I am persecuted by the ugliest and blackest Mozambiquer I have yet seen,a bricklayer's labourer,who can speak English,and says he was servant to an English Captain -'Oh,a good fellow he was,only he's dead!'He now insists on my taking him as a servant.'Idessay your man at home is a good chap,and I'll be a good boy,and cook very nice.'He is thick-set and short and strong.Nature has adorned him with a cock eye and a yard of mouth,and art,with a prodigiously tall white chimney-pot hat with the crown out,a cotton nightcap,and a wondrous congeries of rags.He professes to be cook,groom,and 'walley',and is sure you would be pleased with his attentions.
Well,to go back to Gnadenthal.I wandered all over the village on Sunday afternoon,and peeped into the cottages.All were neat and clean,with good dressers of crockery,the VERY poorest,like the worst in Weybridge sandpits;but they had no glass windows,only a wooden shutter,and no doors;a calico curtain,or a sort of hurdle supplying its place.The people nodded and said 'Good day!'but took no further notice of me,except the poor old Hottentot,who was seated on a doorstep.He rose and hobbled up to meet me and take my hand again.He seemed to enjoy being helped along and seated down carefully,and shook and patted my hand repeatedly when I took leave of him.At this the people stared a good deal,and one woman came to talk to me.
In the evening I sat on a bench in the square,and saw the people go in to 'Abendsegen'.The church was lighted,and as I sat there and heard the lovely singing,I thought it was impossible to conceive a more romantic scene.On Monday I saw all the schools,and then looked at the great strong Caffre lads playing in the square.One of them stood to be pelted by five or six others,and as the stones came,he twisted and turned and jumped,and was hardly ever hit,and when he was,he didn't care,though the others hurled like catapults.It was the most wonderful display of activity and grace,and quite incredible that such a huge fellow should be so quick and light.When I found how comfortable dear old Mrs.Rietz made me,I was sorry I had hired the cart and kept it to take me home,for I would gladly have stayed longer,and the heat did me no harm;but I did not like to throw away a pound or two,and drove back that evening.Mrs.Rietz,told me her mother was a Mozambiquer.'And your father?'said I.'Oh,I don't know.
MY MOTHER WAS ONLY A SLAVE.'She,too,was a slave,but said she 'never knew it',her 'missus'was so good;a Dutch lady,at a farm I had passed,on the road,who had a hundred and fifty slaves.Iliked my Hottentot hut amazingly,and the sweet brown bread,and the dinner cooked so cleanly on the bricks in the kitchen.The walls were whitewashed and adorned with wreaths of everlasting flowers and some quaint old prints from Loutherburg -pastoral subjects,not exactly edifying.
Well,I have prosed unconscionably,so adieu for the present.
February 3d.-Many happy returns of your birthday,dear -.I had a bottle of champagne to drink your health,and partly to swell the bill,which these good people make so moderate,that I am half ashamed.I get everything that Caledon can furnish for myself and S-for 15L.a month.
On Saturday we got the sad news of Prince Albert's death,and it created real consternation here.What a thoroughly unexpected calamity!Every one is already dressed in deep mourning.It is more general than in a village of the same size at home -(how Ihave caught the colonial trick of always saying 'home'for England!
Dutchmen who can barely speak English,and never did or will see England,equally talk of 'news from home').It also seems,by the papers of the 24th of December,which came by a steamer the other day,that war is imminent.I shall have to wait for convoy,Isuppose,as I object to walking the plank from a Yankee privateer.
I shall wait here for the next mail,and then go back to Capetown,stopping by the way,so as to get there early in March,and arrange for my voyage.The weather had a relapse into cold,and an attempt at rain.Pity it failed,for the drought is dreadful this year,chiefly owing to the unusual quantity of sharp drying winds -a most unlucky summer for the country and for me.
My old friend Klein,who told me several instances of the kindness and gratitude of former slaves,poured out to me the misery he had undergone from the 'ingratitude'of a certain Rosina,a slave-girl of his.She was in her youth handsome,clever,the best horsebreaker,bullock-trainer and driver,and hardest worker in the district.She had two children by Klein,then a young fellow;six by another white man,and a few more by two husbands of her own race!But she was of a rebellious spirit,and took to drink.
After the emancipation,she used to go in front of Klein's windows and read the statute in a loud voice on every anniversary of the day;and as if that did not enrage him enough,she pertinaciously (whenever she was a little drunk)kissed him by main force every time she met him in the street,exclaiming,'Aha!when I young and pretty slave-girl you make kiss me then;now I ugly,drunk,dirty old devil and free woman,I kiss you!'Frightful retributive justice!I struggled hard to keep my countenance,but the fat old fellow's good-humoured,rueful face was too much for me.His tormentor is dead,but he retains a painful impression of her 'ingratitude '.
