7th.—For the last four days it has again been blowing a wintry hurricane. Every one says that the continuance of these winds so late into the summer (this answers to July) is unheard of, and MUST cease soon. In Table Bay, I hear a good deal of mischief has been done to the shipping.

I hope my long yarns won't bore you. I put down what seems new and amusing to me at the moment, but by the time it reaches you, it will seem very dull and commonplace. I hear that the Scotchman who attacked poor Aria, the crazy Hottentot, is a 'revival lecturer', and was 'simply exhorting him to break his fiddle and come to Christ' (the phrase is a clergyman's, I beg to observe); and the saints are indignant that, after executing the pious purpose as far as the fiddle went, he was prevented by the chief constable from dragging him to the Tronk. The 'revival' mania has broken out rather violently in some places; the infection was brought from St. Helena, I am told. At Capetown, old Abdool Jemaalee told me that English Christians were getting more like Malays, and had begun to hold 'Kalifahs' at Simon's Bay. These are festivals in which Mussulman fanatics run knives into their flesh, go into convulsions, &c, to the sound of music, like the Arab described by Houdin. Of course the poor blacks go quite demented.

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

January 15th.—No mail in yet. We have had beautiful weather the last three days. Captain D- has been in Capetown, and bought a horse, which he rode home seventy-five miles in a day and a half,— the beast none the worse nor tired. I am to ride him, and so shall see the country if the vile cold winds keep off.

This morning I walked on the Veld, and met a young black shepherd leading his sheep and goats, and playing on a guitar composed of an old tin mug covered with a bit of sheepskin and a handle of rough wood, with pegs, and three strings of sheep-gut. I asked him to sing, and he flung himself at my feet in an attitude that would make Watts crazy with delight, and CROONED queer little mournful ditties. I gave him sixpence, and told him not to get drunk. He said, 'Oh no; I will buy bread enough to make my belly stiff—I almost never had my belly stiff.' He likewise informed me he had just been in the Tronk (prison), and on my asking why, replied: 'Oh, for fighting, and telling lies;' Die liebe Unschuld! (Dear innocence!)

Hottentot figs are rather nice—a green fig-shaped thing, containing about a spoonful of SALT-SWEET insipid glue, which you suck out. This does not sound nice, but it is. The plant has a thick, succulent, triangular leaf, creeping on the ground, and growing anywhere, without earth or water. Figs proper are common here, but tasteless; and the people pick all their fruit green, and eat it so too. The children are all crunching hard peaches and plums just now, particularly some little half-breeds near here, who are frightfully ugly. Fancy the children of a black woman and a red-haired man; the little monsters are as black as the mother, and have RED wool—you never saw so diabolical an appearance. 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, and quite 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 valiant little beasts, and so composed in temper, I never saw. They are nearly all bays— a few very dark grey, which are esteemed; VERY few white or light grey. I have seen no 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, seldom stabled, will carry a six-and-a-half-foot Dutchman sixty miles a day, day after day, at a shuffling easy canter, six miles an hour. You 'off saddle' every three hours, and let him roll; you also let him drink all he can get; his coat shines and his eye is bright, and unsoundness is very rare. They are never properly broke, and the soft-mouthed colts are sometimes made vicious by the cruel bits and heavy hands; but by nature 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 they drink and lounge a little; and the young ones are fetched home by their niggers, while the old stagers know they will be wanted, and saunter off by themselves. I often attend the Houyhnhnm conversazione at the tank, at about seven o'clock, and am amused by their behaviour; and I continually wish I could see Ned's face on witnessing many equine proceedings here. To see a farmer outspan and turn the team of active little beasts loose on the boundless veld to amuse themselves for an hour or two, sure that they will all be there, would astonish him a little; and then to offer a horse nothing but a roll in the dust to refresh himself withal!

One unpleasant sight here is the skeletons of horses and oxen along the roadside; or at times a fresh carcase surrounded by a convocation of huge serious-looking carrion crows, with neat white neck-cloths. The skeletons look like wrecks, and make you 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 new track is formed.

January 17th.—Lovely weather all the week. Summer well set in.



LETTER VI—CALEDON



Caledon, January 19th.

Dearest Mother,

Till this last week, the weather was pertinaciously cold and windy; and I had resolved to go to Worcester, which lies in a 'Kessel', and is really hot. But now the glorious African summer is come, and I believe this is the weather of Paradise. I got up at four this morning, when the Dutchmen who had slept here were starting in their carts and waggons. It was quite light; but the moon shone brilliantly still, and had put on a bright rose-coloured veil, borrowed from the rising sun on the opposite horizon. The freshness (without a shadow of cold or damp) of the air was indescribable—no dew was on the ground. I went up the hill-side, along the 'Sloot' (channel, which supplies all our water), into the 'Kloof' between the mountains, and clambered up to the 'Venster Klip', from which natural window the view is very fine. The flowers are all gone and the grass all dead. Rhenoster boschjes and Hottentot fig are green everywhere, and among the rocks all manner of shrubs, and far too much 'Wacht een beetje' (Wait a bit), a sort of series of natural fish-hooks, which try the robustest patience. Between seven and eight, the sun gets rather hot, and I came in and TUBBED, and sat on the stoep (a sort of terrace, in front of every house in South Africa). I breakfast at nine, sit on the stoep again till the sun comes round, and then retreat behind closed shutters from the stinging sun. The AIR is fresh and light all day, though the sun is tremendous; but one has no languid feeling or desire to lie about, 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 to go out in the afternoon breeze. The nights are cool, so as always to want one blanket. I still have a cough; but it is getting better, so that I can always eat and walk. Mine host has just bought a horse, which he is going to try with a petticoat to-day, and if he goes well I shall ride.

I like this inn-life, because I see all the 'neighbourhood'— farmers and traders—whom I like far better than the GENTILITY of Capetown. I have given letters to England to a 'boer', who is 'going home', i.e. to Europe, the FIRST OF HIS RACE SINCE THE REVOCATION OF THE EDICT OF NANTES, when some poor refugees were inveigled hither by the Dutch Governor, and oppressed worse than the Hottentots. M. de Villiers has had no education AT ALL, and has worked, and traded, and farmed,—but the breed tells; he is a pure and thorough Frenchman, unable to speak a word of French. When I went in to dinner, he rose and gave me a chair with a bow which, with his appearance, made me ask, 'Monsieur vient d'arriver?' This at once put him out and pleased him. He is very unlike a Dutchman. If you think that any of the French will feel as I felt to this far-distant brother of theirs, pray give him a few letters; but remember that he can speak only English and Dutch, and a little German. Here his name is CALLED 'Filljee', but I told him to drop that barbarism in Europe; De Villiers ought to speak for itself. He says they came from the neighbourhood of Bordeaux.

The postmaster, Heer Klein, and his old Pylades, Heer Ley, are great cronies of mine—stout old greybeards, toddling down the hill together. I sometimes go and sit on the stoep with the two old bachelors, and they take it as a great compliment; and Heer Klein gave me my letters all decked with flowers, and wished 'Vrolyke tydings, Mevrouw,' most heartily. He has also made his tributary mail-cart Hottentots bring from various higher mountain ranges the beautiful everlasting flowers, which will make pretty wreaths for J-. When I went to his house to thank him, I found a handsome Malay, with a basket of 'Klipkaus', a shell-fish much esteemed here. Old Klein told me they were sent him by a Malay who was born in his father's house, a slave, and had been HIS 'BOY' and play- fellow. Now, the slave is far richer than the old young master, and no waggon comes without a little gift—oranges, fish, &c.—for 'Wilhem'. When Klein goes to Capetown, the old Malay seats him in a grand chair and sits on a little wooden stool at his feet; Klein begs him, as 'Huisheer', to sit properly; but, 'Neen Wilhem, Ik zal niet; ik kan niet vergeten.' 'Good boy!' said old Klein; 'good people the Malays.' It is a relief, after the horrors one has heard of Dutch cruelty, to see such an 'idyllisches Verhaltniss'. I have heard other instances of the same fidelity from Malays, but they were utterly unappreciated, and only told to prove the excellence of slavery, and 'how well the rascals must have been off'.

