Caledon, Dec. 29th.

I am beginning now really to feel better: I think my cough is less, and I eat a great deal more. They cook nice clean food here, and have some good claret, which I have been extravagant enough to drink, much to my advantage. The Cape wine is all so fiery. The climate is improving too. The glorious African sun blazes and roasts one, and the cool fresh breezes prevent one from feeling languid. I walk from six till eight or nine, breakfast at ten, and dine at three; in the afternoon it is generally practicable to saunter again, now the weather is warmer. I sleep from twelve till two. On Christmas-eve it was so warm that I lay in bed with the window wide open, and the stars blazing in. Such stars! they are much brighter than our moon. The Dutchmen held high jinks in the hall, and danced and made a great noise. On New Year’s-eve they will have another ball, and I shall look in. Christmas-day was the hottest day—indeed, the only hot day we have had—and I could not make it out at all, or fancy you all cold at home.

I wish you were here to see the curious ways and new aspect of everything. This village, which, as I have said, is very like Rochefort, but hardly so large, is the chef lieu of a district the size of one-third of England. A civil commander resides here, a sort of prÉfet; and there is an embryo market-place, with a bell hanging in a brick arch. When a waggon arrives with goods, it draws up there, they ring the bell, everybody goes to see what is for sale, and the goods are sold by auction. My host bought potatoes and brandy the other day, and is looking out for ostrich feathers for me, out of the men’s hats.

The other day, while we sat at dinner, all the bells began to ring furiously, and Capt. D— jumped up and shouted ‘Brand!’ (fire), rushed off for a stout leather hat, and ran down the street. Out came all the population, black, white, and brown, awfully excited, for it was blowing a furious north-wester, right up the town, and the fire was at the bottom; and as every house is thatched with a dry brown thatch, we might all have to turn out and see the place in ashes in less than an hour. Luckily, it was put out directly. It is supposed to have been set on fire by a Hottentot girl, who has done the same thing once before, on being scolded. There is no water but what runs down the streets in the sloot, a paved channel, which brings the water from the mountain and supplies the houses and gardens. A garden is impossible without irrigation, of course, as it never rains; but with it, you may have everything, all the year round. The people, however, are too careless to grow fruit and vegetables.

How the cattle live is a standing marvel to me. The whole veld (common), which extends all over the country (just dotted with a few square miles of corn here and there), is covered with a low thin scrub, about eighteen inches high, called rhenoster-bosch—looking like meagre arbor vitÆ or pale juniper. The cattle and sheep will not touch this nor the juicy Hottentot fig; but under each little bush, I fancy, they crop a few blades of grass, and on this they keep in very good condition. The noble oxen, with their huge horns (nine or ten feet from tip to tip), are never fed, though they work hard, nor are the sheep. The horses get a little forage (oats, straw and all). I should like you to see eight or ten of these swift wiry little horses harnessed to a waggon,—a mere flat platform on wheels. In front stands a wild-looking Hottentot, all patches and feathers, and drives them best pace, all ‘in hand’, using a whip like a fishing-rod, with which he touches them, not savagely, but with a skill which would make an old stage-coachman burst with envy to behold. This morning, out on the veld, I watched the process of breaking-in a couple of colts, who were harnessed, after many struggles, second and fourth in a team of ten. In front stood a tiny foal cuddling its mother, one of the leaders. When they started, the foal had its neck through the bridle, and I hallooed in a fright; but the Hottentot only laughed, and in a minute it had disengaged itself quite coolly and capered alongside. The colts tried to plunge, but were whisked along, and couldn’t, and then they stuck out all four feet and skidded along a bit; but the rhenoster bushes tripped them up (people drive regardless of roads), and they shook their heads and trotted along quite subdued, without a blow or a word, for the drivers never speak to the horses, only to the oxen. Colts here get no other breaking, and therefore have no paces or action to the eye, but their speed and endurance are wonderful. There is no such thing as a cock-tail in the country, and the waggon teams of wiry little thoroughbreds, half Arab, look very strange to our eyes, going full tilt. There is a terrible murrain, called the lung-sickness, among horses and oxen here, every four or five years, but it never touches those that are stabled, however exposed to wet or wind on the roads.

I must describe the house I inhabit, as all are much alike. It is whitewashed, with a door in the middle and two windows on each side; those on the left are Mrs. D—’s bed and sitting rooms. On the right is a large room, which is mine; in the middle of the house is a spacious hall, with doors into other rooms on each side, and into the kitchen, &c. There is a yard behind, and a staircase up to the zolder or loft, under the thatch, with partitions, where the servants and children, and sometimes guests, sleep. There are no ceilings; the floor of the zolder is made of yellow wood, and, resting on beams, forms the ceiling of my room, and the thatch alone covers that. No moss ever grows on the thatch, which is brown, with white ridges. In front is a stoep, with ‘blue gums’ (Australian gum-trees) in front of it, where I sit till twelve, when the sun comes on it. These trees prevail here greatly, as they want neither water nor anything else, and grow with incredible rapidity.

