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.
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