I have fallen in love with a Hottentot baby here. Her mother is all black, with a broad face and soft spaniel eyes, and the father is Bastaard; but the baby (a girl, nine months old), has walked out of one of Leonardo da Vinci's pictures. I never saw so beautiful a child. She has huge eyes with the spiritual look he gives to them, and is exquisite in every way. When the Hottentot blood is handsome, it is beautiful; there is a delicacy and softness about some of the women which is very pretty, and the eyes are those of a GOOD dog. Most of them are hideous, and nearly all drink; but they are very clean and honest. Their cottages are far superior in cleanliness to anything out of England, except in picked places, like some parts of Belgium; and they wash as much as they can, with the bad water-supply, and the English outcry if they strip out of doors to bathe. Compared to French peasants, they are very clean indeed, and even the children are far more decent and cleanly in their habits than those of France. The woman who comes here to clean and scour is a model of neatness in her work and her person (quite black), but she gets helplessly drunk as soon as she has a penny to buy a glass of wine; for a penny, a half-pint tumbler of very strong 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 it does not seem very stale and decies repetita. All being new and curious to the eye here, one becomes long-winded about mere trifles.

One small thing more. The first few shillings that a coloured woman has to spend on her cottage go in—what do you think?—A grand toilet table of worked muslin over pink, all set out with little 'objets'—such as they are: if there is nothing else, there is that here, as at Capetown, and all along to Simon's Bay. Now, what is the use or comfort of a duchesse to a Hottentot family? I shall never see those toilets again without thinking of Hottentots- -what a baroque association of ideas! I intend, in a day or two, to go over to 'Gnadenthal', the Moravian missionary station, founded in 1736—the 'bluhende Gemeinde von Hottentoten'. How little did I think to see it, when we smiled at the phrase in old Mr. Steinkopf's sermon years ago in London! The MISSIONARIZED Hottentots are not, as it is said, thought well of—being even tipsier than the rest; but I may see a full-blood one, and even a true Bosjesman, which is worth a couple of hours' drive; and the place is said to be beautiful.

This climate is evidently a styptic of great power, I shall write a few lines to the Lancet about Caledon and its hot baths—'Bad Caledon', as the Germans at Houw Hoek call it. The baths do not concern me, as they are chalybeate; but they seem very effectual in many cases. Yet English people never come here; they stay at Capetown, which must be a furnace now, or at Wynberg, which is damp and chill (comparatively); at most, they get to Stellenbosch. I mean visitors, not settlers; THEY are everywhere. I look the colour of a Hottentot. Now I MUST leave off.

Your most affectionate

L. D. G.



LETTER VII—GNADENTHAL



Caledon, Jan. 28th.

Well, I have been to Gnadenthal, and seen the 'blooming parish', and a lovely spot it is. A large village nestled in a deep valley, surrounded by high 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 and pounding! 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 three or four farms, at all which horses were GALLOPING OUT the grain, or men were winnowing it by tossing it up with wooden shovels to let the wind blow away the chaff. We did the twenty-four miles up and down the mountain roads in two hours and a half, with our valiant little pair of horses; it is incredible how they go. We stopped at a nice cottage on the hillside belonging to a ci-devant slave, one Christian Rietz, a WHITE man, with brown woolly hair, sharp features, grey eyes, and NOT woolly moustaches. He said he was a 'Scotch bastaard', and 'le bon sang parlait—tres-haut meme', for a more thriving, shrewd, sensible fellow I never saw. His FATHER and master had had to let him go when all slaves were emancipated, and he had come to Gnadenthal. He keeps a little inn in the village, and a shop and a fine garden. The cottage we lodged in was on the mountain side, and had been built for his son, who was dead; and his adopted daughter, a pretty coloured girl, exactly like a southern Frenchwoman, waited on us, assisted by about six or seven other women, who came chiefly to stare. Vrouw Rietz was as black as a coal, but SO pretty!—a dear, soft, sleek, old lady, with beautiful eyes, and the kind pleasant ways which belong to nice blacks; and, though old and fat, still graceful and lovely in face, hands, and arms. The cottage was thus:- One large hall; my bedroom on the right, S-'s on the left; the kitchen behind me; Miss Rietz behind S-; mud floors daintily washed over with fresh cow-dung; ceiling of big rafters, just as they had grown, on which rested bamboo canes close together ACROSS the rafters, and bound together between each, with transverse bamboo—a pretty BEEHIVEY effect; at top, mud again, and then a high thatched roof and a loft or zolder for forage, &c.; the walls of course mud, very thick and whitewashed. The bedrooms tiny; beds, clean sweet melies (maize) straw, with clean sheets, and eight good pillows on each; glass windows (a great distinction), exquisite cleanliness, and hearty civility; good food, well cooked; horrid tea and coffee, and hardly any milk; no end of fruit. In all the gardens it hung on the trees thicker than the leaves. Never did I behold such a profusion of fruit and vegetables.

But first I must tell what struck me most, I asked one of the Herrenhut brethren whether there were any REAL Hottentots, and he said, 'Yes, one;' and next morning, as I sat waiting for early prayers under the big oak-trees in the Plaats (square), he came up, followed by a tiny old man hobbling along with a long stick to support him. 'Here', said he, 'is the LAST Hottentot; he is a hundred and seven years old, and lives all alone.' I looked on the little, wizened, yellow face, and was shocked that he should be dragged up like a wild beast to be stared at. A feeling of pity which felt like remorse fell upon me, and my eyes filled as I rose and stood before him, so tall and like a tyrant and oppressor, while he uncovered his poor little old snow-white head, and peered up in my face. I led him to the seat, and helped him to sit down, and said in Dutch, 'Father, I hope you are not tired; you are old.' He saw and heard as well as ever, and spoke good Dutch in a firm voice. 'Yes, I am above a hundred years old, and alone—quite alone.' I sat beside him, and he put his head on one side, and looked curiously up at me with his faded, but still piercing little wild eyes. Perhaps he had a perception of what I felt—yet I hardly think so; perhaps he thought I was in trouble, for he crept close up to me, and put one tiny brown paw 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 hand again, and said, 'God bless them!' It was a relief to feel that he was pleased, for I should have felt like a murderer if my curiosity had added a moment's pain to so tragic a fate.

This may sound like sentimentalism; but you cannot conceive the effect of looking on the last of a race once the owners of all this land, and now utterly gone. His look was not quite human, physically speaking;—a good head, small wild-beast eyes, piercing and restless; cheek-bones strangely high and prominent, nose QUITE flat, mouth rather wide; thin shapeless lips, and an indescribably small, long, pointed chin, with just a very little soft white woolly beard; his head covered with extremely short close white wool, which ended round the poll in little ringlets. Hands and feet like an English child of seven or eight, and person about the size of a child of eleven. He had all his teeth, and though shrunk to nothing, was very little wrinkled in the face, and not at all in the hands, which were dark brown, while his face was yellow. His manner, and way of speaking were like those of an old peasant in England, only his voice was clearer and stronger, and his perceptions not blunted by age. He had travelled with one of the missionaries in the year 1790, or thereabouts, and remained with them ever since.

I went into the church—a large, clean, rather handsome building, consecrated in 1800—and heard a very good sort of Litany, mixed with such singing as only black voices can produce. The organ was beautifully played by a Bastaard lad. The Herrenhuters use very fine chants, and the perfect ear and heavenly voices of a large congregation, about six hundred, all coloured people, made music more beautiful than any chorus-singing I ever heard.

