Under three purple-flowered trees standing in the Castle courtyard, one blazing hot morning, we, more sentimentally than travellingly inclined, sat and rested while a khaki-clothed Tommy wandered round to find a guide to show us over the old Dutch fort. We thanked Heaven for his half-heartedness and for some shade. Marinus, fortunately for us both, smoked his pipe of peace and of Transvaal tobacco, and I opened the Brass Bottle, which, indeed, is no bottle at all, but, as everyone not vulgarly inclined knows, a fairy-tale metaphor for one's imagination. The barometer registered 97° F. in the shade, which is a perfect state of atmosphere for the fumes of the Brass Bottle, in which, all mingling with the smoke from Marinus' pipe, the building of the Castle began.

The walls dissolved into blue air: the brasswork of the 'Kat,' the block of buildings dividing the Castle into two courtyards, melted into one small spot of liquid, leaving a dry, dusty, levelled yellow plain, with an earthwork wall embodying the spirit of the dykes of the Netherlands in its composition—for the green waves of Table Bay lapped at its base. It was the second day of January, 1666; under the blazing sun three hundred discontented-looking men were digging and levelling the hard earth. At the westerly land-points were the foundations of two bastions. Suddenly a group of men appeared, looking like Rembrandt's 'Night-Watch' come to life, carrying sealed parchments and plans, followed by many Madagascar slaves in clean white linen tunics not to be renewed for six whole months, this being the New Year. The slaves carried bags of food and a long tray made of wood, on which were about one hundred small moneybags. One of the Night-Watch, who was the Commander Wagenaar, walked up to a long table whereon was a white stone; the guns of the old fort, crumbling to pieces across the parade-ground, fired. It was noon, and the foundation-stone of the Castle was laid. The three hundred weary, sweating men raised a feeble cheer, the masons, carpenters, and smiths, advancing separately, received from the hands of the 'Fiscal,' Chief Magistrate and Attorney-General of the Colony, the gift of the General Netherlands East India Company of thirty Rds., or rix-dollars, tied up in the small black bags. Then the Company moved across to another part of the ground, and the Predikant, the Rev. Joan van Arckel, proceeded to lay another stone, followed by the Fiscal, Sieur Hendrick Lucas, to whose honour fell the laying of the third great corner-stone. Then were the entire three hundred malcontents, as well as the soldiers who had also laboured, presented with two oxen, six sheep, one hundred fresh-baked wheaten loaves, and eight casks of Cape-brewed beer, 'which food and drink, well cooked and well prepared,' whispered the Chief Surgeon, Sieur Pieter van Clinckenberg, to Lieutenant Abraham Schut, 'let us hope may induce these sluggish fellows to be better encouraged and made more willing to work.'

Lieutenant Abraham Schut, to whose duties of supervising the Company's stables and the Mounted Guards in the country, and the watch-houses, and the supervising of the workings and workers of the vineyards, the orchards, and the granary, were also added those of 'keeping an eye' on the 'lazy fellows at work in the brick and tile fields,' very solemnly stared before him at the 'encouraged' diggers, and wondered what reward the General Netherlands East India Company had laid up for him.

But the Fiscal was addressing the crowd gathered round the Commander. I had missed some of his speech because of these two babbling Night-Watchers next me, but I now listened: 'And that it may also somewhat be evident that by this continual digging and delving in and under the ground, poets have also been found and thrown up, a certain amateur this day presents to the Commander the following eight verses.' The crowd drew closer to the Fiscal, who continued with the amateur's verses:

Lieutenant Abraham Schut came towards me; no, it was not this wonderful Abraham, though he wore a uniform—the cheering of the crowd still rung in my ears. 'Who wrote it?' I said. 'Wrote what?' The subaltern stared at me. 'Built it, I suppose you mean,' he smiled. 'Oh yes, built, of course, of course,' I muttered, hotter than ever. Marinus' pipe had burnt out, and the officer who stood before us wore khaki.

With the last words of the quaint Dutch poem ringing in my ears, we followed our guide across the courtyard into an arched white doorway. The old entrance, the sea entrance to the Castle, was blocked up, because on the other side runs the Cape Government Railway, with all its paraphernalia of tin walls, engine-rooms, dirty, ugly workshops, gasometers, coal-heaps, all making up the foreshore scenery of Table Bay, and delighting the eyes of the workers and drones who are daily hurried (sic) along like 'animated packages in a rabbit hutch.'[1]

In the plaster ceiling of this archway is such a charming miniature plan, in raised stucco, of the Castle buildings. From here we climbed some stone steps and came on to the ramparts, called after the ships that first brought Company rule to the Cape—the Reiger, the Walvis, the Dromedaris. We climbed up stone stairs, and in white stucco, in the wall, were the Company's arms—the big galleon in full sail. We passed the cells—the one used by Cetewayo, the rebellious Chief of the Zulus, the 'Children of Heaven,' had a special little fireplace sunk into the wall—walked along wonderfully neat, bricked ramparts past the Guard Tower, and climbed down more steps into the courtyard.

