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

little petticoat she has, in a tight coil round her waist, and displays the most darling little round legs and behind, which it would be a real pleasure to slap; it is so shiny and round, and she runs and stands so strongly and gracefully.

Here comes another Malay, with a pair of baskets hanging from a stick across his shoulder, like those in Chinese pictures, which his hat also resembles. Another cart full of working men, with a Malay driver; and inside are jumbled some red-haired, rosy-cheeked English navvies, with the ugliest Mozambiques, blacker than Erebus, and with faces all knobs and corners, like a crusty loaf. As we drive home we see a span of sixteen noble oxen in the marketplace, and on the ground squats the Hottentot driver. His face no words can describe--his cheek-bones are up under his hat, and his meagre- pointed chin halfway down to his waist; his eyes have the dull look of a viper's, and his skin is dirty and sallow, but not darker than a dirty European's.

Capetown is rather pretty, but beyond words untidy and out of repair. As it is neither drained nor paved, it won't do in hot weather; and I shall migrate 'up country' to a Dutch village. Mrs. J-, who is Dutch herself, tells me that one may board in a Dutch farm-house very cheaply, and with great comfort (of course eating with the family), and that they will drive you about the country and tend your horses for nothing, if you are friendly, and don't treat them with Engelsche hoog-moedigheid.

Oct. 19th.--The packet came in last night, but just in time to save the fine of 50l. per diem, and I got your welcome letter this morning. I have been coughing all this time, but I hope I shall improve. I came out at the very worst time of year, and the weather has been (of course) 'unprecedentedly' bad and changeable. But when it IS fine it is quite celestial; so clear, so dry, so light. Then comes a cloud over Table Mountain, like the sugar on a wedding-cake, which tumbles down in splendid waterfalls, and vanishes unaccountably halfway; and then you run indoors and shut doors and windows, or it portends a 'south-easter', i.e. a hurricane, and Capetown disappears in impenetrable clouds of dust. But this wind coming off the hills and fields of ice, is the Cape doctor, and keeps away cholera, fever of every sort, and all malignant or infectious diseases. Most of them are unknown here. Never was so healthy a place; but the remedy is of the heroic nature, and very disagreeable. The stones rattle against the windows, and omnibuses are blown over on the Rondebosch road.

A few days ago, I drove to Mr. V-'s farm. Imagine St. George's Hill, and the most beautiful bits of it, sloping gently up to Table Mountain, with its grey precipices, and intersected with Scotch burns, which water it all the year round, as they come from the living rock; and sprinkled with oranges, pomegranates, and camelias in abundance. You drive through a mile or two as described, and arrive at a square, planted with rows of fine oaks close together; at the upper end stands the house, all on the ground-floor, but on a high stoep: rooms eighteen feet high; the old slave quarters on each side; stables, &c., opposite; the square as big as Belgrave Square, and the buildings in the old French style.

We then went on to Newlands, a still more beautiful place. Immense trenching and draining going on--the foreman a Caffre, black as ink, six feet three inches high, and broad in proportion, with a staid, dignified air, and Englishmen working under him! At the streamlets there are the inevitable groups of Malay women washing clothes, and brown babies sprawling about. Yesterday, I should have bought a black woman for her beauty, had it been still possible. She was carrying an immense weight on her head, and was far gone with child; but such stupendous physical perfection I never even imagined. Her jet black face was like the Sphynx, with the same mysterious smile; her shape and walk were goddess-like, and the lustre of her skin, teeth, and eyes, showed the fulness of health;--Caffre of course. I walked after her as far as her swift pace would let me, in envy and admiration of such stately humanity.

The ordinary blacks, or Mozambiques, as they call them, are hideous. Malay here seems equivalent to Mohammedan. They were originally Malays, but now they include every shade, from the blackest nigger to the most blooming English woman. Yes, indeed, the emigrant-girls have been known to turn 'Malays', and get thereby husbands who know not billiards and brandy--the two diseases of Capetown. They risked a plurality of wives, and professed Islam, but they got fine clothes and industrious husbands. They wear a very pretty dress, and all have a great air of independence and self-respect; and the real Malays are very handsome. I am going to see one of the Mollahs soon, and to look at their schools and mosque; which, to the distraction of the Scotch, they call their 'Kerk.'

I asked a Malay if he would drive me in his cart with the six or eight mules, which he agreed to do for thirty shillings and his dinner (i.e. a share of my dinner) on the road. When I asked how long it would take, he said, 'Allah is groot', which meant, I found, that it depended on the state of the beach--the only road for half the way.

