28th Oct.—Since I wrote, we have had more really cold weather, but yesterday the summer seems to have begun. The air is as light and clear as if there were none, and the sun hot; but I walk in it, and do not find it oppressive. All the household groans and perspires, but I am very comfortable.

Yesterday I sat in the full broil for an hour or more, in the hot dust of the Malay burial-ground. They buried the head butcher of the Mussulmans, and a most strange poetical scene it was. The burial-ground is on the side of the Lion Mountain—on the Lion’s rump—and overlooks the whole bay, part of the town, and the most superb mountain panorama beyond. I never saw a view within miles of it for beauty and grandeur. Far down, a fussy English steamer came puffing and popping into the deep blue bay, and the ‘Hansom’s’ cabs went tearing down to the landing place; and round me sat a crowd of grave brown men chanting ‘Allah il Allah’ to the most monotonous but musical air, and with the most perfect voices. The chant seemed to swell, and then fade, like the wind in the trees.

I went in after the procession, which consisted of a bier covered with three common Paisley shawls of gay colours; no one looked at me; and when they got near the grave, I kept at a distance, and sat down when they did. But a man came up and said, ‘You are welcome.’ So I went close, and saw the whole ceremony. They took the corpse, wrapped in a sheet, out of the bier, and lifted it into the grave, where two men received it; then a sheet was held over the grave till they had placed the dead man; and then flowers and earth were thrown in by all present, the grave filled in, watered out of a brass kettle, and decked with flowers. Then a fat old man, in printed calico shirt sleeves, and a plaid waistcoat and corduroy trousers, pulled off his shoes, squatted on the grave, and recited endless ‘Koran’, many reciting after him. Then they chanted ‘Allah-il-Allah’ for twenty minutes, I think: then prayers, with ‘Ameens’ and ‘Allah il-Allahs’ again. Then all jumped up and walked off. There were eighty or a hundred men, no women, and five or six ‘Hadjis’, draped in beautiful Eastern dresses, and looking very supercilious. The whole party made less noise in moving and talking than two Englishmen.

A white-complexioned man spoke to me in excellent English (which few of them speak), and was very communicative and civil. He told me the dead man was his brother-in-law, and he himself the barber. I hoped I had not taken a liberty. ‘Oh, no; poor Malays were proud when noble English persons showed such respect to their religion. The young Prince had done so too, and Allah would not forget to protect him. He also did not laugh at their prayers, praise be to God!’ I had already heard that Prince Alfred is quite the darling of the Malays. He insisted on accepting their fÊte, which the Capetown people had snubbed. I have a friendship with one Abdul Jemaalee and his wife Betsy, a couple of old folks who were slaves to Dutch owners, and now keep a fruit-shop of a rough sort, with ‘Betsy, fruiterer,’ painted on the back of an old tin tray, and hung up by the door of the house. Abdul first bought himself, and then his wife Betsy, whose ‘missus’ generously threw in her bed-ridden mother. He is a fine handsome old man, and has confided to me that £5,000 would not buy what he is worth now. I have also read the letters written by his, son, young Abdul Rachman, now a student at Cairo, who has been away five years—four at Mecca. The young theologian writes to his ‘hoog eerbare moeder’ a fond request for money, and promises to return soon. I am invited to the feast wherewith he will be welcomed. Old Abdul Jemaalee thinks it will divert my mind, and prove to me that Allah will take me home safe to my children, about whom he and his wife asked many questions. Moreover, he compelled me to drink herb tea, compounded by a Malay doctor for my cough. I declined at first, and the poor old man looked hurt, gravely assured me that it was not true that Malays always poisoned Christians, and drank some himself. Thereupon I was obliged, of course, to drink up the rest; it certainly did me good, and I have drunk it since with good effect; it is intensely bitter and rather sticky. The white servants and the Dutch landlady where I lodge shake their heads ominously, and hope it mayn’t poison me a year hence. ‘Them nasty Malays can make it work months after you take it.’ They also possess the evil eye, and a talent for love potions. As the men are very handsome and neat, I incline to believe that part of it.

