Six Months in Cape Colony and Natal and one month in Tenerife and Madeira. With six illustrations and a sketch map

Front matter

SIX MONTHS IN CAPE COLONY AND NATAL 1 etc. BY THE SAME AUTHOR. A FLIGHT TO MEXICO. With Seven Full-page Illustrations and a Railway Map. Crown Svo, cloth, 7-f. 6d. " Mr. Aubertin has the eye of a poet and a traveller for description." — Saturday Review. "An instructive and entertaining book." — Spectator. " Every chapter adds to the general effect of a narrative in which no points of interest are passed by." — Daily Nevus. " He has evidently a keen eye for scenery." — Pali Mall Gazette. " Few travellers write in the easy, pleasant style which makes Mr. J. J- Aubertin^ book such deU^rffftrE*wJmg. . . . It ought to be read by all who want to have a pUr&jipH- -™&$imMion to a little-known subject." j THE LUSJEADS.-.-OT' CAMOENS. Portuguese Text, wittr%rarislation by J. J. Aubertin. Second Edition.

Two vols., crown Svo, cloth, \2s. ■' Mr. Aubertin's translation is definite."— Athenæum. "His translation is preceded by a scholarly Introduction, brief but ample." — Saturday Review. "It behoves us" to give this translation unmeasured and unstinted praise." — Spectator. r _</r.i . _ _____..___ .-.. _i__ _-__.. t>:~,^ ...u:,.i_ l__ u_..,,____.- _,.;.l "The metre adopted is the Ottava Rima, which he handles with considerable skill."— Pall Mall Gazette. "Mr. Aubertin has really for the first time placed this famous epic within the reach of English readers who are unacquainted with the Portuguese language."— Daily News. " He has done his work as translator with scrupulous fidelity ; and his version of the 'Lusiads' must be counted the best which we possess." — Standard. *' Mr. Aubertin's power as a translator is of a peculiar kind ... he absolutely identifies himself with his original." — Times.

London : Kegan Paul, Trench & Co. TABLE MOUNTAIN. From Cams' Ground, Rondebosch. SIX MONTHS IN CAPE COLONY AND NATAL, AND ONE MONTH IN TENERIFE AND MADEIRA. BY J. J. AUBERTIN, /^— TRANSLATOR OF "THE LUSIADS " AND "SEVENTY SONNETS OF CAMOENS," AND AUTHOR OF " A FLIGHT TO MEXICO." WITH SIX ILLUSTRATIONS AND A SKETCH MAP. LONDON: KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH & CO., I, PATERNOSTER SQUARE. 1886. Bookseller (loquitur). "A Tour, indeed! I've had enough Of Tours and such-like flimsy stuff. What a fool's errand you have made (I speak the language of the trade) To travel all the country o'er, And write what has been writ before ! We can get Tours — don't make wry faces — From those who never saw the places. I know a man who has the skill To make you Books of Tours at will ; And from his garret in Moorfields Can see what every country yields ; So, if you please, you may retire, And throw your Book into the fire : You need not grin, my friend, nor vapour ; I would not buy it for waste paper !

Chapter I. Bound For Capetown

FLOATING, drifting, and sailing over what we figuratively call the ocean of life, I found myself at Southampton on the ioth of November, 1884, on the margin of the ocean of salt waters, on board the Union Company's S.S. Trojan (Captain Larmer), bound for Capetown. And after spending six months in Cape Colony and Natal, visiting Madeira on my way home, and crossing thence to Tenerife and mounting its celebrated peak, with its 12,186 feet, I found myself again in England on the 31st of July, 1885. This was the scope of the voyage and journey ; and if you, my good reader — and I address you individually, and not as a mere printed name — are disposed to sit down with me, and hear what I have to tell you of all I saw and heard and thought, I shall really be very pleased to have your company through these pages.