We have got a new ‘boy’ (all coloured servants are ‘boys,’—a remnant of slavery), and he is the type of the nigger slave. A thief, a liar, a glutton, a drunkard—but you can’t resent it; he has a naÏf, half-foolish, half-knavish buffoonery, a total want of self-respect, which disarms you. I sent him to the post to inquire for letters, and the postmaster had been tipsy over-night and was not awake. Jack came back spluttering threats against ‘dat domned Dutchman. Me no want (like) him; me go and kick up dom’d row. What for he no give Missis letter?’ &c. I begged him to be patient; on which he bonneted himself in a violent way, and started off at a pantomime walk. Jack is the product of slavery: he pretends to be a simpleton in order to do less work and eat and drink and sleep more than a reasonable being, and he knows his buffoonery will get him out of scrapes. Withal, thoroughly good-natured and obliging, and perfectly honest, except where food and drink are concerned, which he pilfers like a monkey. He worships S—, and won’t allow her to carry anything, or to dirty her hands, if he is in the way to do it. Some one suggested to him to kiss her, but he declined with terror, and said he should be hanged by my orders if he did. He is a hideous little negro, with a monstrous-shaped head, every colour of the rainbow on his clothes, and a power of making faces which would enchant a schoolboy. The height of his ambition would be to go to England with me.

An old ‘bastaard’ woman, married to the Malay tailor here, explained to me my popularity with the coloured people, as set forth by ‘dat Malay boy’, my driver. He told them he was sure I was a ‘very great Missis’, because of my ‘plenty good behaviour’; that I spoke to him just as to a white gentleman, and did not ‘laugh and talk nonsense talk’. ‘Never say “Here, you black fellow”, dat Misses.’ The English, when they mean to be good-natured, are generally offensively familiar, and ‘talk nonsense talk’, i.e. imitate the Dutch English of the Malays and blacks; the latter feel it the greatest compliment to be treated au sÉrieux, and spoken to in good English. Choslullah’s theory was that I must be related to the Queen, in consequence of my not ‘knowing bad behaviour’. The Malays, who are intelligent and proud, of course feel the annoyance of vulgar familiarity more than the blacks, who are rather awe-struck by civility, though they like and admire it.

Mrs. D— tells me that the coloured servant-girls, with all their faults, are immaculately honest in these parts; and, indeed, as every door and window is always left open, even when every soul is out, and nothing locked up, there must be no thieves. Captain D— told me he had been in remote Dutch farmhouses, where rouleaux of gold were ranged under the thatch on the top of the low wall, the doors being always left open; and everywhere the Dutch boers keep their money by them, in coin.

Jan. 3d.—We have had tremendous festivities here—a ball on New Year’s-eve, and another on the 1st of January—and the shooting for Prince Alfred’s rifle yesterday. The difficulty of music for the ball was solved by the arrival of two Malay bricklayers to build the new parsonage, and I heard with my own ears the proof of what I had been told as to their extraordinary musical gifts. When I went into the hall, a Dutchman was screeching a concertina hideously. Presently in walked a yellow Malay, with a blue cotton handkerchief on his head, and a half-bred of negro blood (very dark brown), with a red handkerchief, and holding a rough tambourine. The handsome yellow man took the concertina which seemed so discordant, and the touch of his dainty fingers transformed it to harmony. He played dances with a precision and feeling quite unequalled, except by Strauss’s band, and a variety which seemed endless. I asked him if he could read music, at which he laughed heartily, and said, music came into the ears, not the eyes. He had picked it all up from the bands in Capetown, or elsewhere.

It was a strange sight,—the picturesque group, and the contrast between the quiet manners of the true Malay and the grotesque fun of the half-negro. The latter made his tambourine do duty as a drum, rattled the bits of brass so as to produce an indescribable effect, nodded and grinned in wild excitement, and drank beer while his comrade took water. The dancing was uninteresting enough. The Dutchmen danced badly, and said not a word, but plodded on so as to get all the dancing they could for their money. I went to bed at half-past eleven, but the ball went on till four.

Next night there was genteeler company, and I did not go in, but lay in bed listening to the Malay’s playing. He had quite a fresh set of tunes, of which several were from the ‘Traviata’!

Yesterday was a real African summer’s day. The D—s had a tent and an awning, one for food and the other for drink, on the ground where the shooting took place. At twelve o’clock Mrs. D— went down to sell cold chickens, &c., and I went with her, and sat under a tree in the bed of the little stream, now nearly dry. The sun was such as in any other climate would strike you down, but here coup de soleil is unknown. It broils you till your shoulders ache and your lips crack, but it does not make you feel the least languid, and you perspire very little; nor does it tan the skin as you would expect. The light of the sun is by no means ‘golden’—it is pure white—and the slightest shade of a tree or bush affords a delicious temperature, so light and fresh is the air. They said the thermometer was at about 130° where I was walking yesterday, but (barring the scorch) I could not have believed it.

