1843, May.—Cape Town, when viewed from the sea, is beautiful and singular; the white houses are close to the shore, surrounded by mountains; the Devil’s Peak, the Table, and the Lion Mountain form a fine picture, enlivened by the number of vessels in the bay, lying close to the town. From the New Jetty, where you land, in the early morning of a clear day, the Blue Mountains, to the right of Robin’s Island, on the opposite side of the bay, are very beautiful. From the Old Jetty under the Table Mountain you see, to the right, the wreck of the “Abercrombie Robertson,” and that of the “Reform;” these lie near together. At the same place the “Waterloo” went on shore, but being rotten, instantly went to pieces, and disappeared. A little to the right, nearer the castle, are two other wrecks, now fast disappearing.

The castle and the barracks are close to this jetty; the latter was formerly the storehouse of the Dutch merchants. The principal street in Cape Town is the Heerengracht, which runs up from the shore: the George Hotel—the best hotel in the place, is in this street: we went there, it was quite full, and the passengers from the “Carnatic” found a difficulty in procuring rooms; from its being the race-week the place was full.

I found my husband residing in the house of a French lady in Roeland-street, close under Table Mountain. This house is reckoned amongst the most respectable houses of the class, and its situation at the farthest end of the town is desirable; you have quiet and fresh air. Had I arrived in the summer season at the Cape I should have preferred a house at Wynberg; during the winter time, Wynberg being damp, the inhabitants generally come into Cape Town. In a boarding-house there are many inconveniences, but you are saved the trouble of house-keeping, which to an Indian is a most vile affair; therefore I was content to remain. The terms at a boarding-house are seven shillings and sixpence a day for each person, which includes one bed-room, food and wine; the food is good; the wine, which is Cape, is only drinkable for those accustomed to it; and the Cape beer I did not venture to taste. House-rent is very cheap, and food also; meat, threepence per pound; an enormous fish costs twopence; a great craw-fish one penny; a fine fowl, thirteen-pence halfpenny; a small cart of fire-wood, seven shillings and sixpence.

The reports I heard in Cape Town respecting house-keeping in the country were not favourable; they say the houses in the country are generally leaky, and the landlords will not repair them; that the servants are thieves and liars, and, moreover, extremely dirty, requiring constant overlooking in the kitchen. The houses in Cape Town are infested with myriads of fleas—and such fleas!—perfect monsters! They have also a fair proportion of bugs.

10th.—I went to the fish market, a square-walled enclosure near the Old Jetty. The scene was curious and animated; Malays, Hottentots, Bushmen, and queer-looking people of all sorts, ages, and tribes, dressed out in their gayest colours, and grinning like so many monkeys, were all huddled together selling or buying fish. Cartloads of the most enormous craw-fish lay on the ground, crawling about and fighting each other; and on the ground near to them were heaps of silver-fish, and quantities of Cape salmon, and fish without scales, with long thin bodies and pointed heads, which were sold for one penny each,—good when salted and smoked; and there were also a number of queer-looking fish, of all sorts and sizes, with unpronounceable names. The porters who attend the market carry the fish away in baskets slung to each end of a long pole balanced on the shoulder;—and such creatures as these porters are! I bought a gielbeck or yellow beak, for which I paid twopence; the palate of the gielbeck is yellow, whence its name. A Malay porter carried it to the house on a stick through its gills, for which his pay was also twopence,—a great price for a very short distance, compared with the price of the fish, which was a very large one. One day I met a Bush-boy dragging off a fish as long as himself; he had a great stick over his shoulder, the end of which was passed through one of the gills of the fish, whilst the tail of the creature swept the ground. The high cheek-boned little black monster laughed and grinned as I could not repress an exclamation at his exceeding and picturesque ugliness.

16th.—The year, they tell me, is divided into two parts, the dry and the wet,—nine months of dry weather, and three months of rain; June, July, and August being the cold and rainy months. This day, the 16th of May, it is very cold, and may be reckoned a winter month; the thermometer in my bed-room at noon 58°. Since my arrival on the 26th April we have had daily showers, and some few days of rain; still, between the heavy showers the sun bursts forth, and a walk is delightful.

