Caledon, Sunday.

You must have fallen into second childhood to think of printing such rambling hasty scrawls as I write. I never could write a good letter; and unless I gallop as hard as I can, and don’t stop to think, I can say nothing; so all is confused and unconnected: only I fancy you will be amused by some of my ‘impressions’. I have written to my mother an accurate account of my health. I am dressed and out of doors never later than six, now the weather makes it possible. It is surprising how little sleep one wants. I go to bed at ten and often am up at four.

I made friends here the other day with a lively dried-up little old Irishman, who came out at seven years old a pauper-boy. He has made a fortune by ‘going on Togt’ (German, Tausch), as thus; he charters two waggons, twelve oxen each, and two Hottentots to each waggon, leader and driver. The waggons he fills with cotton, hardware, &c., &c.—an ambulatory village ‘shop’,—and goes about fifteen miles a day, on and on, into the far interior, swapping baftas (calico), punjums (loose trowsers), and voerschitz (cotton gownpieces), pronounced ‘foossy’, against oxen and sheep. When all is gone he swaps his waggons against more oxen and a horse, and he and his four ‘totties’ drive home the spoil; and he has doubled or trebled his venture. En route home, each day they kill a sheep, and eat it all. ‘What!’ says I; ‘the whole?’ ‘Every bit. I always take one leg and the liver for myself, and the totties roast the rest, and melt all the fat and entrails down in an iron pot and eat it with a wooden spoon.’ Je n’en revenais pas. ‘What! the whole leg and liver at one meal?’ ‘Every bit; ay, and you’d do the same, ma’am, if you were there.’ No bread, no salt, no nothing—mutton and water. The old fellow was quite poetic and heroic in describing the joys and perils of Togt. I said I should like to go too; and he bewailed having settled a year ago in a store at Swellendam, ‘else he’d ha’ fitted up a waggon all nice and snug for me, and shown me what going on togt was like. Nothing like it for the health, ma’am; and beautiful shooting.’ My friend had 700l. in gold in a carpet bag, without a lock, lying about on the stoep. ‘All right; nobody steals money or such like here. I’m going to pay bills in Capetown.’

Tell my mother that a man would get from 2l. to 4l. a month wages, with board, lodging, &c., all found, and his wife from 1l. 10s. to 2l. a month and everything found, according to abilities and testimonials. Wages are enormous, and servants at famine price; emigrant ships are cleared off in three days, and every ragged Irish girl in place somewhere. Four pounds a month, and food for self, husband, and children, is no uncommon pay for a good cook; and after all her cookery may be poor enough. My landlady at Capetown gave that. The housemaid had only 1l. 5s. a month, but told me herself she had taken 8l. in one week in ‘tips’. She was an excellent servant. Up country here the wages are less, but the comfort greater, and the chances of ‘getting on’ much increased. But I believe Algoa Bay or Grahamstown are by far the best fields for new colonists, and (I am assured) the best climate for lung diseases. The wealthy English merchants of Port Elizabeth (Algoa Bay) pay best. It seems to me, as far as I can learn, that every really working man or woman can thrive here.

My German host at Houw Hoek came out twenty-three years ago, he told me, without a ‘heller’, and is now the owner of cattle and land and horses to a large amount. But then the Germans work, while the Dutch dawdle and the English drink. ‘New wine’ is a penny a glass (half a pint), enough to blow your head off, and ‘Cape smoke’ (brandy, like vitriol) ninepence a bottle—that is the real calamity. If the Cape had the grape disease as badly as Madeira, it would be the making of the colony.

I received a message from my Malay friends, Abdool Jemaalee and Betsy, anxious to know ‘if the Misses had good news of her children, for bad news would make her sick’. Old Betsy and I used to prose about young Abdurrachman and his studies at Mecca, and about my children, with more real heartiness than you can fancy. We were not afraid of boring each other; and pious old Abdool sat and nodded and said, ‘May Allah protect them all!’ as a refrain;—‘Allah, il Allah!’