You Would Want To Lay Out A
Fortune In Woolly Babies.
Yesterday I had a dreadful heartache
after my darling, on her little birthday, and even the lovely
ranges of distant mountains, coloured like opals in the sunset, did
not delight me.
This is a dreary place for strangers. Abdul
Jemaalee's tisanne, and a banana which he gave me each time I went
to his shop, are the sole offer of 'Won't you take something?' or
even the sole attempt at a civility that I have received, except
from the J-s, who, are very civil and kind.
When I have done my visit to Simon's Bay, I will go 'up country',
to Stellenbosch, Paarl and Worcester, perhaps. If I can find
people going in a bullock-waggon, I will join them; it costs 1
pound a day, and goes twenty miles. If money were no object, I
would hire one with Caffres to hunt, as well as outspan and drive,
and take a saddle-horse. There is plenty of pleasure to be had in
travelling here, if you can afford it. The scenery is quite beyond
anything you can imagine in beauty. I went to a country house at
Rondebosch with the J-s, and I never saw so lovely a spot. The
possessor had done his best to spoil it, and to destroy the
handsome Dutch house and fountains and aqueducts; but Nature was
too much for him, and the place lovely in neglect and shabbiness.
Now I will tell you my impressions of the state of society here, as
far as I have been able to make out by playing the inquisitive
traveller.
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