Rathfelder’s Halfway House, 6th November.—I drove out here yesterday in Captain T—’s drag, which he kindly brought into Capetown for me. He and his wife and children came for a change of air for whooping cough, and advised me to come too, as my cough continues, though less troublesome. It is a lovely spot, six miles from Constantia, ten from Capetown, and twelve from Simon’s Bay. I intend to stay here a little while, and then to go to Kalk Bay, six miles from hence. This inn was excellent, I hear, ‘in the old Dutch times’. Now it is kept by a young Englishman, Cape-born, and his wife, and is dirty and disorderly. I pay twelve shillings a day for S— and self, without a sitting-room, and my bed is a straw paillasse; but the food is plentiful, and not very bad. That is the cheapest rate of living possible here, and every trifle costs double what it would in England, except wine, which is very fair at fivepence a bottle—a kind of hock. The landlord pays £1 a day rent for this house, which is the great resort of the Capetown people for Sundays, and for change of air, &c.—a rude kind of Richmond. His cook gets £3 10s. a month, besides food for himself and wife, and beer and sugar. The two (white) housemaids get £1 15s. and £1 10s. respectively (everything by the month). Fresh butter is 3s. 6d. a pound, mutton 7d.; washing very dear; cabbages my host sells at 3d. a piece, and pumpkins 8d. He has a fine garden, and pays a gardener 3s. 6d. a day, and black labourers 2s. They work three days a week; then they buy rice and a coarse fish, and lie in the sun till it is eaten; while their darling little fat black babies play in the dust, and their black wives make battues in the covers in their woolly heads. But the little black girl who cleans my room is far the best servant, and smiles and speaks like Lalage herself, ugly as the poor drudge is. The voice and smile of the negroes here is bewitching, though they are hideous; and neither S— nor I have yet heard a black child cry, or seen one naughty or quarrelsome. You would want to lay out a fortune in woolly babies. Yesterday I had a dreadful heartache after my darling, on her little birthday, and even the lovely ranges of distant mountains, coloured like opals in the sunset, did not delight me. This is a dreary place for strangers. Abdul Jemaalee’s tisanne, and a banana which he gave me each time I went to his shop, are the sole offer of ‘Won’t you take something?’ or even the sole attempt at a civility that I have received, except from the J—s, who, are very civil and kind.

When I have done my visit to Simon’s Bay, I will go ‘up country’, to Stellenbosch, Paarl and Worcester, perhaps. If I can find people going in a bullock-waggon, I will join them; it costs £1 a day, and goes twenty miles. If money were no object, I would hire one with Caffres to hunt, as well as outspan and drive, and take a saddle-horse. There is plenty of pleasure to be had in travelling here, if you can afford it. The scenery is quite beyond anything you can imagine in beauty. I went to a country house at Rondebosch with the J—s, and I never saw so lovely a spot. The possessor had done his best to spoil it, and to destroy the handsome Dutch house and fountains and aqueducts; but Nature was too much for him, and the place lovely in neglect and shabbiness.

Now I will tell you my impressions of the state of society here, as far as I have been able to make out by playing the inquisitive traveller. I dare say the statements are exaggerated, but I do not think they are wholly devoid of truth. The Dutch round Capetown (I don’t know anything of ‘up country’) are sulky and dispirited; they regret the slave days, and can’t bear to pay wages; they have sold all their fine houses in town to merchants, &c., and let their handsome country places go to pieces, and their land lie fallow, rather than hire the men they used to own. They hate the Malays, who were their slaves, and whose ‘insolent prosperity’ annoys them, and they don’t like the vulgar, bustling English. The English complain that the Dutch won’t die, and that they are the curse of the colony (a statement for which they can never give a reason). But they, too, curse the emancipation, long to flog the niggers, and hate the Malays, who work harder and don’t drink, and who are the only masons, tailors, &c., and earn from 4s. 6d. to 10s. a day. The Malays also have almost a monopoly of cart-hiring and horse-keeping; an Englishman charges £4 10s. or £5 for a carriage to do what a Malay will do quicker in a light cart for 30s. S— says, ‘The English here think the coloured people ought to do the work, and they to get the wages. Nothing less would satisfy them.’ Servants’ wages are high, but other wages not much higher than in England; yet industrious people invariably make fortunes, or at least competencies, even when they begin with nothing. But few of the English will do anything but lounge; while they abuse the Dutch as lazy, and the Malays as thieves, and feel their fingers itch to be at the blacks. The Africanders (Dutch and negro mixed in various proportions) are more or less lazy, dirty, and dressy, and the beautiful girls wear pork-pie hats, and look very winning and rather fierce; but to them the philanthropists at home have provided formidable rivals, by emptying a shipload of young ladies from a ‘Reformatory’ into the streets of Capetown.