At breakfast-time a gentleman related to me an extraordinary history respecting slavery at the Cape; the particulars are as follow:—“The ‘Cleopatra’ has seized a Brazilian vessel—the ‘Progresso;’ she is a slaver. The ‘Cleopatra’ has taken from her thirteen prisoners and forty-eight slaves; with these people she has arrived at Pappendosh, a place near Cape Town, where the slaves have been landed; the rest of the slaves will follow in the ‘Progresso:’ she has not come in at present; she was taken in the Mozambique Channel. The slaves will now be examined and classed according to their ages,—the age is arbitrarily settled. They generally arrive branded; and as without some distinguishing mark they cannot be known, it is supposed those who may happen to have no mark will be branded by the authorities at the Cape. Blank indentures are to be drawn out, in which the age of the slave, his marks, &c., will be shown forth. The slaves are generally young, and they, supposing the age to be about ten years, will be bound to the purchaser of the indenture until the age of twenty-one; these indentures are to be sold by auction on the Parade at Cape Town to the highest bidder. The slaves who may be more aged are to be bound for a certain term of years to the person who buys them, so that their slavery may be the same with those of earlier years. These proceedings are under the authority of the Government; the motive is to conciliate the Dutch, who are generally the purchasers of the slaves.”

As the English hold forth that they abolish slavery, these proceedings appear curious, and I will go, if possible, to see the slaves sold on the parade. Although we do not originally capture the slaves we capture the vessels when carrying them away, take them into the Cape, and sell them for our own profit for a certain term of years to the highest bidder at public auction. It is mentioned in the indentures that the slaves are to be brought up in the Christian religion. It is said the slaves generally have no religion at all, and their masters leave them in utter ignorance.

The Table Mountain is to me a source of constant enjoyment; I delight in its varied appearance: at times a dense white vapour is spread over it,—when that passes away, the deep clear ultramarine blue of the sky, covered with bright clouds, forms a background to the dark mountain, whilst, every now and then, a stormy grey cloud passes over all, and gives a beautiful effect of light and shade.

I roamed the other day up the mountain by the side of the torrent, the bed of which is filled with large stones, over which the stream gurgles and runs with velocity. Hundreds of women and some few men were all employed washing clothes by beating them upon the stones in the stream: some of the women, with their infants tied upon their backs, were washing away, and the whole side of the mountain was covered with linen drying on the grass. How many of the groups would have formed an admirable picture, in spite of the ugliness of these Malay and Hottentot animals! They ask four shillings and sixpence, or three and sixpence a dozen for washing clothes, but will generally take two shillings and sixpence, including large and small. For the ship passengers they wash very badly; for people resident in Cape Town they wash well.

We accompanied a gentleman and his family up the mountain under the Devil’s Peak; he was going to teach his boys to fire at a target. They produced a great heavy old pair of flint pistols, and with these they amused themselves. I was enrolled amongst the Tyros; the two gentlemen were the best shots,—I took rank as the third; my success charmed me, although I was afraid of the pistol,—the crazy old weapon was so heavy I could scarcely take aim. A few evenings afterwards a pretty young French lady accompanied the party, and fired remarkably true.

25th.—The sun during the day is very powerful; it does not answer in these latitudes to expose one’s self to its rays during the noontide heat. At 4 P.M. we went on the mountain to practise pistol-shooting; we found that after sunset there was scarcely any twilight, and warned by the very cold, sharp exhalations from the wet ground, we quitted the spot quickly, but not before we had all taken cold.

June 11th.—The thermometer in my room at noon 53°, the air sharp and very cold. Rambled up Table Mountain, beyond the mill, from which place the narrow pathway is surrounded by flowers, even at this early season. I gathered great branches of what is called in England the Duke of York’s geranium; it was not in flower, but the scent of the leaves was delicious; it grew there most luxuriantly; when in blossom the flower is lilac and white. The purple and white prickly heath, and the white heath, were abundant; the deep orange-coloured aromatic azalia, the bossistroph or honey-plant, the fine white arum, and the tall slender Ixia, with its pendant crimson and graceful blossom, and its small bulb, which shot up every here and there, delighted me with their beauty. These plants, cultivated with so much care in England, were growing wild in every direction surrounding the little stony sheep-path I was ascending.

They say mechanics use the oil from the tip of the tail of the Cape sheep for their machinery, and that it does not become foul in the works. Five pounds’ weight of the tips of the tails of the sheep costs two shillings and sixpence, and produces two quarts and a half of fine clear oil, after having been melted over the fire and strained through a flannel bag. Animals in southern Africa appear to run to tail: see the enormous size of the tail of the sheep into which all the fat of the body appears to be collected: see the pretty mousehunt (a sort of fox), the Hottentot women in Cape Town, and the Bushwomen; all these have the beauty of the Hottentot Venus. Some of the Malays, both men and women, are handsome: the Africanders are too universally well known to need description.

THE BUSHWOMAN.