The sun, moon, and stars are different beings from those we look upon. Not only are they so large and bright, but you SEE that the moon and stars are BALLS, and that the sky is endless beyond them. On the other hand, the clear, dry air dwarfs Table Mountain, as you seem to see every detail of it to the very top.

Capetown is very picturesque. The old Dutch buildings are very handsome and peculiar, but are falling to decay and dirt in the hands of their present possessors. The few Dutch ladies I have seen are very pleasing. They are gentle and simple, and naturally well-bred. Some of the Malay women are very handsome, and the little children are darlings. A little parti-coloured group of every shade, from ebony to golden hair and blue eyes, were at play in the street yesterday, and the majority were pretty, especially the half-castes. Most of the Caffres I have seen look like the perfection of human physical nature, and seem to have no diseases. Two days ago I saw a Hottentot girl of seventeen, a housemaid here. You would be enchanted by her superfluity of flesh; the face was very queer and ugly, and yet pleasing, from the sweet smile and the rosy cheeks which please one much, in contrast to all the pale yellow faces--handsome as some of them are.

I wish I could send the six chameleons which a good-natured parson brought me in his hat, and a queer lizard in his pocket. The chameleons are charming, so monkey-like and so 'caressants'. They sit on my breakfast tray and catch flies, and hang in a bunch by their tails, and reach out after my hand.

I have had a very kind letter from Lady Walker, and shall go and stay with them at Simon's Bay as soon as I feel up to the twenty- two miles along the beaches and bad roads in the mail-cart with three horses. The teams of mules (I beg pardon, spans) would delight you--eight, ten, twelve, even sixteen sleek, handsome beasts; and oh, such oxen! noble beasts with humps; and hump is very good to eat too.

Oct. 21st.--The mail goes out to-morrow, so I must finish this letter. I feel better to-day than I have yet felt, in spite of the south-easter.

Yours, &c.


LETTER III


28th Oct.--Since I wrote, we have had more really cold weather, but yesterday the summer seems to have begun. The air is as light and clear as if THERE WERE NONE, and the sun hot; but I walk in it, and do not find it oppressive. All the household groans and perspires, but I am very comfortable.

Yesterday I sat in the full broil for an hour or more, in the hot dust of the Malay burial-ground. They buried the head butcher of the Mussulmans, and a most strange poetical scene it was. The burial-ground is on the side of the Lion Mountain--on the Lion's rump--and overlooks the whole bay, part of the town, and the most superb mountain panorama beyond. I never saw a view within miles of it for beauty and grandeur. Far down, a fussy English steamer came puffing and popping into the deep blue bay, and the 'Hansom's' cabs went tearing down to the landing place; and round me sat a crowd of grave brown men chanting 'Allah il Allah' to the most monotonous but musical air, and with the most perfect voices. The chant seemed to swell, and then fade, like the wind in the trees.

I went in after the procession, which consisted of a bier covered with three common Paisley shawls of gay colours; no one looked at me; and when they got near the grave, I kept at a distance, and sat down when they did. But a man came up and said, 'You are welcome.' So I went close, and saw the whole ceremony. They took the corpse, wrapped in a sheet, out of the bier, and lifted it into the grave, where two men received it; then a sheet was held over the grave till they had placed the dead man; and then flowers and earth were thrown in by all present, the grave filled in, watered out of a brass kettle, and decked with flowers. Then a fat old man, in printed calico shirt sleeves, and a plaid waistcoat and corduroy trousers, pulled off his shoes, squatted on the grave, and recited endless 'Koran', many reciting after him. Then they chanted 'Allah-il-Allah' for twenty minutes, I think: then prayers, with 'Ameens' and 'Allah il-Allahs' again. Then all jumped up and walked off. There were eighty or a hundred men, no women, and five or six 'Hadjis', draped in beautiful Eastern dresses, and looking very supercilious. The whole party made less noise in moving and talking than two Englishmen.

A white-complexioned man spoke to me in excellent English (which few of them speak), and was very communicative and civil. He told me the dead man was his brother-in-law, and he himself the barber. I hoped I had not taken a liberty. 'Oh, no; poor Malays were proud when noble English persons showed such respect to their religion. The young Prince had done so too, and Allah would not forget to protect him. He also did not laugh at their prayers, praise be to God!' I had already heard that Prince Alfred is quite the darling of the Malays. He insisted on accepting their fete, which the Capetown people had snubbed. I have a friendship with one Abdul Jemaalee and his wife Betsy, a couple of old folks who were slaves to Dutch owners, and now keep a fruit-shop of a rough sort, with 'Betsy, fruiterer,' painted on the back of an old tin tray, and hung up by the door of the house. Abdul first bought himself, and then