But I have no sensational stories to recount ; no gigantic criminals to bring to justice ; no thrilling and agonizing compound plots to unravel, with that B CAPE COLONY AND NATAL. 2 perfect satisfaction to all right and justice which is so easily arranged in novels, but which never comes to pass in the real world. I have no intoxicating pages to indite, with which so many of those who repudiate all wine and spirits are wont, nevertheless, and in a far more poisonous manner, to inebriate the brain. Therefore you must be content to read a quiet tale, which I will vary for you as much as the subject will admit of, even though I may not succeed in raising in you any new sensation. Now, it was no new sensation for me to find myself about to enter on a voyage, as so many scores are now daily doing, of some few thousand miles of sea, without any pressing misgivings of shipwreck or starvation ; nor was it new to me to reflect, while paddling about on a cold wet deck, that in a mere handful of hours I should have left behind me wet driving winds and rains with their chilly heavens, and should be lounging under warm, bright skies instead ; for I had several times gone through all this before.

But it was quite a new sensation to me that at the end of some six thousand miles of ocean I should land where the Queen was reigning, where the Eng lish flag would be flying, and where the English language would be spoken ; for I had never before visited one of our colonies, never before set foot on any spot of that vast colonial empire which is said to embrace in the aggregate an area of eight million square miles, or something only a little less BOUND FOR CAPETOXX'N. 3 than that of the whole European and Asiatic Empire of Russia. So forth we set from Southampton in the after noon, and sailed away in gloomy atmosphere to Plymouth, whence on the following day we turned our prow towards the south, and made for Funchal in Madeira. And soon I found that another new sensation awaited me, in the character of the time we were to pass on board ; for though I had traversed some tens of thousands of miles at sea, I had never met with anything like the life and spirit I found there, from the moment when we sailed into pleasant weather until we landed at Capetown on the nth of Decem ber.

The truth is that we were taking out with us a number of volunteer officers, with their men, who were on their way to join Sir Charles Warren on his expedition into Bechuanaland. Well did they illustrate the spirit of the volunteer ! Some more and some less, of course, according to age ; but altogether little of age was prominent. What were we not enter tained with ? Of these officers I must give a list for memorial's sake, and here they stand : — Lieut. -Colonel A. Morrison. Majors Knox, Martin, Ollivant, and Hon. M. Stapleton. Captains Davison, Hanson, Howell, Harris, John stone, Jones, Newbigging, R.A., and Rait. Lieutenants Angell, Hon. C. Bingham, Church ward, Davidson, Deare, Falknier, Gamble, Hibbert CAPE COLONY AND AATAL. 4 Keefe, Hon. R. Leigh, MacAdam, Monroy, Pelle, Smeaton, Tongue, and Williams.

Surgeon-Major Maunsell, and Surgeons Coates, Emerson, Hughes, Johnston, O'Donnel, and Robins. Veterinary Surgeon Cox. Dep.-A.-C.-G. Calder, and A.-C.-G. McComb. Dancing, theatricals, and concerts, Christy min strels, cricket, and quoits, were in turn celebrated ; in the first three of which entertainments there were happily well-qualified ladies on board to take a part ; and an amusingly gossiping newspaper was periodi cally published, to which I fancy Lieutenant Keefe, with his inimitable cry of " Walk up ! walk up ! " on all occasions was a main contributor, as, indeed, he appeared also to be a general Corypheus. Nor was this all ; for we had daily lotteries on the " runs " of the ship — two or three different lotteries, with auctions for the sale of the tickets ; and in these one of our fellow-passengers, Mr. Myers, of Kimberley, greatly distinguished himself as the auctioneer.

Who ever bid the highest for any given ticket, and thus bought it of the owner who wished to sell it, paid double the price he bid, of which one-half went to the owner, and the other half to the pool. But the owner was obliged to bid for his own ticket if he wished to keep it, and the amount he bid went into the pool, which every day seemed to me to grow larger and larger, though I never succeeded in feeling the effects of this in the palm of my hand. But one very BOUND FOR CAPETOWN. 5 singular circumstance in connection with the doctrine of chances happened, which I cannot but record. On the Monday, for example, a Mr. Burroughs and a Mr. Wood each drew the same number in the two different lotteries, and the number proved a prize ; and on the Tuesday the same fact in drawing hap pened to them, and their number was again a prize !