Prayers lasted half an hour; then the congregation turned out of doors, and the windows were opened. Some of the people went away, and others waited for the 'allgemeine Predigt'. In a quarter of an hour a much larger congregation than the first assembled, the girls all with net-handkerchiefs tied round their heads so as to look exactly like the ancient Greek head-dress with a double fillet—the very prettiest and neatest coiffure I ever saw. The gowns were made like those of English girls of the same class, but far smarter, cleaner, and gayer in colour—pink, and green, and yellow, and bright blue; several were all in white, with white gloves. The men and women sit separate, and the women's side was a bed of tulips. The young fellows were very smart indeed, with muslin or gauze, either white, pink, or blue, rolled round their hats (that is universal here, on account of the sun). The Hottentots, as they are called—that is, those of mixed Dutch and Hottentot origin (correctly, 'bastaards')—have a sort of blackguard elegance in their gait and figure which is peculiar to them; a mixture of negro or Mozambique blood alters it altogether. The girls have the elegance without the blackguard look; ALL are slender, most are tall; all graceful, all have good hands and feet; some few are handsome in the face and many very interesting-looking. The complexion is a pale olive-yellow, and the hair more or less woolly, face flat, and cheekbones high, eyes small and bright. These are by far the most intelligent—equal, indeed, to whites. A mixture of black blood often gives real beauty, but takes off from the 'air', and generally from the talent; but then the blacks are so pleasant, and the Hottentots are taciturn and reserved. The old women of this breed are the grandest hags I ever saw; they are clean and well dressed, and tie up their old faces in white handkerchiefs like corpses,—faces like those of Andrea del Sarto's old women; they are splendid. Also, they are very clean people, addicted to tubbing more than any others. The maid-of-all-work, who lounges about your breakfast table in rags and dishevelled hair, has been in the river before you were awake, or, if that was too far off, in a tub. They are also far cleaner in their huts than any but the VERY BEST English poor.

The 'Predigt' was delivered, after more singing, by a missionary cabinet-maker, in Dutch, very ranting, and not very wise; the congregation was singularly decorous and attentive, but did not seem at all excited or impressed—just like a well-bred West-end audience, only rather more attentive. The service lasted three- quarters of an hour, including a short prayer and two hymns. The people came out and filed off in total silence, and very quickly, the tall graceful girls draping their gay silk shawls beautifully. There are seven missionaries, all in orders but one, the blacksmith, and all married, except the resident director of the boys' boarding-school; there is a doctor, a carpenter, a cabinet- maker, a shoe-maker, and a storekeeper—a very agreeable man, who had been missionary in Greenland and Labrador, and interpreter to MacClure. There is one 'Studirter Theolog'. All are Germans, and so are their wives. My friend the storekeeper married without having ever beheld his wife before they met at the altar, and came on board ship at once with her. He said it was as good a way of marrying as any other, and that they were happy together. She was lying in, so I did not see her. At eight years old, their children are all sent home to Germany to be educated, and they seldom see them again. On each side of the church are schools, and next to them the missionaries' houses on one side of the square, and on the other a row of workshops, where the Hottentots are taught all manner of trades. I have got a couple of knives, made at Gnadenthal, for the children. The girls occupy the school in the morning, and the boys in the afternoon; half a day is found quite enough of lessons in this climate. The infant school was of both sexes, but a different set morning and afternoon. The missionaries' children were in the infant school; and behind the little blonde German 'Madels' three jet black niggerlings rolled over each other like pointer-pups, and grinned, and didn't care a straw for the spelling; while the dingy yellow little bastaards were straining their black eyes out, with eagerness to answer the master's questions. He and the mistress were both Bastaards, and he seemed an excellent teacher. The girls were learning writing from a master, and Bible history from a mistress, also people of colour; and the stupid set (mostly black) were having spelling hammered into their thick skulls by another yellow mistress, in another room. At the boarding school were twenty lads, from thirteen up to twenty, in training for school-teachers at different stations. Gnadenthal supplies the Church of England with them, as well as their own stations. There were Caffres, Fingoes, a Mantatee, one boy evidently of some Oriental blood, with glossy, smooth hair and a copper skin—and the rest Bastaards of various hues, some mixed with black, probably Mozambique. The Caffre lads were splendid young Hercules'. They had just printed the first book in the Caffre language (I've got it for Dr. Hawtrey,)— extracts from the New Testament,—and I made them read the sheets they were going to bind; it is a beautiful language, like Spanish in tone, only with a queer 'click' in it. The boys drew, like Chinese, from 'copies', and wrote like copper-plate; they sang some of Mendelssohn's choruses from 'St. Paul' splendidly, the Caffres rolling out soft rich bass voices, like melodious thunder. They are clever at handicrafts, and fond of geography and natural history, incapable of mathematics, quick at languages, utterly incurious about other nations, and would all rather work in the fields than learn anything but music; good boys, honest, but 'trotzig'. So much for Caffres, Fingoes, &c. The Bastaards are as clever as whites, and more docile—so the 'rector' told me. The boy who played the organ sang the 'Lorelei' like an angel, and played us a number of waltzes and other things on the piano, but he was too shy to talk; while the Caffres crowded round me, and chattered away merrily. The Mantatees, whom I cannot distinguish from Caffres, are scattered all over the colony, and rival the English as workmen and labourers—fine stalwart, industrious fellows. Our little 'boy' Kleenboy hires a room for fifteen shillings a month, and takes in his compatriots as lodgers at half a crown a week—the usurious little rogue! His chief, one James, is a bricklayer here, and looks and behaves like a prince. It is fine to see his black arms, ornamented with silver bracelets, hurling huge stones about.

All Gnadenthal is wonderfully fruitful, being well watered, but it is not healthy for whites; I imagine, too hot and damp. There are three or four thousand coloured people there, under the control of the missionaries, who allow no canteens at all. The people may have what they please at home, but no public drinking-place is allowed, and we had to take our own beer and wine for the three days. The gardens and burial-ground are beautiful, and the square is entirely shaded by about ten or twelve superb oaks; nothing prettier can be conceived. It is not popular in the neighbourhood. 'You see it makes the d-d niggers cheeky' to have homes of their own—and the girls are said to be immoral. As to that, there are no so-called 'morals' among the coloured people, and how or why should there? It is an honour to one of these girls to have a child by a white man, and it is a degradation to him to marry a dark girl. A pious stiff old Dutchwoman who came here the other day for the Sacrament (which takes place twice a year), had one girl with her, big with child by her son, who also came for the Sacrament, and two in the straw at home by the other son; this caused her exactly as much emotion as I feel when my cat kittens. No one takes any notice, either to blame or to nurse the poor things—they scramble through it as pussy does. The English are almost equally contemptuous; but there is one great difference. My host, for instance, always calls a black 'a d-d nigger'; but if that nigger is wronged or oppressed he fights for him, or bails him out of the Tronk, and an English jury gives a just verdict; while a Dutch one simply finds for a Dutchman, against any one else, and ALWAYS against a dark man. I believe this to be true, from what I have seen and heard; and certainly the coloured people have a great preference for the English.

I am persecuted by the ugliest and blackest Mozambiquer I have yet seen, a bricklayer's labourer, who can speak English, and says he was servant to an English Captain—'Oh, a good fellow he was, only he's dead!' He now insists on my taking him as a servant. 'I dessay your man at home is a good chap, and I'll be a good boy, and cook very nice.' He is thick-set and short and strong. Nature has adorned him with a cock eye and a yard of mouth, and art, with a prodigiously tall white chimney-pot hat with the crown out, a cotton nightcap, and a wondrous congeries of rags. He professes to be cook, groom, and 'walley', and is sure you would be pleased with his attentions.

Well, to go back to Gnadenthal. I wandered all over the village on Sunday afternoon, and peeped into the cottages. All were neat and clean, with good dressers of crockery, the VERY poorest, like the worst in Weybridge sandpits; but they had no glass windows, only a wooden shutter, and no doors; a calico curtain, or a sort of hurdle supplying its place. The people nodded and said 'Good day!' but took no further notice of me, except the poor old Hottentot, who was seated on a doorstep. He rose and hobbled up to meet me and take my hand again. He seemed to enjoy being helped along and seated down carefully, and shook and patted my hand repeatedly when I took leave of him. At this the people stared a good deal, and one woman came to talk to me.

