Letters from the Cape by Lucy Duff Gordon (ebook reader computer txt) 📖

dumb show, as no one's voice could be heard; through it we fought and laboured and dipped under water, and I only had my dry corner by the wheel, where the kind pleasant little third officer lashed me tight. It was far more formidable than the first gale, but less beautiful; and we made so much lee-way that we lost ten days, and only arrived here yesterday. I recommend a fortnight's heavy gale in the South Atlantic as a cure for a blase state of mind. It cannot be described; the sound, the sense of being hurled along without the smallest regard to 'this side uppermost'; the beauty of the whole scene, and the occasional crack and bear-away of sails and spars; the officer trying to 'sing out', quite in vain, and the boatswain's whistle scarcely audible. I remained near the wheel every day for as long as I could bear it, and was enchanted.

Then the mortal perils of eating, drinking, moving, sitting, lying; standing can't be done, even by the sailors, without holding on. THE night of the gale, my cot twice touched the beams of the ship above me. I asked the captain if I had dreamt it, but he said it was quite possible; he had never seen a ship so completely on her beam ends come up all right, masts and yards all sound.

There is a middy about half M-'s size, a very tiny ten-year-older, who has been my delight; he is so completely 'the officer and the gentleman'. My maternal entrails turned like old Alvarez, when that baby lay out on the very end of the cross-jack yard to reef, in the gale; it was quite voluntary, and the other newcomers all declined. I always called him 'Mr. -, sir', and asked his leave gravely, or, on occasions, his protection and assistance; and his little dignity was lovely. He is polite to the ladies, and slightly distant to the passenger-boys, bigger than himself, whom he orders off dangerous places; 'Children, come out of that; you'll be overboard.'

A few days before landing I caught a bad cold, and kept my bed. I caught this cold by 'sleeping with a damp man in my cabin', as some one said. During the last gale, the cabin opposite mine was utterly swamped, and I found the Irish soldier-servant of a little officer of eighteen in despair; the poor lad had got ague, and eight inches of water in his bed, and two feet in the cabin. I looked in and said, 'He can't stay there--carry him into my cabin, and lay him in the bunk'; which he did, with tears running down his honest old face. So we got the boy into S-'s bed, and cured his fever and ague, caught under canvas in Romney Marsh. Meantime S- had to sleep in a chair and to undress in the boy's wet cabin. As a token of gratitude, he sent me a poodle pup, born on board, very handsome. The artillery officers were generally well-behaved; the men, deserters and ruffians, sent out as drivers. We have had five courts-martial and two floggings in eight weeks, among seventy men. They were pampered with food and porter, and would not pull a rope, or get up at six to air their quarters. The sailors are an excellent set of men. When we parted, the first lieutenant said to me, 'Weel, ye've a wonderful idee of discipline for a leddy, I will say. You've never been reported but once, and that was on sick leave, for your light, and all in order.'


Cape Town, Sept. 18.

We anchored yesterday morning, and Captain J-, the Port Captain, came off with a most kind letter from Sir Baldwin Walker, his gig, and a boat and crew for S- and the baggage. So I was whipped over the ship's side in a chair, and have come to a boarding house where the J-s live. I was tired and dizzy and landsick, and lay down and went to sleep. After an hour or so I woke, hearing a little gazouillement, like that of chimney swallows. On opening my eyes I beheld four demons, 'sons of the obedient Jinn', each bearing an article of furniture, and holding converse over me in the language of Nephelecoecygia. Why has no one ever mentioned the curious little soft voices of these coolies?--you can't hear them with the naked ear, three feet off. The most hideous demon (whose complexion had not only the colour, but the precise metallic lustre of an ill black-leaded stove) at last chirruped a wish for orders, which I gave. I asked the pert, active, cockney housemaid what I ought to pay them, as, being a stranger, they might overcharge me. Her scorn was sublime, 'Them nasty blacks never asks more than their regular charge.' So I asked the black-lead demon, who demanded 'two shilling each horse in waggon', and a dollar each 'coolie man'. He then glided with fiendish noiselessness about the room, arranged the furniture to his own taste, and finally said, 'Poor missus sick'; then more chirruping among themselves, and finally a fearful gesture of incantation, accompanied by 'God bless poor missus. Soon well now'. The wrath of the cockney housemaid became majestic: 'There, ma'am; you see how saucy they have grown- -a nasty black heathen Mohamedan a blessing of a white Christian!'

These men are the Auvergnats of Africa. I was assured that bankers entrust them with large sums in gold, which they carry some hundred and twenty miles, by unknown tracks, for a small gratuity. The pretty, graceful Malays are no honester than ourselves, but are excellent workmen.

