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.
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