Letters from the Cape [34]
clever, and kindhearted.
I should like to bring home the little Madagascar girl from Rathfelders, or a dear little mulatto who nurses a brown baby here, and is so clean and careful and 'pretty behaved', - but it would be a great risk. The brown babies are ravishing - so fat and jolly and funny.
One great charm of the people here is, that no one expects money or gifts, and that all civility is gratis. Many a time I finger small coin secretly in my pocket, and refrain from giving it, for fear of spoiling this innocence. I have not once seen a LOOK implying 'backsheesh', and begging is unknown. But the people are reserved and silent, and have not the attractive manners of the darkies of Capetown and the neighbourhood.
LETTER X
Caledon, Feb. 22d.
Yesterday Captain D- gave me a very nice caross of blessbok skins, which he got from some travelling trader. The excellence of the Caffre skin-dressing and sewing is, I fancy, unequalled; the bok- skins are as soft as a kid glove, and have no smell at all.
In the afternoon the young doctor drove me, in his little gig-cart and pair (the lightest and swiftest of conveyances), to see a wine- farm. The people were not at work, but we saw the tubs and vats, and drank 'most'. The grapes are simply trodden by a Hottentot, in a tub with a sort of strainer at the bottom, and then thrown - skins, stalks, and all - into vats, where the juice ferments for twice twenty-four hours; after which it is run into casks, which are left with the bung out for eight days; then the wine is drawn off into another cask, a little sulphur and brandy are added to it, and it is bunged down. Nothing can be conceived so barbarous. I have promised Mr. M- to procure and send him an exact account of the process in Spain. It might be a real service to a most worthy and amiable man. Dr. M- also would be glad of a copy. They literally know nothing about wine-making here, and with such matchless grapes I am sure it ought to be good. Altogether, 'der alte Schlendrian' prevails at the Cape to an incredible degree.
If two 'Heeren M-' call on you, please be civil to them. I don't know them personally, but their brother is the doctor here, and the most good-natured young fellow I ever saw. If I were returning by Somerset instead of Worcester, I might put up at their parents' house and be sure of a welcome; and I can tell you civility to strangers is by no means of course here. I don't wonder at it; for the old Dutch families ARE GENTLEFOLKS of the good dull old school, and the English colonists can scarcely suit them. In the few instances in which I have succeeded in THAWING a Dutchman, I have found him wonderfully good-natured; and the different manner in which I was greeted when in company with the young doctor showed the feeling at once. The dirt of a Dutch house is not to be conceived. I have had sights in bedrooms in very respectable houses which I dare not describe. The coloured people are just as clean. The young doctor (who is much Anglicised) tells me that, in illness, he has to break the windows in the farmhouses - they are built not to open! The boers are below the English in manners and intelligence, and hate them for their 'go-ahead' ways, though THEY seem slow enough to me. As to drink, I fancy it is six of one and half a dozen of the other; but the English are more given to eternal drams, and the Dutch to solemn drinking bouts. I can't understand either, in this climate, which is so stimulating, that I more often drink ginger-beer or water than wine - a bottle of sherry lasted me a fortnight, though I was ordered to drink it; somehow, I had no mind to it.
27th. - The cart could not be got till the day before yesterday, and yesterday Mrs. D- arrived in it with two new Irish maids; it saved her 3L., and I must have paid equally. The horses were very tired, having been hard at work carrying Malays all the week to Constantia and back, on a pilgrimage to the tomb of a Mussulman saint; so to-day they rest, and to-morrow I go to Villiersdorp. Choslullah has been
I should like to bring home the little Madagascar girl from Rathfelders, or a dear little mulatto who nurses a brown baby here, and is so clean and careful and 'pretty behaved', - but it would be a great risk. The brown babies are ravishing - so fat and jolly and funny.
One great charm of the people here is, that no one expects money or gifts, and that all civility is gratis. Many a time I finger small coin secretly in my pocket, and refrain from giving it, for fear of spoiling this innocence. I have not once seen a LOOK implying 'backsheesh', and begging is unknown. But the people are reserved and silent, and have not the attractive manners of the darkies of Capetown and the neighbourhood.
LETTER X
Caledon, Feb. 22d.
Yesterday Captain D- gave me a very nice caross of blessbok skins, which he got from some travelling trader. The excellence of the Caffre skin-dressing and sewing is, I fancy, unequalled; the bok- skins are as soft as a kid glove, and have no smell at all.
In the afternoon the young doctor drove me, in his little gig-cart and pair (the lightest and swiftest of conveyances), to see a wine- farm. The people were not at work, but we saw the tubs and vats, and drank 'most'. The grapes are simply trodden by a Hottentot, in a tub with a sort of strainer at the bottom, and then thrown - skins, stalks, and all - into vats, where the juice ferments for twice twenty-four hours; after which it is run into casks, which are left with the bung out for eight days; then the wine is drawn off into another cask, a little sulphur and brandy are added to it, and it is bunged down. Nothing can be conceived so barbarous. I have promised Mr. M- to procure and send him an exact account of the process in Spain. It might be a real service to a most worthy and amiable man. Dr. M- also would be glad of a copy. They literally know nothing about wine-making here, and with such matchless grapes I am sure it ought to be good. Altogether, 'der alte Schlendrian' prevails at the Cape to an incredible degree.
If two 'Heeren M-' call on you, please be civil to them. I don't know them personally, but their brother is the doctor here, and the most good-natured young fellow I ever saw. If I were returning by Somerset instead of Worcester, I might put up at their parents' house and be sure of a welcome; and I can tell you civility to strangers is by no means of course here. I don't wonder at it; for the old Dutch families ARE GENTLEFOLKS of the good dull old school, and the English colonists can scarcely suit them. In the few instances in which I have succeeded in THAWING a Dutchman, I have found him wonderfully good-natured; and the different manner in which I was greeted when in company with the young doctor showed the feeling at once. The dirt of a Dutch house is not to be conceived. I have had sights in bedrooms in very respectable houses which I dare not describe. The coloured people are just as clean. The young doctor (who is much Anglicised) tells me that, in illness, he has to break the windows in the farmhouses - they are built not to open! The boers are below the English in manners and intelligence, and hate them for their 'go-ahead' ways, though THEY seem slow enough to me. As to drink, I fancy it is six of one and half a dozen of the other; but the English are more given to eternal drams, and the Dutch to solemn drinking bouts. I can't understand either, in this climate, which is so stimulating, that I more often drink ginger-beer or water than wine - a bottle of sherry lasted me a fortnight, though I was ordered to drink it; somehow, I had no mind to it.
27th. - The cart could not be got till the day before yesterday, and yesterday Mrs. D- arrived in it with two new Irish maids; it saved her 3L., and I must have paid equally. The horses were very tired, having been hard at work carrying Malays all the week to Constantia and back, on a pilgrimage to the tomb of a Mussulman saint; so to-day they rest, and to-morrow I go to Villiersdorp. Choslullah has been