In the evening I sat on a bench in the square, and saw the people go in to 'Abendsegen'. The church was lighted, and as I sat there and heard the lovely singing, I thought it was impossible to conceive a more romantic scene. On Monday I saw all the schools, and then looked at the great strong Caffre lads playing in the square. One of them stood to be pelted by five or six others, and as the stones came, he twisted and turned and jumped, and was hardly ever hit, and when he was, he didn't care, though the others hurled like catapults. It was the most wonderful display of activity and grace, and quite incredible that such a huge fellow should be so quick and light. When I found how comfortable dear old Mrs. Rietz made me, I was sorry I had hired the cart and kept 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 a pound or two, and drove back that evening. Mrs. Rietz, told me her mother was a Mozambiquer. 'And your father?' said I. 'Oh, I don't know. MY MOTHER WAS ONLY A SLAVE.' She, too, was a slave, but said she 'never knew it', her 'missus' was so good; a Dutch lady, at a farm I had passed, on the road, who had a hundred and fifty slaves. I liked my Hottentot hut amazingly, and the sweet brown bread, and the dinner cooked so cleanly on the bricks in the kitchen. The walls were whitewashed and adorned with wreaths of everlasting flowers and some quaint old prints from Loutherburg—pastoral subjects, not exactly edifying.

Well, I have prosed unconscionably, so adieu for the present.

February 3d.—Many happy returns of your birthday, dear -. I had a bottle of champagne to drink your health, and partly to swell the bill, which these good people make so moderate, that I am half ashamed. I get everything that Caledon can furnish for myself and S- for 15l. a month.

On Saturday we got the sad news of Prince Albert's death, and it created real consternation here. What a thoroughly unexpected calamity! Every one is already dressed in deep mourning. It is more general than in a village of the same size at home—(how I have caught the colonial trick of always saying 'home' for England! Dutchmen who can barely speak English, and never did or will see England, equally talk of 'news from home'). It also seems, by the papers of the 24th of December, which came by a steamer the other day, that war is imminent. I shall have to wait for convoy, I suppose, as I object to walking the plank from a Yankee privateer. I shall wait here for the next mail, and then go back to Capetown, stopping by the way, so as to get there early in March, and arrange for my voyage. The weather had a relapse into cold, and an attempt at rain. Pity it failed, for the drought is dreadful this year, chiefly owing to the unusual quantity of sharp drying winds—a most unlucky summer for the country and for me.

My old friend Klein, who told me several instances of the kindness and gratitude of former slaves, poured out to me the misery he had undergone from the 'ingratitude' of a certain Rosina, a slave-girl of his. She was in her youth handsome, clever, the best horsebreaker, bullock-trainer and driver, and hardest worker in the district. She had two children by Klein, then a young fellow; six by another white man, and a few more by two husbands of her own race! But she was of a rebellious spirit, and took to drink. After the emancipation, she used to go in front of Klein's windows and read the statute in a loud voice on every anniversary of the day; and as if that did not enrage him enough, she pertinaciously (whenever she was a little drunk) kissed him by main force every time she met him in the street, exclaiming, 'Aha! when I young 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 my countenance, but the fat old fellow's good-humoured, rueful face was too much for me. His tormentor is dead, but he retains a painful impression of her 'ingratitude '.

Our little Mantatee 'Kleenboy' has again, like Jeshurun, 'waxed fat and kicked', as soon as he had eaten enough to be once more plump and shiny. After his hungry period, he took to squatting on the stoep, just in front of the hall-door, and altogether declining to do anything; so he is superseded by an equally ugly little red- headed Englishman. The Irish housemaid has married the German baker (a fine match for her!), and a dour little Scotch Presbyterian has come up from Capetown in her place. Such are the vicissitudes of colonial house-keeping! The only 'permanency' is the old soldier of Captain D-'s regiment, who is barman in the canteen, and not likely to leave 'his honour', and the coloured girl, who improves on acquaintance. She wants to ingratiate herself with me, and get taken to England. Her father is an Englishman, and of course the brown mother and her large family always live in the fear of his 'going home' and ignoring their existence; a MARRIAGE with the mother of his children would be too much degradation for him to submit to. Few of the coloured people are ever married, but they don't separate oftener than REALLY married folks. Bill, the handsome West Indian black, married my pretty washerwoman Rosalind, and was thought rather assuming because he was asked in church and lawfully married; and she wore a handsome lilac silk gown and a white wreath and veil, and very well she looked in them. She had a child of two years old, which did not at all disconcert Bill; but he continues to be dignified, and won't let her go and wash clothes in the river, because the hot sun makes her ill, and it is not fit work for women.

Sunday, 9th.—Last night a dance took place in a house next door to this, and a party of boers attempted to go in, but were repulsed by a sortie of the young men within. Some of the more peaceable boers came in here and wanted ale, which was refused, as they were already very vinous; so they imbibed ginger-beer, whereof one drank thirty-four bottles to his own share! Inspired by this drink, they began to quarrel, and were summarily turned out. They spent the whole night, till five this morning, scuffling and vociferating in the street. The constables discreetly stayed in bed, displaying the true Dogberry spirit, which leads them to take up Hottentots, drunk or sober, to show their zeal, but carefully to avoid meddling with stalwart boers, from six to six and a half feet high and strong in proportion. The jabbering of Dutch brings to mind Demosthenes trying to outroar a stormy sea with his mouth full of pebbles. The hardest blows are those given with the tongue, though much pulling of hair and scuffling takes place. 'Verdomde Schmeerlap!'—'Donder and Bliksem! am I a verdomde Schmeerlap?'— 'Ja, u is,' &c., &c. I could not help laughing heartily as I lay in bed, at hearing the gambols of these Titan cubs; for this is a boer's notion of enjoying himself. This morning, I hear, the street was strewn with the hair they had pulled out of each other's heads. All who come here make love to S-; not by describing their tender 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 on marriage. There is a fine handsome Van Steen, who is very persevering; but S- does not seem to fancy becoming Mevrouw at all. The demand for English girls as wives is wonderful here. The nasty cross little ugly Scotch maid has had three offers already, in one fortnight!

February 18th.—I expect to receive the letters by the English mail to-morrow morning, and to go to Worcester on Thursday. On Saturday the young doctor—good-humoured, jolly, big, young Dutchman—drove me, with his pretty little greys, over to two farms; at one I ate half a huge melon, and at the other, uncounted grapes. We poor Europeans don't know what fruit CAN BE, I must admit. The melon was a foretaste of paradise, and the grapes made one's fingers as sticky as honey, and had a muscat fragrance quite inconceivable. They looked like amber eggs. The best of it is, too, that in this climate stomach-aches are not. We all eat grapes, peaches, and figs, all day long. Old Klein sends me, for my own daily consumption, about thirty peaches, three pounds of grapes, and apples, pears, and figs besides—'just a little taste of fruits'; only here they will pick it all unripe.

February 19th.—The post came in late last night, and old Klein kindly sent me my letters at near midnight. The post goes out this evening, and the hot wind is blowing, so I can only write to you, and a line to my mother. I feel really better now. I think the constant eating of grapes has done me much good.

The Dutch cart-owner was so extortionate, that I am going to wait a few days, and write to my dear Malay to come up and drive me back. It is better than having to fight the Dutch monopolist in every village, and getting drunken drivers and bad carts after all. I shall go round all the same. The weather has been beautiful; to- day there is a wind, which comes about two or three times in the year: it is not depressing, but hot, and a bore, because one must shut every window or be stifled with dust.

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

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



LETTER VIII



Caledon, Sunday.

You must have fallen into second childhood to think of PRINTING such rambling hasty scrawls as I write. I never could write a good letter; and unless I gallop as hard as I can, and don't stop to think, I can say nothing; so all is confused and unconnected: only I fancy YOU will be amused by some of my 'impressions'. I have written to my mother an accurate account of my health. I am dressed and out of doors never later than six, now the weather makes it possible. It is surprising how little sleep one wants. I go to bed at ten and often am up at four.

