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. This does not sound nice, but it is. The plant has a thick, succulent, triangular leaf, creeping on the ground, and growing anywhere, without earth or water. Figs proper are common here, but tasteless; and the people pick all their fruit green, and eat it so too. The children are all crunching hard peaches and plums just now, particularly some little half-breeds near here, who are frightfully ugly. Fancy the children of a black woman and a red-haired man; the little monsters are as black as the mother, and have RED wool - you never saw so diabolical an appearance. Some of the coloured people are very pretty; for example, a coal-black girl of seventeen, and my washerwoman, who is brown. They are wonderfully slender and agile, and quite old hard-working women have waists you could span. They never grow thick and square, like Europeans.

I could write a volume on Cape horses. Such valiant little beasts, and so composed in temper, I never saw. They are nearly all bays - a few very dark grey, which are esteemed; VERY few white or light grey. I have seen no black, and only one dark chestnut. They are not cobs, and look 'very little of them', and have no beauty; but one of these little brutes, ungroomed, half-fed, seldom stabled, will carry a six-and-a-half-foot Dutchman sixty miles a day, day after day, at a shuffling easy canter, six miles an hour. You 'off saddle' every three hours, and let him roll; you also let him drink all he can get; his coat shines and his eye is bright, and unsoundness is very rare. They are never properly broke, and the soft-mouthed colts are sometimes made vicious by the cruel bits and heavy hands; but by nature their temper is perfect.

Every morning all the horses in the village are turned loose, and a general gallop takes place to the water tank, where they drink and lounge a little; and the young ones are fetched home by their niggers, while the old stagers know they will be wanted, and saunter off by themselves. I often attend the Houyhnhnm conversazione at the tank, at about seven o'clock, and am amused by their behaviour; and I continually wish I could see Ned's face on witnessing many equine proceedings here.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 34 of 73
Words from 17194 to 17700 of 37925