To-morrow, my linen will go to a ravine in the giant mountain at my back, and there be scoured in a clear spring by brown women, bleached on the mountain top, and carried back all those long miles on their heads, as it went up.

My landlady is Dutch; the waiter is an Africander, half Dutch, half Malay, very handsome, and exactly like a French gentleman, and as civil.

Enter 'Africander' lad with a nosegay; only one flower that I know- -heliotrope. The vegetation is lovely; the freshness of spring and the richness of summer. The leaves on the trees are in all the beauty of spring. Mrs. R- brought me a plate of oranges, 'just gathered', as soon as I entered the house--and, oh! how good they were! better even than the Maltese. They are going out, and DEAR now--two a penny, very large and delicious. I am wild to get out and see the glorious scenery and the hideous people. To-day the wind has been a cold south-wester, and I have not been out. My windows look N. and E. so I get all the sun and warmth. The beauty of Table Bay is astounding. Fancy the Undercliff in the Isle of Wight magnified a hundred-fold, with clouds floating halfway up the mountain. The Hottentot mountains in the distance have a fantastic jagged outline, which hardly looks real. The town is like those in the south of Europe; flat roofs, and all unfinished; roads are simply non-existent. At the doors sat brown women with black hair that shone like metal, very handsome; they are Malays, and their men wear conical hats a-top of turbans, and are the chief artisans. At the end of the pier sat a Mozambique woman in white drapery and the most majestic attitude, like a Roman matron; her features large and strong and harsh, but fine; and her skin blacker than night.

I have got a couple of Cape pigeons (the storm-bird of the South Atlantic) for J-'s hat. They followed us several thousand miles, and were hooked for their pains. The albatrosses did not come within hail.

The little Maltese goat gave a pint of milk night and morning, and was a great comfort to the cow. She did not like the land or the grass at first, and is to be thrown out of milk now. She is much admired and petted by the young Africander. My room is at least eighteen feet high, and contains exactly a bedstead, one straw mattrass, one rickety table, one wash-table, two chairs, and broken looking-glass; no carpet, and a hiatus of three inches between the floor and the door, but all very clean; and excellent food. I have not made a bargain yet, but I dare say I shall stay here.

Friday.--I have just received your letter; where it has been hiding, I can't conceive. To-day is cold and foggy, like a baddish day in June with you; no colder, if so cold. Still, I did not venture out, the fog rolls so heavily over the mountain. Well, I must send off this yarn, which is as interminable as the 'sinnet' and 'foxes' which I twisted with the mids.


LETTER II


Cape Town, Oct. 3.

I came on shore on a very fine day, but the weather changed, and we had a fortnight of cold and damp and S.W. wind (equivalent to our east wind), such as the 'oldest inhabitant' never experienced; and I have had as bad an attack of bronchitis as ever I remember, having been in bed till yesterday. I had a very good doctor, half Italian, half Dane, born at the Cape of Good Hope, and educated at Edinburgh, named Chiappini. He has a son studying medicine in London, whose mother is Dutch; such is the mixture of bloods here.

Yesterday, the wind went to the south-east; the blessed sun shone out, and the weather was lovely at once. The mountain threw off his cloak of cloud, and all was bright and warm. I got up and sat in the verandah over the stoep (a kind of terrace in front of every house here). They brought me a tortoise as big as half a crown and as lively as a cricket to look at, and a chameleon like a fairy dragon--a green fellow, five inches long, with no claws on his feet, but suckers like a fly--the most engaging little beast. He sat on my finger, and caught flies with great delight and dexterity, and I longed to send him to M-. To-day, I went a long drive with Captain and Mrs. J-: we went to Rondebosch and Wynberg- -lovely country; rather like Herefordshire; red earth and oak- trees. Miles of the road were like Gainsborough-lane, on a large scale, and looked quite English; only here and there a hedge of prickly pear, or the big white aruns in the ditches, told a different tale; and the scarlet geraniums and myrtles growing wild puzzled one.

And then came rattling along a light, rough, but well-poised cart, with an Arab screw driven by a Malay, in a great hat on his kerchiefed head, and his wife, with her neat dress, glossy black hair, and great gold earrings. They were coming with fish, which he had just caught at Kalk Bay, and was going to sell for the dinners of the Capetown folk. You pass neat villas, with pretty gardens and stoeps, gay with flowers, and at the doors of several, neat Malay girls are lounging. They are the best servants here, for the emigrants mostly drink. Then you see a group of children at play, some as black as coals, some brown and very pretty. A little black girl, about R-'s age, has carefully tied what