The Brewing Of The Rain Made The Air Very Oppressive And
Heavy For Three Weeks, But Now It Is As Light As Possible.
I must say good-bye, as the mail closes to-morrow morning.
Easter
in autumn is preposterous, only the autumn looks like spring. The
consumptive young girl whom I packed off to the Cape, and her
sister, are about to be married - of course. Annie has had a touch
of Algoa Bay fever, a mild kind of ague, but no sign of chest
disease, or even delicacy. My 'hurrying her off', which some
people thought so cruel, has saved her. Whoever comes SOON ENOUGH
recovers, but for people far gone it is too bracing.
LETTER XIV
Capetown, Saturday, May 3d.
Dearest mother,
After five weeks of waiting and worry, I have, at last, sent my
goods on board the ship Camperdown, now discharging her cargo, and
about to take a small party of passengers from the Cape. I offered
to take a cabin in a Swedish ship, bound for Falmouth; but the
captain could not decide whether he would take a passenger; and
while he hesitated the old Camperdown came in. I have the best
cabin after the stern cabins, which are occupied by the captain and
his wife and the Attorney-General of Capetown, who is much liked.
The other passengers are quiet people, and few of them, and the
captain has a high character; so I may hope for a comfortable,
though slow passage. I will let you know the day I sail, and leave
this letter to go by post. I may be looked for three weeks or so
after this letter. I am crazy to get home now; after the period
was over for which I had made up my mind, home-sickness began.
Mrs. R- has offered me a darling tiny monkey, which loves me; but I
fear A- would send me away again if I returned with her in my
pocket. Nassirah, old Abdool's pretty granddaughter, brought me a
pair of Malay shoes or clogs as a parting gift, to-day. Mr. M-,
the resident at Singapore, tells me that his secretary's wife, a
Malay lady, has made an excellent translation of the Arabian
Nights, from Arabic into Malay. Her husband is an Indian
Mussulman, who, Mr. M- said, was one of the ablest men he ever
knew. Curious!
I sat, yesterday, for an hour, in the stall of a poor German
basket-maker who had been long in Caffre-land. His wife, a
Berlinerin, was very intelligent, and her account of her life here
most entertaining, as showing the different Ansicht natural to
Germans. 'I had never', she said, 'been out of the city of Berlin,
and KNEW NOTHING.' (Compare with London cockney, or genuine
Parisian.) Thence her fear, on landing at Algoa Bay and seeing
swarms of naked black men, that she had come to a country where no
clothes were to be had; and what should she do when hers were worn
out? They had a grant of land at Fort Peddie, and she dug while
her husband made baskets of cane, and carried them hundreds of
miles for sale; sleeping and eating in Caffre huts. 'Yes, they are
good, honest people, and very well-bred (anstandig), though they go
as naked as God made them. The girls are pretty and very delicate
(fein), and they think no harm of it, the dear innocents.' If
their cattle strayed, it was always brought back; and they received
every sort of kindness. 'Yes, madam, it is shocking how people
here treat the blacks. They call quite an old man 'Boy', and speak
so scornfully, and yet the blacks have very nice manners, I assure
you.' When I looked at the poor little wizened, pale, sickly
Berliner, and fancied him a guest in a Caffre hut, it seemed an odd
picture. But he spoke as coolly of his long, lonely journeys as
possible, and seemed to think black friends quite as good as white
ones. The use of the words anstandig and fein by a woman who spoke
very good German were characteristic. She could recognise an
'Anstandigkeit' not of Berlin. I need not say that the Germans are
generally liked by the coloured people. Choslullah was astonished
and Pleased at my talking German; he evidently had a preference for
Germans, and put up, wherever he could, at German inns and
'publics'.
I went on to bid Mrs. Wodehouse good-bye. We talked of our dear
old Cornish friends. The Governor and Mrs. Wodehouse have been
very kind to me. I dined there twice; last time, with all the dear
good Walkers. I missed seeing the opening of the colonial
parliament by a mistake about a ticket, which I am sorry for.
If I could have dreamed of waiting here so long, I would have run
up to Algoa Bay or East London by sea, and had a glimpse of
Caffreland. Capetown makes me very languid - there is something
depressing in the air - but my cough is much better. I can't walk
here without feeling knocked-up; and cab-hire is so dear; and
somehow, nothing is worth while, when one is waiting from day to
day. So I have spent more money than when I was most amused, in
being bored.
Mr. J- drove me to the Capetown races, at Green Point, on Friday.
As races, they were nichts, but a queer-looking little Cape
farmer's horse, ridden by a Hottentot, beat the English crack
racer, ridden by a first-rate English jockey, in an unaccountable
way, twice over. The Malays are passionately fond of horse-racing,
and the crowd was fully half Malay: there were dozens of carts
crowded with the bright-eyed women, in petticoats of every most
brilliant colour, white muslin jackets, and gold daggers in their
great coils of shining black hair. All most 'anstandig', as they
always are. Their pleasure is driving about en famille; the men
have no separate amusements.
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