I am puzzled what to think of the climate here for invalids. The air is dry and clear beyond conception, and light, but the sun is scorching; while the south-east wind blows an icy hurricane, and the dust obscures the sky. These winds last all the summer, till February or March. I am told when they don’t blow it is heavenly, though still cold in the mornings and evenings. No one must be out at, or after sunset, the chill is so sudden. Many of the people here declare that it is death to weak lungs, and send their poitrinaires to Madeira, or the south of France. They also swear the climate is enervating, but their looks, and above all the blowsy cheeks and hearty play of the English children, disprove that; and those who come here consumptive get well in spite of the doctors, who won’t allow it possible. I believe it is a climate which requires great care from invalids, but that, with care, it is good, because it is bracing as well as warm and dry. It is not nearly so warm as I expected; the southern icebergs are at no great distance, and they ice the south-east wind for us. If it were not so violent, it would be delicious; and there are no unhealthy winds—nothing like our east wind. The people here grumble at the north-wester, which sometimes brings rain, and call it damp, which, as they don’t know what damp is, is excusable; it feels like a dry south-wester in England. It is, however, quite a delusion to think of living out of doors, here; the south-easters keep one in nearly, if not quite, half one’s time, and in summer they say the sun is too hot to be out except morning and evening. But I doubt that, for they make an outcry about heat as soon as it is not cold. The transitions are so sudden, that, with the thermometer at 76°, you must not go out without taking a thick warm cloak; you may walk into a south-easter round the first spur of the mountain, and be cut in two. In short, the air is cold and bracing, and the sun blazing hot; those whom that suits, will do well. I should like a softer air, but I may be wrong; when there is only a moderate wind, it is delicious. You walk in the hot sun, which makes you perspire a very little; but you dry as you go, the air is so dry; and you come in untired. I speak of slow walking. There are no hot-climate diseases; no dysentery, fever, &c.

Simon’s Bay, 18th Nov.—I came on here in a cart, as I felt ill from the return of the cold weather. While at Rathfelder we had a superb day, and the J—s drove me over to Constantia, which deserves all its reputation for beauty. What a divine spot!—such kloofs, with silver rills running down them! It is useless to describe scenery. It was a sort of glorified Scotland, with sunshine, flowers, and orange-groves. We got home hungry and tired, but in great spirits. Alas! next day came the south-easter—blacker, colder, more cutting, than ever—and lasted a week.

The Walkers came over on horseback, and pressed me to go to them. They are most kind and agreeable people. The drive to Simon’s Bay was lovely, along the coast and across five beaches of snow-white sand, which look like winter landscapes; and the mountains and bay are lovely.

Living is very dear, and washing, travelling, chemist’s bills—all enormous. Thirty shillings a cart and horse from Rathfelder here—twelve miles; and then the young English host wanted me to hire another cart for one box and one bath! But I would not, and my obstinacy was stoutest. If I want cart or waggon again, I’ll deal with a Malay, only the fellows drive with forty Jehu-power up and down the mountains.

A Madagascar woman offered to give me her orphan grandchild, a sweet brown fairy, six years old, with long silky black hair, and gorgeous eyes. The child hung about me incessantly all the time I was at Rathfelder, and I had a great mind to her. She used to laugh like baby, and was like her altogether, only prettier, and very brown; and when I told her she was like my own little child, she danced about, and laughed like mad at the idea that she could look like ‘pretty white Missy’. She was mighty proud of her needlework and A B C performances.

It is such a luxury to sleep on a real mattrass—not stuffed with dirty straw; to eat clean food, and live in a nice room. But my cough is very bad, and the cruel wind blows on and on. I saw the doctor of the Naval Hospital here to-day. If I don’t mend, I will try his advice, and go northward for warmth. If you can find an old Mulready envelope, send it here to Miss Walker, who collects stamps and has not got it, and write and thank dear good Lady Walker for her kindness to me.

You will get this about the new year. God bless you all, and send us better days in 1862.