This Mr. Burroughs was a sporting farmer, and a keen bidder among the tickets ; and there was a special feature about his journey to the Cape connected with the present state of agriculture in England. He had rented a farm not far from Winchester, and had attained to really middle age ; but, declining to con tinue except at a considerable annual reduction of rent, and his landlord equally declining to reduce it, they had parted, and he was sailing to the colony with his cheery wife and two nice young children, a boy and a girl, to buy land and begin life anew. Well ! thus we sailed with always lovely weather after touching at Funchal, at whose beautifully clustered city with its suburbs sprinkled above on the green mountains of Madeira we arrived at about half-past ten on the morning of Tuesday, the 25 th of November.

No further hindrance to our navigation had occurred than a short stoppage on the night of the Saturday, and this was brought about by no greater circumstance than the death and burial of the old cow on board. I had been looking at her on that day and wondering how she could give milk ! Milk on board CAPE COLONY AND NATAL. is indeed a puzzle and a penalty, notwithstanding all the variety of condensed preparations, and the death of a really good cow would deserve a full mortuary notice. Funchal sparkled in the sun, and light clouds lay on the tops of the green mountains behind ; and on leaving this lovely island — why did not England keep it ? — as also on sighting the Peak of Tenerife on the following day, I resolved that this should be the last time of seeing these two ocean gems without realizing an expedition through them.

Lounging, basking, and bathing weather had now begun, and all the life that I have alluded to con tinued in full swing, though a smartish head-wind blew during the theatricals. We were not to touch at St. Helena or Ascension, so that we sailed onwards from Madeira without stoppage, gradually coming up to the sun, passing under him, and leaving him to our north, until, on the afternoon of Thursday, the nth of December, we sighted land to our port before dinner, and drew gradually towards Table Bay and Mountain a little after sunset. The approach was grand. The perfectly cloudless sky was tinged all over with that after-sunset rosy hue which must be familiar to you if you know these climates, and in front were the sharply traced outlines of the massive group that forms the background of Capetown, with the long straight table-line in the midst that gives the name to the mountain.

There was not light enough for the BOUND FOR CAPETOXVA: 7 eye to trace the uneven surfaces of the face, which all lay in the dark blue mystery that approaching night produces. Lights, electrical and others, were glis tening in the harbour, where it was too late to enter, and we lay quietly at anchor outside till the morning. And now our little sailing world, that had been kept together on the waters, was disordered and dis persed. Some went on shore at once in boats with friends who had come to meet them, while among some few of us there was a last carouse before the morning's final separation — " Our little systems have their day ; They have their day and cease to be."

Chapter II. First Days In Capetown

IF the mountain masses, with their dark azure fronts and clear sharp outlines against the fading roses of the sky, impressed me at evening, so did their aspect when we came on deck at early morning, to watch our slow and careful entrance into harbour. To our left, as we faced the shore, there frowned a large group of ragged mountains, and immediately in our front stood forth the wide-extending precipices of the real Table Mountain, with its broad flat table top. But you would have been as astonished as I was at the pecu liarly shaped mist that hung upon the brow. On my uttering an exclamation at this appearance, a passenger belonging to Capetown responded, " Ah ! " said he, " many strangers are struck when they see that sort of cloud upon the Table for the first time. We call it the ' Table-cloth.' " " And well you may," I replied.

" It lies exactly like a cloth along the edge, and there is the very festooning of the linen folds in front, disappearing FIRST DAYS LN CAPETOWN. 9 exactly at the proportionate depth of the usual hang ings. The name, though not romantic, is remarkably descriptive." " When the wind comes quietly from the south-east we have that effect, but at times the clouds are vast and towering." " What a majestic mass the whole group presents ! What do you call the two mountains to the right and left ? " " That to the left we call ' The Devil's Peak.' " " The devil you do ! " " Yes ; and this to the right of the Table compre hends the Lion's Head and the Lion's Rump, where the Signal Station stands. From that point you have a splendid view of the Twelve Apostles." " Of what ? What are the Twelve Apostles ?

