The Baths Do Not
Concern Me, As They Are Chalybeate; But They Seem Very Effectual In
Many Cases.
Yet English people never come here; they stay at
Capetown, which must be a furnace now, or at Wynberg, which is damp
and chill (comparatively); at most, they get to Stellenbosch.
I
mean visitors, not settlers; THEY are everywhere. I look the
colour of a Hottentot. Now I MUST leave off.
Your most affectionate
L. D. G.
LETTER VII - GNADENTHAL
Caledon, Jan. 28th.
Well, I have been to Gnadenthal, and seen the 'blooming parish',
and a lovely spot it is. A large village nestled in a deep valley,
surrounded by high mountains on three sides, and a lower range in
front. We started early on Saturday, and drove over a mighty queer
road, and through a river. Oh, ye gods! what a shaking and
pounding! We were rattled up like dice in a box. Nothing but a
Cape cart, Cape horses, and a Hottentot driver, above all, could
have accomplished it. Captain D- rode, and had the best of it. On
the road we passed three or four farms, at all which horses were
GALLOPING OUT the grain, or men were winnowing it by tossing it up
with wooden shovels to let the wind blow away the chaff. We did
the twenty-four miles up and down the mountain roads in two hours
and a half, with our valiant little pair of horses; it is
incredible how they go. We stopped at a nice cottage on the
hillside belonging to a ci-devant slave, one Christian Rietz, a
WHITE man, with brown woolly hair, sharp features, grey eyes, and
NOT woolly moustaches. He said he was a 'Scotch bastaard', and 'le
bon sang parlait - tres-haut meme', for a more thriving, shrewd,
sensible fellow I never saw. His FATHER and master had had to let
him go when all slaves were emancipated, and he had come to
Gnadenthal. He keeps a little inn in the village, and a shop and a
fine garden. The cottage we lodged in was on the mountain side,
and had been built for his son, who was dead; and his adopted
daughter, a pretty coloured girl, exactly like a southern
Frenchwoman, waited on us, assisted by about six or seven other
women, who came chiefly to stare. Vrouw Rietz was as black as a
coal, but SO pretty! - a dear, soft, sleek, old lady, with beautiful
eyes, and the kind pleasant ways which belong to nice blacks; and,
though old and fat, still graceful and lovely in face, hands, and
arms. The cottage was thus:- One large hall; my bedroom on the
right, S-'s on the left; the kitchen behind me; Miss Rietz behind
S-; mud floors daintily washed over with fresh cow-dung; ceiling of
big rafters, just as they had grown, on which rested bamboo canes
close together ACROSS the rafters, and bound together between each,
with transverse bamboo - a pretty BEEHIVEY effect; at top, mud
again, and then a high thatched roof and a loft or zolder for
forage, &c.; the walls of course mud, very thick and whitewashed.
The bedrooms tiny; beds, clean sweet melies (maize) straw, with
clean sheets, and eight good pillows on each; glass windows (a
great distinction), exquisite cleanliness, and hearty civility;
good food, well cooked; horrid tea and coffee, and hardly any milk;
no end of fruit.
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