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.
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