" " Oh, they are twelve magnificent buttresses running down the side of the Table Mountain ; in fact, you will not know the mountain till you have been com pletely round him." " But you are like the rest of the world in giving odd names to your mountains ; and yours in particular present to me a rather curious picture ! " " Why so ? You have devil's bridges, and his peaks and dykes and punch-bowls everywhere else ! " " Yes ; but here you are yet more peculiar, for you have so managed your names that you have the devil on one side and the twelve apostles on the other, and the table between them, with the cloth laid ! " CAFE COLONY AND NATAL. 10 " Well, well, well ! " quoth he, breaking out into a laugh, " you can put it so if you please, but it never struck me in that way before, I must confess.

How ever, there are the names you asked for." As we were carefully and quietly gliding into dock, I remarked upon the aspect of the town. There was a hot and dry appearance all round it. " Ah ! " said my friend, " you have come in the hot, dry time. Our fruit season is now beginning, and you will already find quantities of strawberries ; the peaches and the grapes will follow. But if you had come in September, which answers to your English March, you would have seen all those harsh, dry slopes covered with beautiful flowers ; and this change of aspect in spring is presented over even our driest districts." Having been gradually brought up to the quay side, we went on shore — it being Friday morning, the 1 2th of December — and I was immediately hailed by a " hansom," a whole row of which stood ready for us, all being painted white, to resist the heat of the climate, which at latitude 330 56' south is naturally rather considerable in the month of December.

But another feature in the scene immediately struck me, and reminded me of my former days in Brazil ; one, indeed, which struck me more and more every where I afterwards went — and this must contribute to the difficulties attending Cape questions — I mean the abundant mixture of black and coloured population. FIRST DAYS IN CAPETOXVN. 11 A fellow-passenger who had disembarked the night before, and who knew the town well and recom mended me not to sojourn there, had been good enough to undertake to bespeak a room for me at the International Hotel, which lies some ten minutes or a quarter of an hour outside and above the city ; and I was well content to drive through all the hot streets to get there. Passing the Roman Catholic cathedral, which is, I must say, about the ugliest building belonging to that Church (which has so many pleasing ones) that I have ever seen, I found myself mounting the long straight slope of Hope Street, at the top of which the hotel stands, under the vast broad front of Table Mountain, whose sheer precipices were face to face with me as I drove up this road.

As I gradually approached this mountain, it reminded me of my first view, in 1846, of the Swiss Gemmi Pass as seen from Leukerbad, whose precipices I could not then persuade myself we were really going to scale, until we were actually upon them. But I soon became aware that the proportions of Table Mountain were far and far greater than those of the Gemmi. Not only is the width of its table line immense, but while the Gemmi precipices rise only to some two thousand feet, those of the Table Mountain are given a height of 3852 feet above the bay, or between two and three hundred feet higher than Snowdon. At the top of Hope Street, I came to the gateway of the International Hotel, the two sideposts of which bore pretty plain evidence of either clumsy or inebriated driving ; and curving through a large front garden I found myself between two large oleander trees, at the bottom of some steps leading up to a pillared corridor, here called a stoep, and running nearly the width of the house.

Here I was greeted by Mr. and Mrs. O'Callaghan, the host and hostess, with cheerful Irish faces, and (being Irish) with a large family, of course. Eldest and youngest, all looked merry, and I was shown into a spacious bedroom opening on the corridor. This same corridor faces to the north and presents this peculiarity : in summer it is shady, though hot, because the sun is too high to shine into it : while in autumn and winter, from his lower meridian, he pours in his rays. In the evenings, by moonlight or starlight, it is a charm. This charm, however, some times proves somewhat uncharming ; for people often seem to forget to go to bed, and march to and fro, or maintain unmusical conversations far beyond the hour when those who occupy the rooms opening on to it would wish for sleep and silence.

