January 7th.-For the last four days it has again been blowing a wintry hurricane.Every one says that the continuance of these winds so late into the summer (this answers to July)is unheard of,and MUST cease soon.In Table Bay,I hear a good deal of mischief has been done to the shipping.
I hope my long yarns won't bore you.I put down what seems new and amusing to me at the moment,but by the time it reaches you,it will seem very dull and commonplace.I hear that the Scotchman who attacked poor Aria,the crazy Hottentot,is a 'revival lecturer',and was 'simply exhorting him to break his fiddle and come to Christ'(the phrase is a clergyman's,I beg to observe);and the saints are indignant that,after executing the pious purpose as far as the fiddle went,he was prevented by the chief constable from dragging him to the Tronk.The 'revival'mania has broken out rather violently in some places;the infection was brought from St.
Helena,I am told.At Capetown,old Abdool Jemaalee told me that English Christians were getting more like Malays,and had begun to hold 'Kalifahs'at Simon's Bay.These are festivals in which Mussulman fanatics run knives into their flesh,go into convulsions,&c,to the sound of music,like the Arab described by Houdin.Of course the poor blacks go quite demented.
I intend to stay here another two or three weeks,and then to go to Worcester -stay a bit;Paarl,ditto;Stellenbosch,ditto -and go to Capetown early in March,and in April to embark for home.
January 15th.-No mail in yet.We have had beautiful weather the last three days.Captain D-has been in Capetown,and bought a horse,which he rode home seventy-five miles in a day and a half,-the beast none the worse nor tired.I am to ride him,and so shall see the country if the vile cold winds keep off.
This morning I walked on the Veld,and met a young black shepherd leading his sheep and goats,and playing on a guitar composed of an old tin mug covered with a bit of sheepskin and a handle of rough wood,with pegs,and three strings of sheep-gut.I asked him to sing,and he flung himself at my feet in an attitude that would make Watts crazy with delight,and CROONED queer little mournful ditties.I gave him sixpence,and told him not to get drunk.He said,'Oh no;I will buy bread enough to make my belly stiff -Ialmost never had my belly stiff.'He likewise informed me he had just been in the Tronk (prison),and on my asking why,replied:
'Oh,for fighting,and telling lies;'Die liebe Unschuld!(Dear innocence!)Hottentot figs are rather nice -a green fig-shaped thing,containing about a spoonful of SALT-SWEET insipid glue,which you suck out.This does not sound nice,but it is.The plant has a thick,succulent,triangular leaf,creeping on the ground,and growing anywhere,without earth or water.Figs proper are common here,but tasteless;and the people pick all their fruit green,and eat it so too.The children are all crunching hard peaches and plums just now,particularly some little half-breeds near here,who are frightfully ugly.Fancy the children of a black woman and a red-haired man;the little monsters are as black as the mother,and have RED wool -you never saw so diabolical an appearance.Some of the coloured people are very pretty;for example,a coal-black girl of seventeen,and my washerwoman,who is brown.They are wonderfully slender and agile,and quite old hard-working women have waists you could span.They never grow thick and square,like Europeans.
I could write a volume on Cape horses.Such valiant little beasts,and so composed in temper,I never saw.They are nearly all bays -a few very dark grey,which are esteemed;VERY few white or light grey.I have seen no black,and only one dark chestnut.They are not cobs,and look 'very little of them',and have no beauty;but one of these little brutes,ungroomed,half-fed,seldom stabled,will carry a six-and-a-half-foot Dutchman sixty miles a day,day after day,at a shuffling easy canter,six miles an hour.You 'off saddle'every three hours,and let him roll;you also let him drink all he can get;his coat shines and his eye is bright,and unsoundness is very rare.They are never properly broke,and the soft-mouthed colts are sometimes made vicious by the cruel bits and heavy hands;but by nature their temper is perfect.
Every morning all the horses in the village are turned loose,and a general gallop takes place to the water tank,where they drink and lounge a little;and the young ones are fetched home by their niggers,while the old stagers know they will be wanted,and saunter off by themselves.I often attend the Houyhnhnm CONVERSAZIONE at the tank,at about seven o'clock,and am amused by their behaviour;and I continually wish I could see Ned's face on witnessing many equine proceedings here.To see a farmer outspan and turn the team of active little beasts loose on the boundless veld to amuse themselves for an hour or two,sure that they will all be there,would astonish him a little;and then to offer a horse nothing but a roll in the dust to refresh himself withal!
One unpleasant sight here is the skeletons of horses and oxen along the roadside;or at times a fresh carcase surrounded by a convocation of huge serious-looking carrion crows,with neat white neck-cloths.The skeletons look like wrecks,and make you feel very lonely on the wide veld.In this district,and in most,Ibelieve,the roads are mere tracks over the hard,level earth,and very good they are.When one gets rutty,you drive parallel to it,till the bush is worn out and a new track is formed.
January 17th.-Lovely weather all the week.Summer well set in.