We rambled through the quarters of the old Governors. Everything is groaning under heavy military paint—teak doors, beautiful brass fittings and beamed ceilings—and about a mile away, shut up in a small ugly museum room, are the Rightful Inhabitants—the proper belongings of these long rooms: the oak tables, the big chairs, which once held the old Dutch Governors, the glass they used, the huge silver spittoons, their swords, the flowered panniers of their wives' dresses, fire-irons, brasses, china, the old flags, someone's sedan-chair—all bundled together in grotesque array. The teak-beamed rooms in the Castle would make a better setting than the little room in the museum.

'Marinus,' I said, 'isn't it awful—this horrible clean paint and these little tin sheds in the old garden? Oh, Marinus, do let us scrape this tiny bit of latch, just to peep at the lovely brass beneath! And let us pretend we are putting back the old cupboards, and coffers, and china, and let us burn all that'—with my eye on sheets of neat military maps and deal tables. But Marinus, with the fear of God and of the King, pushed me rudely past a Georgian fireplace into a large room with a big open chimney. Over the grate, let into the wood, I saw the most ridiculous old painting—like a piece of ancient sampler in paint instead of silk—an absurd tree with an impossible bird on a bough, and beneath it a terraced wall with some animals like peacocks, with the paysage background À la Noah's ark, but slightly less accurate. 'There is a superstitious story about that picture,' said Marinus. 'They say some treasure was hidden in the thick wooden screen over the chimney, and the picture was gummed over it. The story goes that whoever should touch this picture, or attempt to remove it, would die shortly afterwards. It may be that the curse, or a bit of it, landed on the old, stamped brass screen which was taken to Groote Schuur, shortly before Rhodes died. But no one would want this horror, would they?' This story made me love the chintz picture, and, after all, the colours were good; it was antique; it was old; and there was treasure behind it!

Above this room are Anne Barnard's apartments, where she came to live when the Secretary of State, Melville, gave 'the prettiest appointment in the world for any young fellow'—the Secretaryship to the Governor of the Cape—to Lady Anne's husband in 1797. She had to write Melville several letters before she got this appointment. 'To pay me all you have owed and still owe me, you never can—but what you can you should do, and you have got before you the pleasure of obliging me,' she wrote. There is stuff for a novel in this sentence. The last appeal, 'You owe me some happiness, in truth you do,' brought this pretty appointment with a salary of £3,500 a year.

I looked out of a window of her room, which opened on to a small balcony, and conjured up the procession she saw the day after she landed—the taking of the oath of allegiance to King George III., the crowd trooping in through the yellow-bricked gateway, clattering over the cobble-stones, every man with his hat off (an old Dutch regulation on entering the Castle on a public occasion). 'Well-fed, rosy-cheeked men, well-powdered and dressed in black! "Boers" from the country, farmers and settlers, in blue cloth jackets and trousers and very large flat hats, with a Hottentot slave slinking behind, each carrying his master's umbrella, a red handkerchief round his head, and a piece of leather round his waist comprising his toilette.'

I heard voices under the arch-gateway leading to the inner courtyard; the subaltern had another party in tow, and his nice voice was very clear: 'Oh yes, wonderful people, these old Dutch Johnnies; everything they built lasts so well. Now look at this old sundial; same old thing! there it is, keeping the right time still—what?'

I laughed quite loudly, and the party looked up, but I had flown back into Anne's room, which is haunted, so perhaps they thought it was the ghost—same old ghost! a good lusty ghost—what?

I met Marinus in the inner court with a man carrying a lantern and some huge keys—our guide to the magazine and armoury, which might have been the crypt of some old European monastery, with what seemed to be miles of white arches, arches with broad brass shutters over the windows, covered with red or grey army paint.

The garden of this second courtyard exists no longer, though the man with the lantern and the keys told us he remembered it—a pond with bamboos and trees. Beyond the moat on the mountain side, on a low level, is a disused Tennis court, a real court for the 'Jeu de Paume' of the seventeenth century, with hard cement walls and cement floor.

