Letters from the Cape, Lucy Duff Gordon [best new books to read .TXT] 📗

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