I Dare Say The Statements Are Exaggerated, But I Do Not
Think They Are Wholly Devoid Of Truth.
The Dutch round Capetown (I
don't know anything of 'up country') are sulky and dispirited; they
regret the slave
Days, and can't bear to pay wages; they have sold
all their fine houses in town to merchants, &c., and let their
handsome country places go to pieces, and their land lie fallow,
rather than hire the men they used to own. They hate the Malays,
who were their slaves, and whose 'insolent prosperity' annoys them,
and they don't like the vulgar, bustling English. The English
complain that the Dutch won't die, and that they are the curse of
the colony (a statement for which they can never give a reason).
But they, too, curse the emancipation, long to flog the niggers,
and hate the Malays, who work harder and don't drink, and who are
the only masons, tailors, &c., and earn from 4s. 6d. to 10s. a day.
The Malays also have almost a monopoly of cart-hiring and horse-
keeping; an Englishman charges 4 pounds 10s. or 5 pounds for a
carriage to do what a Malay will do quicker in a light cart for
30s. S- says, 'The English here think the coloured people ought to
do the work, and they to get the wages. Nothing less would satisfy
them.' Servants' wages are high, but other wages not much higher
than in England; yet industrious people invariably make fortunes,
or at least competencies, even when they begin with nothing.
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