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.
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