It was a very amusing day. The great tall Dutchmen came in to shoot, and did but moderately, I thought. The longest range was five hundred yards, and at that they shot well; at shorter ranges, poorly enough. The best man made ten points. But oh! what figures were there of negroes and coloured people! I longed for a photographer. Some coloured lads were exquisitely graceful, and composed beautiful tableaux vivants, after Murillo’s beggar-boys.

A poor little, very old Bosjesman crept up, and was jeered and bullied. I scolded the lad who abused him for being rude to an old man, whereupon the poor little old creature squatted on the ground close by (for which he would have been kicked but for me), took off his ragged hat, and sat staring and nodding his small grey woolly head at me, and jabbering some little soliloquy very sotto voce. There was something shocking in the timidity with which he took the plate of food I gave him, and in the way in which he ate it, with the wrong side of his little yellow hand, like a monkey. A black, who had helped to fetch the hamper, suggested to me to give him wine instead of meat and bread, and make him drunk for fun (the blacks and Hottentots copy the white man’s manners to them, when they get hold of a Bosjesman to practise upon); but upon this a handsome West Indian black, who had been cooking pies, fired up, and told him he was a ‘nasty black rascal, and a Dutchman to boot’, to insult a lady and an old man at once. If you could see the difference between one negro and another, you would be quite convinced that education (i.e. circumstances) makes the race. It was hardly conceivable that the hideous, dirty, bandy-legged, ragged creature, who looked down on the Bosjesman, and the well-made, smart fellow, with his fine eyes, jaunty red cap, and snow-white shirt and trousers, alert as the best German Kellner, were of the same blood; nothing but the colour was alike.

Then came a Dutchman, and asked for six penn’orth of ‘brood en kaas’, and haggled for beer; and Englishmen, who bought chickens and champagne without asking the price. One rich old boer got three lunches, and then ‘trekked’ (made off) without paying at all. Then came a Hottentot, stupidly drunk, with a fiddle, and was beaten by a little red-haired Scotchman, and his fiddle smashed. The Hottentot hit at his aggressor, who then declared he had been a policeman, and insisted on taking him into custody and to the ‘Tronk’ (prison) on his own authority, but was in turn sent flying by a gigantic Irishman, who ‘wouldn’t see the poor baste abused’. The Irishman was a farmer; I never saw such a Hercules—and beaming with fun and good nature. He was very civil, and answered my questions, and talked like an intelligent man; but when Captain D— asked him with an air of some anxiety, if he was coming to the hotel, he replied, ‘No, sir, no; I wouldn’t be guilty of such a misdemeanour. I am aware that I was a disgrace and opprobrium to your house, sir, last time I was there, sir. No, sir, I shall sleep in my cart, and not come into the presence of ladies.’ Hereupon he departed, and I was informed that he had been drunk for seventeen days, sans dÉsemparer, on his last visit to Caledon. However, he kept quite sober on this occasion, and amused himself by making the little blackies scramble for halfpence in the pools left in the bed of the river. Among our customers was a very handsome black man, with high straight nose, deep-set eyes, and a small mouth, smartly dressed in a white felt hat, paletot, and trousers. He is the shoemaker, and is making a pair of ‘Veldschoen’ for you, which you will delight in. They are what the rough boers and Hottentots wear, buff-hide barbarously tanned and shaped, and as soft as woollen socks. The Othello-looking shoemaker’s name is Moor, and his father told him he came of a ‘good breed’; that was all he knew.

A very pleasing English farmer, who had been educated in Belgium, came and ordered a bottle of champagne, and shyly begged me to drink a glass, whereupon we talked of crops and the like; and an excellent specimen of a colonist he appeared: very gentle and unaffected, with homely good sense, and real good breeding—such a contrast to the pert airs and vulgarity of Capetown and of the people in (colonial) high places. Finding we had no carriage, he posted off and borrowed a cart of one man and harness of another, and put his and his son’s riding horses to it, to take Mrs. D— and me home. As it was still early, he took us a ‘little drive’; and oh, ye gods! what a terrific and dislocating pleasure was that! At a hard gallop, Mr. M— (with the mildest and steadiest air and with perfect safety) took us right across country. It is true there were no fences; but over bushes, ditches, lumps of rock, watercourses, we jumped, flew, and bounded, and up every hill we went racing pace. I arrived at home much bewildered, and feeling more like BÜrger’s Lenore than anything else, till I saw Mr. M—’s steady, pleasant face quite undisturbed, and was informed that such was the way of driving of Cape farmers.

We found the luckless Jack in such a state of furious drunkenness that he had to be dismissed on the spot, not without threats of the ‘Tronk’, and once more Kleenboy fills the office of boots. He returned in a ludicrous state of penitence and emaciation, frankly admitting that it was better to work hard and get ‘plenty grub’, than to work less and get none;—still, however, protesting against work at all.

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—I almost 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, I believe, 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.