Letters from the Cape [11]
neither S- nor I have yet heard a black child cry, or seen one naughty or quarrelsome. You would want to lay out a fortune in woolly babies. Yesterday I had a dreadful heartache after my darling, on her little birthday, and even the lovely ranges of distant mountains, coloured like opals in the sunset, did not delight me. This is a dreary place for strangers. Abdul Jemaalee's tisanne, and a banana which he gave me each time I went to his shop, are the sole offer of 'Won't you take something?' or even the sole attempt at a civility that I have received, except from the J-s, who, are very civil and kind.
When I have done my visit to Simon's Bay, I will go 'up country', to Stellenbosch, Paarl and Worcester, perhaps. If I can find people going in a bullock-waggon, I will join them; it costs 1 pound a day, and goes twenty miles. If money were no object, I would hire one with Caffres to hunt, as well as outspan and drive, and take a saddle-horse. There is plenty of pleasure to be had in travelling here, if you can afford it. The scenery is quite beyond anything you can imagine in beauty. I went to a country house at Rondebosch with the J-s, and I never saw so lovely a spot. The possessor had done his best to spoil it, and to destroy the handsome Dutch house and fountains and aqueducts; but Nature was too much for him, and the place lovely in neglect and shabbiness.
Now I will tell you my impressions of the state of society here, as far as I have been able to make out by playing the inquisitive traveller. I dare say the statements are exaggerated, but I do not think they are wholly devoid of truth. The Dutch round Capetown (I don't know anything of 'up country') are sulky and dispirited; they regret the slave days, and can't bear to pay wages; they have sold all their fine houses in town to merchants, &c., and let their handsome country places go to pieces, and their land lie fallow, rather than hire the men they used to own. They hate the Malays, who were their slaves, and whose 'insolent prosperity' annoys them, and they don't like the vulgar, bustling English. The English complain that the Dutch won't die, and that they are the curse of the colony (a statement for which they can never give a reason). But they, too, curse the emancipation, long to flog the niggers, and hate the Malays, who work harder and don't drink, and who are the only masons, tailors, &c., and earn from 4S. 6D. to 10S. a day. The Malays also have almost a monopoly of cart-hiring and horse- keeping; an Englishman charges 4 pounds 10S. or 5 pounds for a carriage to do what a Malay will do quicker in a light cart for 30S. S- says, 'The English here think the coloured people ought to do the work, and they to get the wages. Nothing less would satisfy them.' Servants' wages are high, but other wages not much higher than in England; yet industrious people invariably make fortunes, or at least competencies, even when they begin with nothing. But few of the English will do anything but lounge; while they abuse the Dutch as lazy, and the Malays as thieves, and feel their fingers itch to be at the blacks. The Africanders (Dutch and negro mixed in various proportions) are more or less lazy, dirty, and dressy, and the beautiful girls wear pork-pie hats, and look very winning and rather fierce; but to them the philanthropists at home have provided formidable rivals, by emptying a shipload of young ladies from a 'Reformatory' into the streets of Capetown.
I am puzzled what to think of the climate here for invalids. The air is dry and clear beyond conception, and light, but the sun is scorching; while the south-east wind blows an icy hurricane, and the dust obscures the sky. These winds last all the summer, till February or March. I am told when they don't blow it is heavenly, though still cold in the mornings and evenings. No one must be out at, or after sunset, the chill is so sudden. Many of the people here declare that it is death to weak lungs, and send their POITRINAIRES to Madeira, or the south of France. They also swear the climate
When I have done my visit to Simon's Bay, I will go 'up country', to Stellenbosch, Paarl and Worcester, perhaps. If I can find people going in a bullock-waggon, I will join them; it costs 1 pound a day, and goes twenty miles. If money were no object, I would hire one with Caffres to hunt, as well as outspan and drive, and take a saddle-horse. There is plenty of pleasure to be had in travelling here, if you can afford it. The scenery is quite beyond anything you can imagine in beauty. I went to a country house at Rondebosch with the J-s, and I never saw so lovely a spot. The possessor had done his best to spoil it, and to destroy the handsome Dutch house and fountains and aqueducts; but Nature was too much for him, and the place lovely in neglect and shabbiness.
Now I will tell you my impressions of the state of society here, as far as I have been able to make out by playing the inquisitive traveller. I dare say the statements are exaggerated, but I do not think they are wholly devoid of truth. The Dutch round Capetown (I don't know anything of 'up country') are sulky and dispirited; they regret the slave days, and can't bear to pay wages; they have sold all their fine houses in town to merchants, &c., and let their handsome country places go to pieces, and their land lie fallow, rather than hire the men they used to own. They hate the Malays, who were their slaves, and whose 'insolent prosperity' annoys them, and they don't like the vulgar, bustling English. The English complain that the Dutch won't die, and that they are the curse of the colony (a statement for which they can never give a reason). But they, too, curse the emancipation, long to flog the niggers, and hate the Malays, who work harder and don't drink, and who are the only masons, tailors, &c., and earn from 4S. 6D. to 10S. a day. The Malays also have almost a monopoly of cart-hiring and horse- keeping; an Englishman charges 4 pounds 10S. or 5 pounds for a carriage to do what a Malay will do quicker in a light cart for 30S. S- says, 'The English here think the coloured people ought to do the work, and they to get the wages. Nothing less would satisfy them.' Servants' wages are high, but other wages not much higher than in England; yet industrious people invariably make fortunes, or at least competencies, even when they begin with nothing. But few of the English will do anything but lounge; while they abuse the Dutch as lazy, and the Malays as thieves, and feel their fingers itch to be at the blacks. The Africanders (Dutch and negro mixed in various proportions) are more or less lazy, dirty, and dressy, and the beautiful girls wear pork-pie hats, and look very winning and rather fierce; but to them the philanthropists at home have provided formidable rivals, by emptying a shipload of young ladies from a 'Reformatory' into the streets of Capetown.
I am puzzled what to think of the climate here for invalids. The air is dry and clear beyond conception, and light, but the sun is scorching; while the south-east wind blows an icy hurricane, and the dust obscures the sky. These winds last all the summer, till February or March. I am told when they don't blow it is heavenly, though still cold in the mornings and evenings. No one must be out at, or after sunset, the chill is so sudden. Many of the people here declare that it is death to weak lungs, and send their POITRINAIRES to Madeira, or the south of France. They also swear the climate