The Bojesmāns or Bushmen are a most remarkable race. In one of my solitary rambles on Table Mountain, I came suddenly upon three of these people, who were squatting round a small fire in a cleft of the rock. Curiosity induced me to stop and look at them; they appeared to dislike my presence and scrutiny, and, as far as I could judge from the angry tone of their words and their suspicious glances, they were glad when I walked on.

The speech of the Bojesmāns is a most remarkable and extraordinary clack clack—unlike any other language under the sun, something resembling the striking together of harsh castanets. The sketch represents a Bushwoman; it is a portrait; she has a bunch of bulbs in her hand: they principally feed on roots and vegetables. Her attire is of leather; coloured beads are around her neck, her ear-rings are of ivory, a curious ornament is in front of her body, and her kraal or hut is in the distance.

In 1847, I saw four Bojesmāns who were exhibited at the Egyptian Hall; they were handsome specimens of their kind; the women were younger than the one represented in the sketch, still the peculiarity of the figure and the style of countenance stamp them of the same race.

The following extract from Harris’s “Wild Sports of Southern Africa,” contains a most interesting description of the Bushmen:—

“At Kramers-fontein the next day, a horrible spectacle presented itself to us in the form of an emaciated old Bushwoman, who had come down from her kraal, five miles distant, to fill two ostrich eggs with water. ‘Grim misery had worn her to the bones,’ and it is no exaggeration to say that her attenuated form appeared a skeleton covered with a wet cloth. Those rounded proportions, which are given to the human form divine, had no existence in her. Her skin resembled wrinkled leather; and I can compare her legs and arms to nothing but straightened sticks, knobbed at the joints. Her body was actually crawling with vermin, with which she was constantly feeding a little half-inanimate miniature of herself in arms.

We were glad to bribe her to depart by a present of tobacco; and the wretched creature’s countenance evinced thankfulness at our liberality.

“The pigmy race, of which this woman was a characteristic specimen, usually reside in holes and crannies of rocks, and sometimes in wretched huts, incapable of protecting them from the inclemency of the seasons. These, their constant fear of discovery induces them to erect in secluded spots at a great distance from water: a precaution to which they are further prompted by a desire to leave the pools open for wild animals, which they occasionally shoot from an ambush with poisoned arrows, and devour on the spot. They possess neither flocks nor herds—are unacquainted with agriculture—and the most wealthy can boast of no property beyond his weapons and his starving dog. With no cares beyond the present moment, they live almost entirely upon bulbous roots, locusts, reptiles, and the larvæ of ants, with the habitations of which latter the country is in many places thickly strewed. Not a trace of their hovels could be seen from the road; and a traveller might even pass through their country without seeing a human being, or suspecting that it was inhabited. Such is their general distrust of visitors, that the males would never willingly approach us, evincing great trepidation when forced to do so—no object being more unwelcome to their sight than a troop of horsemen on the plain.

“The women, who were much less shy, and who never failed to follow the tracks of our waggons when they happened to come upon them, with the hope of obtaining tobacco in exchange for ostrich eggs, are of small and delicate proportions, with hands and feet of truly Lilliputian dimensions. Their footprints reminded us of Gulliver’s adventures, and are not larger than those of a child. When young, they have a pleasing expression of countenance, which they take care to render as captivating as possible by bedaubing their flat noses and prominent cheek-bones with a mixture of red-ochre and fat. The toilets of many were made with scrupulous attention, the effect of the paint being enhanced by necklaces composed of the fresh entrails of wild beasts—a few cowrie shells, old bones, and buttons being also interwoven with their matted hair; but the life they lead, their frequent long abstinence, and constant exposure to the wind and glare of light in a dry open country, soon inducing the habit of keeping their naturally small eyes more than half closed, their comeliness is very ephemeral, and never extends beyond youth. The females possess much greater volubility and animation of gesture than the men; but the sounds they utter are a succession of claps of the tongue produced by forcing that unruly member against different parts of the teeth and palate: and whilst the enunciation is thus rendered troublesome and full of impediment, it resembles rather the chattering of monkeys than the language of human beings.”

18th.—Thermometer at noon 52°.—Sharp and very cold: the scarlet fever in Cape Town.

19th.—Walked to Green Point, and gathered shells beyond the second lighthouse, which is situated on a rocky shore, where vessels are frequently wrecked, both accidentally and, it is said, intentionally. The waves break beautifully over the rocks that run out far into the sea. The sand on the shore glitters like silver, being composed of fragments of pounded shells: there are numerous shells to be found, but generally broken by the ruggedness of the coast. The people dig for them here, and procure them in great quantities out of the sand, which they sift; they are sold to burn for lime, which is made at a less cost from the shells than from the limestone quarries, as on the latter a duty is levied by the municipality.