I made friends here the other day with a lively dried-up little old Irishman, who came out at seven years old a pauper-boy. He has made a fortune by 'going on Togt' (German, Tausch), as thus; he charters two waggons, twelve oxen each, and two Hottentots to each waggon, leader and driver. The waggons he fills with cotton, hardware, &c., &c.—an ambulatory village 'shop',—and goes about fifteen miles a day, on and on, into the far interior, swapping baftas (calico), punjums (loose trowsers), and voerschitz (cotton gownpieces), pronounced 'foossy', against oxen and sheep. When all is gone he swaps his waggons against more oxen and a horse, and he and his four 'totties' drive home the spoil; and he has doubled or trebled his venture. En route home, 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 for myself, and the totties roast the rest, and melt all the fat and entrails down in an iron pot and eat it with a wooden spoon.' 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, no nothing— mutton and water. The old fellow was quite poetic and heroic in describing the joys and perils of Togt. I said I should like to go too; and he bewailed having settled a year ago in a store at Swellendam, 'else he'd ha' fitted up a waggon all nice and snug for me, and shown me what going on togt was like. Nothing like it for the health, ma'am; and beautiful shooting.' My friend had 700l. in gold in a carpet bag, without a lock, lying about on the stoep. 'All right; nobody steals money or such like here. I'm going to pay bills in Capetown.'

Tell my mother that a man would get from 2l. to 4l. a month wages, with board, lodging, &c., all found, and his wife from 1l. 10s. to 2l. a month and everything found, according to abilities and testimonials. Wages are enormous, and servants at famine price; emigrant ships are CLEARED OFF in three days, and every ragged Irish girl in place somewhere. Four pounds a month, and food for self, husband, and children, is no uncommon pay for a good cook; and after all her cookery may be poor enough. My landlady at Capetown gave that. The housemaid had ONLY 1l. 5s. a month, but told me herself she had taken 8l. in one week in 'tips'. She was an excellent servant. Up country here the wages are less, but the comfort greater, and the chances of 'getting on' much increased. But I believe Algoa Bay or Grahamstown are by far the best fields for new colonists, and (I am assured) the best climate for lung diseases. The wealthy English merchants of Port Elizabeth (Algoa Bay) pay best. It seems to me, as far as I can learn, that every really WORKING man or woman can thrive here.

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

I received a message from my Malay friends, Abdool Jemaalee and Betsy, anxious to know 'if the Misses had good news of her children, for bad news would make her sick'. Old Betsy and I used to prose about young Abdurrachman and his studies at Mecca, and about my children, with more real heartiness than you can fancy. We were not afraid of boring each other; and pious old Abdool sat and nodded and said, 'May Allah protect them all!' as a refrain;— 'Allah, il Allah!'



LETTER IX



Caledon, Feb. 21st.

This morning's post brought your packet, and the announcement of an extra mail to-night—so I can send you a P.S. I hear that Capetown has been pestilential, and as hot as Calcutta. It is totally undrained, and the Mozambiquers are beginning to object to acting as scavengers to each separate house. The 'vidanges' are more barbarous even than in Paris. Without the south-easter (or 'Cape doctor') they must have fevers, &c.; and though too rough a practitioner for me, he benefits the general health. Next month the winds abate, but last week an omnibus was blown over on the Rondebosch road, which is the most sheltered spot, and inhabited by Capetown merchants. I have received all the Saturday Reviews quite safe, likewise the books, Mendelssohn's letters, and the novel. I have written for my dear Choslullah to fetch me. The Dutch farmers don't know how to charge enough; moreover, the Hottentot drivers get drunk, and for two lone women that is not the thing. I pay my gentle Malay thirty shillings a day, which, for a cart and four and such a jewel of a driver, is not outrageous; and I had better pay that for the few days I wait on the road, than risk bad carts, tipsy Hottentots, and extortionate boers.

This intermediate country between the 'Central African wilderness' and Capetown has been little frequented. I went to the Church Mission School with the English clergyman yesterday. You know I don't believe in every kind of missionaries, but I do believe that, in these districts, kind, judicious English clergymen are of great value. The Dutch pastors still remember the distinction between 'Christenmenschen' and 'Hottentoten'; but the Church Mission Schools teach the Anglican Catechism to every child that will learn, and the congregation is as piebald as Harlequin's jacket. A pretty, coloured lad, about eleven years old, answered my questions in geography with great quickness and some wit. I said, 'Show me the country you belong to.' He pointed to England, and when I laughed, to the cape. 'This is where we are, but that is the country I BELONG TO.' I asked him how we were governed, and he answered quite right. 'How is the Cape governed?' 'Oh, we have a Parliament too, and Mr. Silberbauer is the man WE send.' Boys and girls of all ages were mixed, but no blacks. I don't think they will learn, except on compulsion, as at Gnadenthal.

I regret to say that Bill's wife has broken his head with a bottle, at the end of the honeymoon. I fear the innovation of being MARRIED AT CHURCH has not had a good effect, and that his neighbours may quote Mr. Peachum.

I was offered a young lion yesterday, but I hardly think it would 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 six hours 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 so LIGHT and dry. The wind tries me, but we have little here compared to the coast. I hope that the voyage home will do me still more good; but I will not sail till April, so as to arrive in June. May, in the Channel, would not do.

How I wish I could send you the fruit now on my table—amber- coloured grapes, yellow waxen apples streaked with vermillion in fine little lines, huge peaches, and tiny green figs! I must send dear old Klein a little present from England, to show that I don't forget my Dutch adorer. I wish I could bring you the 'Biltong ' he sent me—beef or bok dried in the sun in strips, and slightly salted; you may carry enough in your pocket to live on for a fortnight, and it is very good as a little 'relish'. The partridges also have been welcome, and we shall eat the tiny haunch of bok to-day.

Mrs. D- is gone to Capetown to get servants (the Scotch girl having carried on her amours too flagrantly), and will return in my cart. S- is still keeping house meanwhile, much perturbed by the placid indolence of the brown girl. The stableman cooks, and very well too. This is colonial life—a series of makeshifts and difficulties; but the climate is fine, people feel well and make money, and I think it is not an unhappy life. I have been most fortunate in my abode, and can say, without speaking cynically, that I have found 'my warmest welcome at an inn'. Mine host is a rough soldier, but the very soul of good nature and good feeling; and his wife is a very nice person—so cheerful, clever, and kindhearted.

I should like to bring home the little Madagascar girl from Rathfelders, or a dear little mulatto who nurses a brown baby here, and is so clean and careful and 'pretty behaved',—but it would be a great risk. The brown babies are ravishing—so fat and jolly and funny.

One great charm of the people here is, that no one expects money or gifts, and that all civility is gratis. Many a time I finger small coin secretly in my pocket, and refrain from giving it, for fear of spoiling this innocence. I have not once seen a LOOK implying 'backsheesh', and begging is unknown. But the people are reserved and silent, and have not the attractive manners of the darkies of Capetown and the neighbourhood.



LETTER X



Caledon, Feb. 22d.

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

In the afternoon the young doctor drove me, in his little gig-cart and pair (the lightest and swiftest of conveyances), to see a wine- farm. The people were not at work, but we saw the tubs and vats, and drank 'most'. The grapes are simply trodden by a Hottentot, in a tub with a sort of strainer at the bottom, and then thrown— skins, stalks, and all—into vats, where the juice ferments for twice twenty-four hours; after which it is run into casks, which are left with the bung out for eight days; then the wine is drawn off into another cask, a little sulphur and brandy are added to it, and it is bunged down. Nothing can be conceived so barbarous. I have promised Mr. M- to procure and send him an exact account of the process in Spain. It might be a real service to a most worthy and amiable man. Dr. M- also would be glad of a copy. They literally know nothing about wine-making here, and with such matchless grapes I am sure it ought to be good. Altogether, 'der alte Schlendrian' prevails at the Cape to an incredible degree.