The growing popularity of the hotel, however, will justify Mr. O'Callaghan in building additional rooms ; and par ticularly so as a tramway — where is there not a tramway now? — runs up to the garden entrance. The position is perfect. Trees there are in plenty, and an avenue ; and from some of the windows you look across the blue water of the bay on to the brilliant white strips of sand that shine on the FIRST DAYS IN CAPETOXVN. 13 opposite shore like a streak of snow ; and then come the distant mountains beyond. On almost my first morning, I had a specimen of what is dust in Capetown. The south-east wind had increased to hard blowing, and that phrase is enough for any resident to know what was taking place. The cloud on the Table had swollen into immense rolling masses, losing all vestiges of a cloth, and a wind in the Arabian desert would scarcely have pelted one with more gravel and sand.

The south easter is called " the doctor," because it cleanses the air. Perhaps the dust operates as a broom in its hands — it is often thick enough to pass for such an instrument ; and might be called a flogging broom, or rod. Too ! too ! too ! all the morning long. What on earth is all that noise about ? It is the fishmen in their carts. They come galloping into town from Kalk Bay with fish, and blow their horns in every corner of the city. This, also, is one of the earliest features that a stranger may well note in Cape town. The delivery of letters being one of the first duties, I began with Government House, a cab having been called up from the town by a telephone in the hotel. Sir Hercules Robinson was not in, as he lives by the seaside in the summer; but a day or two afterwards I repeated my visit, and was favoured with a long and interesting conversation, with an offer of letters for my intended journey to various parts of the colony.

The cheerful Military Chaplain, the Rev. Rice Thomas, to whom I had brought a pleasant letter from the Very Rev. Mr. Alder, of Eastbourne, formerly Dean at the Cape, was one of the first to call upon me, and brought an invitation to me to luncheon with Miss Arthur at her establishment, " The Orphanage," where I met the Bishop of Capetown and Mrs. Jones, to whom also I had brought a letter from the Rev. Mr. Hutton, the rector of Chipping Barnet. This orphanage is a small and unpretending but remarkable establishment, the fruit of true benevolence ; and on going over it, and over a school attached to it, I was again struck with the variety of race, and of physiognomy among all the children : presenting all the colours — not of the rainbow. On this subject, again, let me here interpolate that, a few days after this, Methuen's Horse arrived.

As I was standing talking in the street with some officers, we were all ordered to stand off, for the men to be drawn up in line. On one side stood these fine fellows in their brown corduroys, and on the other stood a line of Capetown varieties staring at them. Such was the contrast that I found my right eye and my left (as it were) asking, each the other, what it was looking at. On leaving the Orphanage, I found it my most convenient duty to visit the Cape of Good Hope Bank, where, after paying a respectful bow to an FIRST DAYS IN CAPETOXVN. 15 individual with about the finest head of white hair I have ever seen, I was introduced to Mr. Wright, who received me with no misgiving countenance, and proved my friend to the last in enabling me to fulfil all my desires by furnishing me, from time to time, with that material we all so unaffectedly despise because we are so utterly dependent upon it.

This visit gave me the opportunity of surveying, in its full length, the main straight artery of the town — Adderley Street. It runs down to the sea ; it is wide ; and contains the principal buildings, among which those of the Commercial Exchange and Reading Rooms, and the pompous South African Bank appear ; and turning to the right hand at the end, you come upon the railway-station. The houses on each side are of various whitey-brown colours, and generally speaking have flat roofs. Up this large artery the south-easter occasionally rushes, discharging with vehemence his shot of dust and gravel ; and when the air is still and the sky is clear, great Table Mountain pours down the reflected rays of the sun from his vast broad hot precipices. What other city has such a background ? In the worst of the heat, my good reader, you might possibly suggest, " or would wish to have ?