The rocks are covered with limpets of all sorts, and cockles: the great ear shell (haliotis) is common, the coat-of-mail shell (chiton) and other species are also numerous. The great ear shells I have seen carried about for sale in Cape Town at twopence each; the people consider the contents good food.

In Camp’s Bay, and other bays, I understand fine and perfect specimens of a great variety of shells are found where the shore is less rugged and the sand good. The enormous size of the sea-weed is quite surprising, its great stem is of such length and thickness. On removing a clump of the sea-weed, the sand is alive with millions of wood-lice, at least I think they are so called; they make great bounds by rolling themselves up in a ball, and suddenly opening, the strength of the scales and the breadth of the tail sending them on at a surprising rate. It brought to my mind those early days in which a mouse, with a tail turned under the body, and fixed with a bit of cobbler’s wax, was made to jump about the room to my great delight.

21st.—Heavy rain—thermometer 56° at noon; the rain has taken away the great sharpness of the cold, which was too cutting to be pleasant. In these slightly-built houses, when the thermometer was 52° under the mountain, the air was very cold and clear, and peculiarly sharp and crisp. I roamed as usual up the mountain; it is covered with honey bush, at present in full flower, both the red and the white; the protea, a sort of honey bush, is now also in flower. As I made my way along, myriads of small sugar birds started from the bushes, where, fluttering over the flowers, they had been dipping their long slender beaks into the sweet juice below. The people collect the juice which flows in great abundance from the flower of the honey bush; they warm it, and sell it in quart bottles at three shillings a piece to the druggists, who recommend it for coughs.

23rd.—Bought four rings of ivory, which the Kaffirs wear as bracelets and anklets, formed after a very simple fashion. From the hollow end of the elephant’s tusk, where it is three-quarters of an inch in thickness, a circle is cut off one inch in breadth; in this rude state it is worn as an ornament, three or four on each leg and arm. Purchased a pair of bullocks’ horns, well polished, for four shillings; but the enormous price asked for specimens in Cape Town deterred me from making as many purchases as I should otherwise have done.

July 5th.—Heavy rain and very unpleasant weather: the people are suffering from colds and sore throats; which illness, they say, has been brought by the wind that blows over from the sea between Table Mountain and the Lion’s Head.

6th.—An illness, called by the Capers the Sinkings, is very prevalent; it appears to be a swelling or inflammation of the glands of the throat.

7th.—The middle of the Cape winter. Auctions are conducted on a curious principle, the lowest bidder being the purchaser: it is a Dutch practice, and rather difficult to comprehend.

9th.—Walked beyond the hospital on the shore, where several wrecks lie scattered—found some pretty shells. Robberies are daily committed during the night in Cape Town by the Malays. At this time of the year it is their custom to make presents to their priests: the presents must be made, whether the men have it in their power to offer them or not. In the latter case they commit robbery to satisfy the demands of their spiritual advisers—several houses have been broken into.

14th.—Walked towards Camp’s Bay over the Lion Mountain; sketched some Cape aloes which were growing most luxuriantly on the road-side, where they had been planted as a hedge—the stem was of the most brilliant crimson tint—the prickly pear in full bloom, with its white and crimson flower, and its deep crimson buds mixed beautifully with the aloes in the foreground; and in the distance beyond lay the sea and the Blueberg Mountains. I found a great variety of the most beautiful heaths, also a number of bulbs. The Africander was in bloom, as well as those bulbs that give forth their scent at sunset. The Malays are extremely partial to these sweet night-scented flowers, and collect them by the handful.

17th.—From the foot of the Devil’s Peak I sketched the Lion Mountain; it was covered with a deep driving fog that hung in wreaths not unlike a mane around it; the fog covered the shipping that was just visible below it, and the town looked indistinct: it was a most cold and unwholesome day; but I gathered beautiful flowers; the arums and prickly pears were in full bloom.

29th.—Ascended the Lion’s Rump, and arrived at the signal-post in time to see a magnificent sunset: took a sketch of the Lion’s Head, to the right of which was the back of Table Mountain, and the Southern Ocean to the left. The town and the bay from this mountain are seen to great advantage; the regularity of the plan on which the town was built by the Dutch is excellent. The walk this evening delighted me; my young companions and I sat down many times, and employed ourselves with digging up the bulbs with which the mountain is literally covered. The size of some of the bulbous roots is surprising, one weighed three pounds and a quarter, and measured in circumference twenty inches and a half; the height of the bulb was five inches and a half, and the leaves were eleven inches long. The fragrance of the flowers of the night-scented bulbs became delicious as we descended the mountain very late in the evening; it is rich in fine grass, and bulbs innumerable.

