And Then Came Rattling Along A Light, Rough, But Well-Poised Cart,
With An Arab Screw Driven By A Malay, In A Great Hat On His
Kerchiefed Head, And His Wife, With Her Neat Dress, Glossy Black
Hair, And Great Gold Earrings.
They were coming with fish, which
he had just caught at Kalk Bay, and was going to sell for the
dinners of the Capetown folk.
You pass neat villas, with pretty
gardens and stoeps, gay with flowers, and at the doors of several,
neat Malay girls are lounging. They are the best servants here,
for the emigrants mostly drink. Then you see a group of children
at play, some as black as coals, some brown and very pretty. A
little black girl, about R-'s age, has carefully tied what little
petticoat she has, in a tight coil round her waist, and displays
the most darling little round legs and behind, which it would be a
real pleasure to slap; it is so shiny and round, and she runs and
stands so strongly and gracefully.
Here comes another Malay, with a pair of baskets hanging from a
stick across his shoulder, like those in Chinese pictures, which
his hat also resembles. Another cart full of working men, with a
Malay driver; and inside are jumbled some red-haired, rosy-cheeked
English navvies, with the ugliest Mozambiques, blacker than Erebus,
and with faces all knobs and corners, like a crusty loaf. As we
drive home we see a span of sixteen noble oxen in the marketplace,
and on the ground squats the Hottentot driver. His face no words
can describe - his cheek-bones are up under his hat, and his meagre-
pointed chin halfway down to his waist; his eyes have the dull look
of a viper's, and his skin is dirty and sallow, but not darker than
a dirty European's.
Capetown is rather pretty, but beyond words untidy and out of
repair. As it is neither drained nor paved, it won't do in hot
weather; and I shall migrate 'up country' to a Dutch village. Mrs.
J-, who is Dutch herself, tells me that one may board in a Dutch
farm-house very cheaply, and with great comfort (of course eating
with the family), and that they will drive you about the country
and tend your horses for nothing, if you are friendly, and don't
treat them with Engelsche hoog-moedigheid.
Oct. 19th. - The packet came in last night, but just in time to save
the fine of 50l. per diem, and I got your welcome letter this
morning. I have been coughing all this time, but I hope I shall
improve. I came out at the very worst time of year, and the
weather has been (of course) 'unprecedentedly' bad and changeable.
But when it IS fine it is quite celestial; so clear, so dry, so
light. Then comes a cloud over Table Mountain, like the sugar on a
wedding-cake, which tumbles down in splendid waterfalls, and
vanishes unaccountably halfway; and then you run indoors and shut
doors and windows, or it portends a 'south-easter', i.e. a
hurricane, and Capetown disappears in impenetrable clouds of dust.
But this wind coming off the hills and fields of ice, is the Cape
doctor, and keeps away cholera, fever of every sort, and all
malignant or infectious diseases.
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