" The cathedral may rank with some of our average London churches, and when I have said that, and that there are various straight streets running in various directions, laid out with old Dutch regularity, I seem to have said enough about the actual town, with all its public buildings of the usual category. Two, however, of these I must specially mention out of gratitude for the hospitality they afforded me — the "Civil Service" and the "City" Clubs. But when you return to the International, do not do so in a cab up Hope Street again, but walk up the longavenue of oak trees. Government House with its garden faces on to it, and opposite are the remarkable Botanical Gardens. Further up, and before passing out of the shade, you will come upon the college on your right. The very large and important building to your left, as you entered below, is the Palace of the Legislature, or House of Assembly.

As this was yet unfinished when I first saw it, and was not inaugurated until the meeting of Parliament in April, 1885, I will not yet speak of the visits I made to it during the session, after my return from my excursions. So, if you please, we will go straight up the three-quarters of a mile of oak avenue, and, passing to the left over a certain length of hot road, get back to our hotel, and to the received modes of relief after a walk under hot skies.

Chapter III. Excursion To The Cape Of Good Hope

THE bishop having been good enough to give me an invitation to spend a couple of days at Bishopscourt, I decided to make that my start for a visit to the whole of the peninsula, including, of course, the actual Cape of Good Hope, or " Cape Point," as it is now more popularly called. Though comparatively very few ever make this visit, I had a great personal interest in so doing, partly because under any circumstances I should have wished to see this grand historic spot, and mainly from a species of romantic association I had imbibed from my translation of the terrible and mysterious scene which Camoens so power fully works up in the fifth book of his Lusiads, as occurring between Vasco da Gama and the prophetic giant Adamastor. Now this Cape of Good Hope has really no title whatever to that name, except upon the supposition that we can unchristen ourselves and substitute for our baptismal nomination some other by a subsequent ceremony.

Vasco da C Gama, who sailed from Lisbon on the 8th of July, 1497, under the auspices of his king, Dom Manoel the Fortunate, was not the discoverer of this cape. It had been discovered ten years earlier, in 1487, by Bartholomeo Dias, who was the first to pass it, on his attempted sea voyage to India, in which he managed to get as far as the (now called) Great Fish River, many leagues to the east of Port Elizabeth or Algoa Bay. But so bad was the weather when he passed this cape, that he did not sight it in his outward course, but only on his return ; and then, consistently with what he had proved of it, he called it Cabo Tormentoso, or Cape Stormy. That ought to be its name now; but his king, Dom John II., for the purpose of encouraging renewed attempts to reach India by sea, changed this real name into the very opposite one which the Cape now bears.

Poor Dias had no reason at all to consent to the change ; for not only had he named the Cape as he found it, but in 1500 he lost his life during a terrible storm in those regions, while sailing in Pedro Alvares' expedition. This catastrophe Camoens puts into the mouth of the giant Adamastor, as in the form of prophecy — " And here I hope to take, if not misled, 'Gainst him deep vengeance who discovered me." Well! on this excursion I set out, beginning with my pleasant visit to Bishopscourt. On leaving Capetown by rail I soon began to realize the truth of what my fellow-passenger had told me about the beauties of ENTRANCE TO niSHOPSCOURT the mountain ; for every minute unfolded new striking aspects of his vast masses. Arriving presently at Claremont Station, some forty minutes' journey, I found the bishop's chaise, with his chesnut horse and black coachman, and began a remarkably picturesque drive of about twenty minutes through thickly planted roads.

One feature here was the almost impalpable red dust that blew in all directions and actually painted the trees, a large number of which were the lofty Eucalyptus. Then, on entering the property — presented to the bishopric, I understand, by the late Bishop Gray — we passed into a most imposing avenue of lofty pines. These trees had all been planted by the Dutch in years gone by, and the house was Dutch also ; a striking feature connected with it being the large courtyard into which you drive for the entrance, planted with large oak trees, all in order. Few views, indeed, of the particular character can be more enchanting than that of the garden, trees, meadow, and mountain from the bishop's verandah. You may gaze and go away and come to gaze again. " Decies repetita placebit." How far all may be pleasant amidst these charms when the rains come on may be another question.