If two 'Heeren M-' call on you, please be civil to them. I don't know them personally, but their brother is the doctor here, and the most good-natured young fellow I ever saw. If I were returning by Somerset instead of Worcester, I might put up at their parents' house and be sure of a welcome; and I can tell you civility to strangers is by no means of course here. I don't wonder at it; for the old Dutch families ARE GENTLEFOLKS of the good dull old school, and the English colonists can scarcely suit them. In the few instances in which I have succeeded in thawing a Dutchman, I have found him wonderfully good-natured; and the different manner in which I was greeted when in company with the young doctor showed the feeling at once. The dirt of a Dutch house is not to be conceived. I have had sights in bedrooms in very respectable houses which I dare not describe. The coloured people are just as clean. The young doctor (who is much Anglicised) tells me that, in illness, he has to break the windows in the farmhouses—they are built not to open! The boers are below the English in manners and intelligence, and hate them for their 'go-ahead' ways, though THEY seem slow enough to me. As to drink, I fancy it is six of one and half a dozen of the other; but the English are more given to eternal drams, and the Dutch to solemn drinking bouts. I can't understand either, in this climate, which is so stimulating, that I more often drink ginger-beer or water than wine—a bottle of sherry lasted me a fortnight, though I was ordered to drink it; somehow, I had no mind to it.

27th.—The cart could not be got till the day before yesterday, and yesterday Mrs. D- arrived in it with two new Irish maids; it saved her 3l., and I must have paid equally. The horses were very tired, having been hard at work carrying Malays all the week to Constantia and back, on a pilgrimage to the tomb of a Mussulman saint; so to- day they rest, and to-morrow I go to Villiersdorp. Choslullah has been appointed driver of a post-cart; he tried hard to be allowed to pay a remplacant, and to fetch 'his missis', but was refused leave; and so a smaller and blacker Malay has come, whom Choslullah threatened to curse heavily if he failed to take great care of 'my missis' and be a 'good boy'. Ramadan begins on Sunday, and my poor driver can't even prepare for it by a good feast, as no fowls are to be had here just now, and he can't eat profanely-killed meat. Some pious Christian has tried to burn a Mussulman martyr's tomb at Eerste River, and there were fears the Malays might indulge in a little revenge; but they keep quiet. I am to go with my driver to eat some of the feast (of Bairam, is it not?) at his priest's when Ramadan ends, if I am in Capetown, and also am asked to a wedding at a relation of Choslullah's. It was quite a pleasure to hear the kindly Mussulman talk, after these silent Hottentots. The Malays have such agreeable manners; so civil, without the least cringing or Indian obsequiousness. I dare say they can be very 'insolent' on provocation; but I have always found among them manners like old-fashioned French ones, but quieter; and they have an affectionate way of saying 'MY missis' when they know one, which is very nice to hear. It is getting quite chilly here already; COLD night and morning; and I shall be glad to descend off this plateau into the warmer regions of Worcester, &c. I have just bought EIGHT splendid ostrich feathers for 1l. of my old Togthandler friend. In England they would cost from eighteen to twenty-five shillings each. I have got a reebok and a klipspringer skin for you; the latter makes a saddle-cloth which defies sore backs; they were given me by Klein and a farmer at Palmiet River. The flesh was poor stuff, white and papery. The Hottentots can't 'bray' the skins as the Caffres do; and the woman who did mine asked me for a trifle beforehand, and got so drunk that she let them dry halfway in the process, consequently they don't look so well.

Worcester, Sunday, March 2d.

Oh, such a journey! Such country! Pearly mountains and deep blue sky, and an impassable pass to walk down, and baboons, and secretary birds, and tortoises! I couldn't sleep for it all last night, tired as I was with the unutterably bad road, or track rather.

Well, we left Caledon on Friday, at ten o'clock, and though the weather had been cold and unpleasant for two days, I had a lovely morning, and away we went to Villiersdorp (pronounced Filjeesdorp). It is quite a tiny village, in a sort of Rasselas-looking valley. We were four hours on the road, winding along the side of a mountain ridge, which we finally crossed, with a splendid view of the sea at the far-distant end of a huge amphitheatre formed by two ridges of mountains, and on the other side the descent into Filjeesdorp. The whole way we saw no human being or habitation, except one shepherd, from the time we passed Buntje's kraal, about two miles out of Caledon. The little drinking-shop would not hold travellers, so I went to the house of the storekeeper (as the clergyman of Caledon had told me I might), and found a most kind reception. Our host was English, an old man-of-war's man, with a gentle, kindly Dutch wife, and the best-mannered children I have seen in the colony. They gave us clean comfortable beds and a good dinner, and wine ten years in the cellar; in short, the best of hospitality. I made an effort to pay for the entertainment next morning, when, after a good breakfast, we started loaded with fruit, but the kind people would not hear of it, and bid me good- bye like old friends. At the end of the valley we went a little up-hill, and then found ourselves at the top of a pass down into the level below. S- and I burst out with one voice, 'How beautiful!' Sabaal, our driver, thought the exclamation was an ironical remark on the road, which, indeed, appeared to be exclusively intended for goats. I suggested walking down, to which, for a wonder, the Malay agreed. I was really curious to see him get down with two wheels and four horses, where I had to lay hold from time 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 front was a long, long level valley, perhaps three to five miles broad (I can't judge distance in this atmosphere; a house that looks a quarter of a mile off is two miles distant). At the extreme end, in a little gap between two low brown hills that crossed each other, one could just see Worcester—five hours' drive off. Behind it, and on each side the plain, mountains of every conceivable shape and colour; the strangest cliffs and peaks and crags toppling every way, and tinged with all the colours of opal; chiefly delicate, pale lilac and peach colour, but varied with red brown and Titian green. In spite of the drought, water sparkled on the mountain-sides in little glittering threads, and here and there in the plain; and pretty farms were dotted on either side at the very bottom of the slopes toward the mountain-foot. The sky of such a blue! (it is deeper now by far than earlier in the year). In short, I never did see anything so beautiful. It even surpassed Hottentot's Holland. On we went, straight along the valley, crossing drift after drift;—a drift is the bed of a stream more or less dry; in which sometimes you are drowned, sometimes only POUNDED, as was our hap. The track was incredibly bad, except for short bits, where ironstone prevailed. However, all went well, and on the road I chased and captured a pair of remarkably swift and handsome little 'Schelpats'. That you may duly appreciate such a feat of valour and activity, I will inform you that their English name is 'tortoise'. On the strength of this effort, we drank a bottle of beer, as it was very hot and sandy; and our Malay was a WET enough Mussulman to take his full share in a modest way, though he declined wine or 'Cape smoke Soopjes' (drams) with aversion. No sooner had we got under weigh again, than Sabaal pulled up and said, 'There ARE the Baviaans Missis want to see!' and so they were. At some distance by the river was a great brute, bigger than a Newfoundland dog, stalking along with the hideous baboon walk, and tail vehemently cocked up; a troop followed at a distance, hiding and dodging among the palmiets. They were evidently en route to rob a garden close to them, and had sent a great stout fellow ahead to reconnoitre. 'He see Missis, and feel sure she not got a gun; if man come on horseback, you see 'em run like devil.' We had not that pleasure, and left them, on felonious thoughts intent.