Aug. 4th.—Visited the Botanical Garden under the Lion’s Head; a number of trees and plants from Australia are collected there. The most brilliant African plant in blossom was the Strelitzia regina, with its orange and purple blossom, and its long wand-like leaves. The Kaffir bread-tree (Zamia horrida) and the Zamia longifolia are very remarkable; grass trees from Australia were there, but they had perished from the cold. When on the Lion’s Head we saw a very curious bulb, the hæmanthus or blood-flower; the bulb is of large size, and produces only two leaves, which turn back and lie open upon the ground; they have no stalk, and lie close upon the earth, the colour a bright green; some of this class have spotted leaves. The gardener told me that the Bushmen use the juice of the spotted hæmanthus as poison for their arrows; and my young companions said, when they were on the frontier they saw a Bushman stick his arrow between the two leaves down into the bulb, and he told them, in that manner the Bushmen poisoned their weapons[40].

In India the Hill-men from Rajmal use poison on their arrows; it is most powerful and fatal, but they will not disclose from what plant they obtain it. The Hill-men at Almorah preserve the same secrecy on the subject. The hæmanthus toxicaria has spotted leaves; of these plants there were many in the garden, newly placed there, and they had not been there long enough to flower.

Harris, in speaking of African poisons, says:—“The Bechuana, with what truth I know not, are said occasionally to domesticate this stately bird (the ostrich) for equestrian purposes; and the puny Bushman avails himself of the disguise afforded by its skin to mix with a troop of wild animals, and select his victim. At the twang of his tiny bow away scours the herd in dire consternation, and, more alarmed than all, off scuds the impostor with them, again propelling a shaft as soon as the panic has subsided. The destruction committed in this manner is incredible: a slender reed, only slightly barbed with bone or iron, but imbued with a subtle poison, and launched with unerring dexterity, being sufficient to destroy the most powerful animal.

“The principal ingredient of this deadly bane is said, by Pringle, to consist of the venom of the most dangerous serpents that infest the desert. In seizing and extracting the poison from beneath the fangs of the fatal puff-adder, or the cobra-di-capello, the despised African displays the most wonderful dexterity and boldness; simply placing his naked foot on the neck of the writhing reptile, and not unfrequently closing the exhibition of his intrepidity by fearlessly swallowing the contents of the bag he has extracted, as a supposed antidote, or rather as an effectual charm against the deleterious consequence of the venom, should it ever be accidentally brought into contact with his blood. Being of itself too thin and volatile to retain its powers long unimpaired, this animal poison is skilfully concocted into a black glutinous substance, by the due admixture of powerful vegetable and mineral poisons; the former being generally obtained from the root of a species of amaryllis, called by the colonists the gift-bol, or poison-bulb; whilst the latter is an unctuous or bituminous substance, which is said to exude from certain rocks and caverns that exist in particular parts of the Bushman’s country.”

On the mountain we found the ornithogalum, the star of Bethlehem, in abundance; it was like a weed in the garden. The ferania was there, with its spider-like flower; and the oxalis (woodsorrel), with its most brilliant pink flowers; the name of the enormous bulb I was unable to discover. The Australian pine was in great beauty in the garden; also the melaleuca kȳápootie, with its most curious bark. When you tear off a part of it you may separate it into layers as fine as gold-beaters’ skin, and it is of the same colour. Another sort has a coarser bark, and is used to cover hooqŭ snakes in India; fire-screens are made of this bark in America, and ingeniously ornamented with beads. The Zamia longifolia and the grass tree are distorted-looking productions, holding in outward appearance the same place amongst plants as a man afflicted with elephantiasis does amongst human beings. The bottle brush tree was in full bloom. The garden is very well worth visiting; the gardener is civil and intelligent.

5th.—I started to walk to the Plaat Clip, or flat stone; it is half-way up Table Mountain; a favourite place of resort for parties from Cape Town. It is a beautiful spot: over the broad top of a bare rock a stream of water pours down with great velocity, and rushes down the side, forming a beautiful but small waterfall. Trees ornament the spot, and luxuriant bunches of the arum in full bloom are dotted amongst the rocks with picturesque effect. The ruin of a house stands there; its history appears unknown,—divers romantic tales were told me concerning this ruin. It is situated on a lovely and picturesque spot, very attractive to a person fond of solitude. After a long walk and much clambering among the rocks, we returned laden with flowers. Nothing can be more agreeable than spending the day at the Plaat Clip.