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.
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