The road got more and more beautiful as we neared Worcester, and the mountains grew higher and craggier. Presently, a huge bird, like a stork on the wing, pounced down close by us. He was a secretary-bird, and had caught sight of a snake. We passed 'Brant Vley' (burnt or hot spring), where sulphur-water bubbles up in a basin some thirty feet across and ten or twelve deep. The water is clear as crystal, and is hot enough just NOT to boil an egg, I was told. At last, one reaches the little gap between the brown hills which one has seen for four hours, and drives through it into a wide, wide flat, with still craggier and higher mountains all round, and Worcester in front at the foot of a towering cliff. The town is not so pretty, to my taste, as the little villages. The streets are too wide, and the market-place too large, which always looks dreary, but the houses and gardens individually are charming. Our inn is a very nice handsome old Dutch house; but we have got back to 'civilization', and the horrid attempts at 'style' which belong to Capetown. The landlord and lady are too genteel to appear at all, and the Hottentots, who are disguised, according to their sexes, in pantry jacket and flounced petticoat, don't understand a word of English or of real Dutch. At Gnadenthal they understood Dutch, and spoke it tolerably; but here, as in most places, it is three-parts Hottentot; and then they affect to understand English, and bring everything wrong, and are sulky: but the rooms are very comfortable. The change of climate is complete- -the summer was over at Caledon, and here we are into it again—the most delicious air one can conceive; it must have been a perfect oven six weeks ago. The birds are singing away merrily still; the approach of autumn does not silence them here. The canaries have a very pretty song, like our linnet, only sweeter; the rest are very inferior to ours. The sugar-bird is delicious when close by, but his pipe is too soft to be heard at any distance.

To those who think voyages and travels tiresome, my delight in the new birds and beasts and people must seem very stupid. I can't help it if it does, and am not ashamed to confess that I feel the old sort of enchanted wonder with which I used to read Cook's voyages, and the like, as a child. It is very coarse and unintellectual of me; but I would rather see this now, at my age, than Italy; the fresh, new, beautiful nature is a second youth—or CHILDHOOD—si vous voulez. To-morrow we shall cross the highest pass I have yet crossed, and sleep at Paarl—then Stellenbosch, then Capetown. For any one OUT of health, and IN pocket, I should certainly prescribe the purchase of a waggon and team of six horses, and a long, slow progress in South Africa. One cannot walk in the midday sun, but driving with a very light roof over one's head is quite delicious. When I looked back upon my dreary, lonely prison at Ventnor, I wondered I had survived it at all.

Capetown, March 7th.

After writing last, we drove out, on Sunday afternoon, to a deep alpine valley, to see a NEW BRIDGE—a great marvel apparently. The old Spanish Joe Miller about selling the bridge to buy water occurred to me, and made Sabaal laugh immensely. The Dutch farmers were tearing home from Kerk, in their carts—well-dressed, prosperous-looking folks, with capital horses. Such lovely farms, snugly nestled in orange and pomegranate groves! It is of no use to describe this scenery; it is always mountains, and always beautiful opal mountains; quite without the gloom of European mountain scenery. The atmosphere must make the charm. I hear that an English traveller went the same journey and found all barren from Dan to Beersheba. I'm sorry for him.

In the morning of Sunday, early, I walked along the road with Sabaal, and saw a picture I shall never forget. A little Malabar girl had just been bathing in the Sloot, and had put her scanty shift on her lovely little wet brown body; she stood in the water with the drops glittering on her brown skin and black, satin hair, the perfection of youthful loveliness—a naiad of ten years old. When the shape and features are PERFECT, as hers were, the coffee- brown shows it better than our colour, on account of its perfect EVENNESS—like the dead white of marble. I shall never forget her as she stood playing with the leaves of the gum-tree which hung over her, and gazing with her glorious eyes so placidly.

On Monday morning, I walked off early to the old Drosdy (Landdrost's house), found an old gentleman, who turned out to be the owner, and who asked me my name and all the rest of the Dutch 'litanei' of questions, and showed me the pretty old Dutch garden and the house—a very handsome one. I walked back to breakfast, and thought Worcester the prettiest place I had ever seen. We then started for Paarl, and drove through 'Bain's Kloof', a splendid mountain-pass, four hours' long, constant driving. It was glorious, but more like what one had seen in pictures—a deep, narrow gorge, almost dark in places, and, to my mind, lacked the BEAUTY of the yesterday's drive, though it is, perhaps, grander; but the view which bursts on one at the top, and the descent, winding down the open mountain-side, is too fine to describe. Table Mountain, like a giant's stronghold, seen far distant, with an immense plain, half fertile, half white sand; to the left, Wagenmaker's Vley; and further on, the Paarl lying scattered on the slope of a mountain topped with two DOMES, just the shape of the cup which Lais (wasn't it?) presented to the temple of Venus, moulded on her breast. The horses were tired, so we stopped at Waggon-maker's Valley (or Wellington, as the English try to get it called), and found ourselves in a true Flemish village, and under the roof of a jolly Dutch hostess, who gave us divine coffee and bread-and-butter, which seemed ambrosia after being deprived of those luxuries for almost three months. Also new milk in abundance, besides fruit of all kinds in vast heaps, and pomegranates off the tree. I asked her to buy me a few to take in the cart, and got a 'muid', the third of a sack, for a shilling, with a bill, 'U bekomt 1 muid 28 granaeten dat Kostet 1s.' The old lady would walk out with me and take me into the shops, to show the 'vrow uit Engelland' to her friends. It was a lovely place, intensely hot, all glowing with sunshine. Then the sun went down, and the high mountains behind us were precisely the colour of a Venice ruby glass—really, truly, and literally;—not purple, not crimson, but glowing ruby-red—and the quince-hedges and orange- trees below looked INTENSELY green, 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, two men and two women, quite light yellow, not darker than Europeans, and with little tiny black knots of wool scattered over their heads at intervals. They are hideous in face, but exquisitely shaped—very, very small though. One of the men was drunk, poor wretch, and looked the picture of misery. You can see the fineness of their senses by the way in which they dart their glances and prick their ears. Every one agrees that, when tamed, they make the best of servants—gentle, clever, and honest; but the penny-a-glass wine they can't resist, unless when caught and tamed young. They work in the fields, or did so as long as any were left; but even here, I was told, it was a wonder to see them.

We went on through the Paarl, a sweet pretty place, reminding one vaguely of Bonchurch, and still through fine mountains, with Scotch firs growing like Italian stone pines, and farms, and vineyard upon vineyard. At Stellenbosch we stopped. I had been told it was the prettiest town in the colony, and it IS very pretty, with oak-trees all along the street, like those at Paarl and Wagenmakkers Vley; but I was disappointed. It was less beautiful than what I had seen. Besides, the evening was dull and cold. The south-easter greeted us here, and I could not go out all the afternoon. The inn was called 'Railway Hotel', and kept by low coarse English people, who gave us a filthy dinner, dirty sheets, and an atrocious breakfast, and charged 1l. 3s. 6d. for the same meals and time as old Vrow Langfeldt had charged 12s. for, and had given civility, cleanliness, and abundance of excellent food;—besides which, she fed Sabaal gratis, and these people fleeced him as they did me. So, next morning, we set off, less pleasantly disposed, for Capetown, over the flat, which is dreary enough, and had a horrid south-easter. We started early, and got in before the wind became a hurricane, which it did later. We were warmly welcomed by Mrs. R-; and here I am in my old room, looking over the beautiful bay, quite at home again. It blew all yesterday, and having rather a sore-throat I stayed in bed, and to-day is all bright and beautiful. But Capetown looks murky after Caledon and Worcester; there is, to my eyes, quite a haze over the mountains, and they look far off and indistinct. All is comparative in this world, even African skies. At Caledon, the most distant mountains, as far as your eye can reach, look as clear in every detail as the map on your table—an appearance utterly new to European eyes.

I gave Sabaal 1l. for his eight days' service as driver, as a Drinkgelt, and the worthy fellow was in ecstasies of gratitude. Next morning early, he appeared with a present of bananas, and his little girl dressed from head to foot in brand-new clothes, bought out of my money, with her wool screwed up extremely tight in little knots on her black little head (evidently her mother is the blackest of Caffres or Mozambiques). The child looked like a Caffre, and her father considers her quite a pearl. I had her in, and admired the little thing loud enough for him to hear outside, as I lay in bed. You see, I too was to have my share in the pleasure of the new clothes. This readiness to believe that one will sympathize with them, is very pleasing in the Malays.

