The covenant - James A. Michener [50]
Although it was unclaimed, it was not untouched. In this empty period one hundred and fifty-three known expeditions actually landed at the Cape, and since many consisted of multiple ships, sometimes ten or twelve, it can be said with certainty that on the average at least one major ship a year stopped, often staying for extended periods. In 1580 Sir Francis Drake, heading home at the end of his circumnavigation with a fortune in cloves, caused to be written in his log:
From Java we sailed for the Cape of Good Hope. We ranne hard aboard the Cape, finding the report of the Portugals to be most false, who affirme that it is the most dangerous Cape of the world, never without intolerable storms and present dangers to travallers, which come neare the same. This Cape is a most stately thing, and the fairest we saw in the whole circumference of the earth.
In 1601 when Sir James Lancaster arrived with a small fleetan appalling two hundred and nine days out of Londonone hundred and five men were dead of scurvy, with the rest too weak to man the sails. There was one exception; in General Lancaster's own ship the men were in good shape:
And the reason why the Generals men stood better in health than the men of other ships was this; he brought to sea with him certaine bottles of the Juice of Limons, which hee gave to each one, as long as it would last, three spoonfuls every day . . .
Lancaster kept his men ashore forty-six days, plus five more at anchor in the roads, and during this time he was astonished at the level of society he encountered among the little brown men who occupied the land:
We bought of them a thousand Sheepe and two and fortie Oxen; and might have bought more if we would. These Oxen are full as bigge as ours and the sheepe many of them much bigger, fat and sweet and (to our thinking) much better than our sheepe in England . . . Their speech they clocke with their tongues in such sort, that in seven weeks which wee remained heere in this place, the sharpest wit among us could not learne one word of their language; and yet the people would soone understand any signe wee made to them . . . While that wee stayed heere in this baye we had so royall refreshing that all our men recovered their health and strength, onely foure or five excepted.
Year after year the ships stopped by, the sailors lived ashore, and the clerks wrote accounts of what transpired, so that there exists a rather better record of the unoccupied Cape than of other areas that were settled by unlettered troops. The character of the little brown people with their clicking tongue is especially well laid out'they speak from the throat and seem to sob and sigh'so that scholars throughout Europe had ample knowledge of the Cape long before substantial interest was shown by their governments. Indeed, one enterprising London editor compiled a four-volume book dealing largely with travels past the Cape, Purchas his Pilgrimes, and entered unknowingly into literary history as the principal source for The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
Two engaging traditions endeared the Cape to sailors. It became the custom that whenever the navigator sensed that he was nearing the Cape, he would alert the crew, whereupon all ordinary seamen would strain to see who could first cry out: 'Table Mountain!' After his sighting was verified, the captain ceremoniously handed him a silver coin, and all hands, officers and men alike, stood at the railing to see once more this extraordinary mountain.
It was not a peak; as if some giant carpenter had planed it down, its top seemed as flat as a palace floor, and not a small floor, either, but a vast one. Its sides were steep and it possessed a peculiarity that never ceased to amaze: at frequent intervals, on a cloudless