Although Governor Borghorst, with his entire family, amused themselves by carrying the earth in baskets from the ditch which was to form the moat, the real work of the Castle was carried out from old plans of Vauban by Isbrand Goski, in a great hurry, with the shadows of French cannon and French flags disturbing his dreams. The shadows proved worthless phantoms, for peace was declared before the fort was ready. Later on, Sir James Craig, filled with zeal for the defence of this ultra-important outpost, which had come, with some slight misunderstanding, into the hands of England, caused more blockhouses to be built along the slopes of the Devil's Peak, realizing the ridiculous position of the Castle for defence purposes. Fort Knokke was connected with the Castle by a long, low, fortified wall, called the 'Sea Lines.' Beyond the Castle stood the 'Rogge Bay,' the 'Amsterdam,' and the 'Chavonnes' batteries, while at the water edge of the old Downs—now called Green Point Common—stood the little 'Mouille' battery. The land on which, unfortunately, the Amsterdam battery was built has become a valuable adjunct of the docks, and it now stands a scarred, maimed thing with its sea-wall lying in dÉbris. A sad spectacle, like a deserted beehive, with all its cells and secrets exposed to the dock world—half solid rock, half small, yellow Dutch brick.

It is Wednesday morning in present Cape Town, we have left the Castle, wept over the Amsterdam battery, and marched up Adderley Street.

At the top of Adderley Street is the old Slave Lodge, now used for Government Offices and the Supreme Court, low and white, with cobbled courtyard and thick walls. About here, in the old days, began the Government Gardens or 'Company's' Gardens, a long oak avenue running through them. At the time of the Cession of the Cape to the English, the Gardens had been very much neglected. Lord Macartney appropriated a large slice for the rearing of curious and rare plants (the Botanical Gardens).

Government House, on the left, was originally built as a pleasure pavilion or overflow guesthouse during the 'Company's' rÉgime. One or two of the later Dutch Governors used it as their residence, and during the short English rule in 1797 Lord Macartney and his successor, Sir George Younge, ceased to use the large suite of rooms in the old Castle. Poor Lord Macartney, because of his gout, found the narrow, steep stairs in the Gardens House a great trial. He hopped up the stairs like a parrot to its perch, says one of his staff in a private letter; but Sir George Younge, fresh from Holyrood, rebuilt the stairs and kitchens and the high wall round a part of the garden. For the occasion the avenue was shut to the public, which nearly caused a revolution. It has seen much, this low, yellow 'Pavilion in the Gardens.' It has sheltered French, English, and Dutch: famous for its ancient hospitality, its big white ball-room saw our great-grandmothers, in white muslin and cashmere shawls, dancing under the tallow candles: every tree in the garden hung with lights: Van Rheenen and Mostaert ladies dancing away, while their husbands and fathers and mothers stood outside and cursed their partners: but one must dance, no matter what one's politics may be.

Hanging on the walls of the present day Government House are portraits of the Past-Governors—Milner with the thinking eyes, dignified Lord Loch, Rosmead, Grey, Bartle Frere benignly gazing. Skip some history, and you have Somerset, stern and disliked; 'Davie' Baird, full of good round oaths, in 'Raeburn' red; Sir Harry Smith of the perfect profile, too short for the greatness of his spirit. Marinus grows sentimental before this portrait, because of Juanita, Lady Smith, her beauty, and her bravery. 'But she was fat'—this from me. Marinus looks compassionately on such doubtful tactics. 'She was not fat when he found her in that sacked Spanish town; she was not fat when he sent her that long ride to return the looted silver candlesticks; she was not fat when she rode with him into danger during the Kaffir wars—wonderful energetic woman!' 'Sir Harry was very short,' continued Marinus, whose methods are quite unoriginal. 'But his dignity, and his beautiful nose!' I said; 'it reminds me of that story told of Napoleon, who tried and failed, through being too short, to reach a certain book from a shelf. A tall Marshal came to his aid, and, looking down at the little Emperor, said: "Ah, sire, je suis plus grand que vous." "Pas du tout, vous Êtes plus long," said the Emperor.'

Then there is the portrait of Macartney, looking straight across the room at old Dutch Rhenius in wig and satins, whose shrewd, amused eyes follow one about the room. I think Rhenius' dinner-parties were probably amusing.

There are no other portraits of Dutch Governors; none of those who followed in such quick succession just before the first British occupation.

One of these, De Chavonnes, ruled with pomp and circumstance. There is an amusing story set down in the 1720 Journal wherein the Governor maintained his dignity in the face of a humorous situation.

De Chavonnes was at the Castle, and into Table Bay sailed the English ship, the Marlborough. She failed to salute the Castle on arrival. Much bustle and fuss—such an insult cannot be passed over. The Wharf-master, Cornelius Volk, is ordered to proceed on board and inform the captain that no one will be allowed to land before the usual salute is fired. With more haste arrives an English midshipman, very pink and well-mannered: 'We have on board an elephant, your Excellency, and are afraid the firing might frighten him.' His Excellency and the Wharf-master and the chief merchant, Jan de la Fontaine, together with the members of the Council and officers of the garrison, stared at the pink-faced middy. De Chavonnes hesitated only one minute, which is a long period of time for the middy, who I am quite sure had compromising dimples; then came His Excellency's answer: 'The excuse is allowed.'

A very dignified finale! Smaller things than elephants have unbalanced the scales of peace.