The CAMPERDOWN has only upper-deck cabins,and I shall have fresh air.I am not as well as I was at Caledon,so I am all the more anxious to have a voyage likely to do me good instead of harm.
I got my cart and Choslullah photographed after all.Choslullah came next day (having got rid of his pious friend),quite resolved that 'the Missis'should take his portrait,so I will send or bring a few copies of my beloved cart.After the photograph was done,we drove round the Kloof,between Table and Lion Mountain.The road is cut on the side of Lion Mountain,and overhangs the sea at a great height.Camp Bay,which lies on the further side of the 'Lion's Head',is most lovely;never was sea so deeply blue,rocks so warmly brown,or sand and foam so glittering white;and down at the mountain-foot the bright green of the orange and pomegranate trees throws it all out in greater relief.But the atmosphere here won't do after that of the 'Ruggings',as the Caledon line of country is called.I shall never lose the impression of the view Ihad when Dr.Morkel drove me out on a hill-side,where the view seemed endless and without a vestige of life;and yet in every valley there were farms;but it looked a vast,utter solitude,and without the least haze.You don't know what that utter clearness means -the distinctness is quite awful.Here it is always slightly hazy;very pretty and warm,but it takes off from the grandeur.It is the difference between a pretty Pompadour beauty and a Greek statue.Those pale opal mountains,as distinct in every detail as the map on your table,are so cheerful and serene;no melodramatic effects of clouds and gloom.I suppose it is not really so beautiful as it seemed to me,for other people say it is bare and desolate,and certainly it is;but it seemed to me anything but dreary.
I am persuaded that Capetown is not healthy;indeed,the town can't be,from its stench and dirt;but I believe the whole seashore is more or less bad,compared to the upper plateaux,of which I know only the first.I should have gone back to Paarl,only that ships come and go within twenty-four hours,so one has the pleasure of living in constant expectation,with packed trunks,wondering when one shall get away.A clever Mr.M-,who has lived ALL OVER India,and is going back to Singapore,with his wife and child,are now in the house;and some very pleasant Jews,bound for British Caffraria -one of them has a lovely little wife and three children.She is very full of Prince Albert's death,and says there was not a dry eye in the synagogues in London,which were all hung with black on the day of his funeral,and prayer went on the whole day.'THEPEOPLE mourned for him as much as for Hezekiah;and,indeed,he deserved it a great deal better,'was her rather unorthodox conclusion.These colonial Jews are a new 'Erscheinung'to me.
They have the features of their race,but many of their peculiarities are gone.Mr.L-,who is very handsome and gentlemanly,eats ham and patronises a good breed of pigs on the 'model farm'on which he spends his money.He is (he says)a thorough Jew in faith,and evidently in charitable works;but he wants to say his prayers in English and not to 'dress himself up' in a veil and phylacteries for the purpose;and he and his wife talk of England as 'home',and care as much for Jerusalem as their neighbours.