March 15.

I went to see my old Malay friends and to buy a water-melon. They were in all the misery of Ramadan. Betsy and pretty Nassirah very thin and miserable, and the pious old Abdool sitting on a little barrel waiting for 'gun-fire'—i.e. sunset, to fall to on the supper which old Betsy was setting out. He was silent, and the 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, at Wynberg. I was to have spent a few days there, but Wynberg is cold at night and dampish, so I declined that. She is a nice woman—Irish, and so innocent and frank and well-bred. She has been at Cold Bokke Veld, and shocked her puritanical host by admiring the naked Caffres who worked on his farm. He wanted them to wear clothes.

We have been amused by the airs of a naval captain and his wife, who are just come here. They complained that the merchant-service officers spoke FAMILIARLY to their children on board. Quel audace! When I think of the excellent, modest, manly young fellows who talked very familiarly 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 the town. A most striking sight. A large room, like a county ball-room, with glass chandeliers, carpeted with common carpet, all but a space at the entrance, railed off for shoes; the Caaba and pulpit at one end; over the niche, a crescent painted; and over the entrance door a crescent, an Arabic inscription, and the royal arms of England! A fat jolly Mollah looked amazed as I ascended the steps; but when I touched my forehead and said, 'Salaam Aleikoom', he laughed and said, 'Salaam, Salaam, come in, come in.' The faithful poured in, all neatly dressed in their loose drab trousers, blue jackets, and red handkerchiefs on their heads; they left their wooden clogs in company, with my shoes, and proceeded, as it appeared, to strip. Off went jackets, waistcoats, and trousers, with the dexterity of a pantomime transformation; the red handkerchief was replaced by a white skullcap, and a long large white shirt and full white drawers flowed around them. How it had all been stuffed into the trim jacket and trousers, one could not conceive. Gay sashes and scarves were pulled out of a little bundle in a clean silk handkerchief, and a towel served as prayer-carpet. In a moment the whole scene was as oriental as if the Hansom cab I had come in existed no more. Women suckled their children, and boys played among the clogs and shoes all the time, and I sat on the floor in a remote corner. The chanting was very fine, and the whole ceremony very decorous and solemn. It lasted an hour; and then the little heaps of garments were put on, and the congregation dispersed, each man first laying a penny on a very curious little old Dutch- looking, heavy, iron-bound chest, which stood in the middle of the room.

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



LETTER XI



Capetown, March 20th.

Dearest mother,

Dr. Shea says he fears I must not winter in England yet, but that I am greatly improved—as, indeed, I could tell him. He is another of the kind 'sea doctors' I have met with; he came all the way from Simon's Bay to see me, and then said, 'What nonsense is that?' when I offered him a fee. This is a very nice place up in the 'gardens', quite out of the town and very comfortable. But I regret Caledon. A- will show you my account of my beautiful journey back. Worcester is a fairy-land; and then to catch tortoises walking about, and to see 'baviaans', and snakes and secretary birds eating them! and then people have the impudence to think I must have been 'very dull!' Sie merken's nicht, that it is THEY who are dull.

Dear Dr. Hawtrey! he must have died just as I was packing up the first Caffre Testament for him! I felt his death very much, in connexion with my father; their regard for each other was an honour to both. I have the letter he wrote me on J-'s marriage, and a charming one it is.

I took Mrs. A- a drive in a Hansom cab to-day out to Wynberg, to see my friends Captain and Mrs. T-, who have a cottage under Table Mountain in a spot like the best of St. George's Hill. Very dull too; but as she is really a lady, it suits her, and Capetown does not. I was to have stayed with them, but Wynberg is cold at night. Poor B-'s wife is very ill and won't leave Capetown for a day. The people here are wunderlich for that. A lady born here, and with 7,000l. a year, has never been further than Stellenbosch, about twenty miles. I am 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 how easy it all is, I would have gone by sea to East London and seen the Knysna and George district, and the primaeval African forest, the yellow wood, and other giant trees. However, 'For what I have received,' &c., &c. No one can conceive what it is, after two years of prison and utter languor, to stand on the top of a mountain pass, and enjoy physical existence for a few hours at a time. I felt as if it was quite selfish to enjoy anything so much when you were all so anxious about me at home; but as that is the best symptom of all, I do not repent.

S- has been an excellent travelling servant, and really a better companion than many more educated people; for she is always amused and curious, and is friendly with the coloured people. She is quite recovered. It is a wonderful climate—sans que cela paraisse. It feels chilly and it blows horridly, and does not seem genial, but it gives new life.

To-morrow I am going with old Abdool Jemaalee to prayers at the Mosque, and shall see a school kept by a Malay priest. It is now Ramadan,. and my Muslim friends are very thin and look glum. Choslullah sent a message to ask, 'Might he see the Missis once more? He should pray all the time she was on the sea.' Some pious Christians here would expect such horrors to sink the ship. I can't think why Mussulmans are always gentlemen; the Malay coolies have a grave courtesy which contrasts most strikingly with both European vulgarity and negro jollity. It is very curious, for they only speak Dutch, and know nothing of oriental manners. I fear I shall not see the Walkers again. Simon's Bay is too far to go and come in a day, as one cannot go out before ten or eleven, and must be in by five or half-past. Those hours are gloriously bright and hot, but morning and night are cold.

I am so happy in the thought of sailing now so very soon and seeing you all again, that I can settle to nothing for five minutes. I now feel how anxious and uneasy I have been, and how I shall rejoice to get home. I shall leave a letter for A-, to go in April, and tell him and you what ship I am in. I shall choose the SLOWEST, so as not to reach England and face the Channel before June, if possible. So don't be alarmed if I do not arrive till late in June. Till then good-bye, and God bless you, dearest mother—Auf frohes Wiedersehn.



LETTER XII



Capetown, Sunday, March 23d.

It has been a REAL hot day, and threatened an earthquake and a thunderstorm; but nothing has come of it beyond sheet lightning to- night, which is splendid over the bay, and looks as if repeated in a grand bush-fire on the hills opposite. The sunset was glorious. That rarest of insects, the praying mantis, has just dropped upon my paper. I am thankful that, not being an entomologist, I am dispensed from the sacred duty of impaling the lovely green creature who sits there, looking quite wise and human. Fussy little brown beetles, as big as two lady-birds, keep flying into my eyes, and the musquitoes are rejoicing loudly in the prospect of a feast. You will understand by this that both windows are wide open into the great verandah,—very unusual in this land of cold nights.

April 4th.—I have been trying in vain to get a passage home. The Camperdown has not come. In short, I am waiting for a chance vessel, and shall pack up now and be ready to go on board at a day's notice.

I went on the last evening of Ramadan to the Mosque, having heard there was a grand 'function'; but there were only little boys lying about on the floor, some on their stomachs, some on their backs, higgledy-piggledy (if it be not profane to apply the phrase to young Islam), all shouting their prayers a tue tete. Priests, men, women, and English crowded in and out in the exterior division. The English behaved a l'Anglaise—pushed each other, laughed, sneered, and made a disgusting display of themselves. I asked a stately priest, in a red turban, to explain the affair to me, and in a few minutes found myself supplied by one Mollah with a chair, and by another with a cup of tea—was, in short, in the midst of a Malay soiree. They spoke English very little, but made up for it by their usual good breeding and intelligence. On Monday, I am going to see the school which the priest keeps at his house, and to 'honour his house by my presence'. The delight they show at any friendly interest taken in them is wonderful. Of course, I am supposed to be poisoned. A clergyman's widow here gravely asserts that her husband went mad THREE YEARS after drinking a cup of coffee handed to him by a Malay!—and in consequence of drinking it! It is exactly like the mediaeval feeling about the Jews. I saw that it was quite a DEMONSTRATION that I drank up the tea unhesitatingly. Considering that the Malays drank it themselves, my courage deserves less admiration. But it was a quaint sensation to sit in a Mosque, behaving as if at an evening party, in a little circle of poor Moslim priests.