CASA PEÑATE, MONTE,
LES PALMAS.
5/2/00.
My opinions about the origin of this wretched war are not worth stating
and are extremely distressing to one who holds them. It will be enough
to tell you that this summer John Morley seemed to me the one English
statesman who was keeping his head cool, and I have not read anything
that has changed my mind. I fear that the whole affair will look bad
in history. And the worst of it is that the cold fit will come with a
vengeance.
We have no good news yet. I hope for some this afternoon. Your letter
came by Marseilles--to my surprise, for we rarely get a mail that way.
Our last tidings are of speeches made by generals and these do not
cheer me. Last night I had a talk with a man who knew the Transvaal and
who fears that our volunteer marksmen will not hit much until they have
had two months of South African atmosphere: the unaccustomed eye makes
wildly incorrect estimates of distance.
You speak of dragoons. "My period," a very short one 1558-63 is full
of the "swart-rutter." The English government's one idea of carrying
on a big war, if war there was to be, was that of hiring German
"swart-rutters." They did much pistolling, and I suppose that you know,
I don't, how big a machine was the pistol of those days. Well, the War
Office temp. Mary (only there was not one) was open to criticism. Every
ounce of powder that England had was imported from the Netherlands.
This had to go on for a while under Elizabeth--there are amusing
letters from English agents wherein "bales of cloth," and so on, have
an esoteric meaning.
A starved Canarian hound has attached itself to us--of the grey-hound
type, and sundry small additions are made to the menagerie as occasion
serves. A parrot died yesterday--had drunk too much water, so an
expert says--was called José--his fellow Juan still screams. In the
neighbouring hotel is another with atrocious German habits acquired
from the head waiter--will drink himself drunk with beer and swear
terribly. I hear rumours of an additional monkey whose name is to be
Loango.
I play schoolmaster--How they have turned the Latin grammar inside
out!--and I miss my Rule of Three. In a Spanish Census paper I for
once made myself "doctor iuris": Glasgow allows me to say "utriusque."
I added to the population capable of reading and writing no less than
five names--for our trilingual Switzer was to be included--and this
will seriously affect Canarian statistics.
But I like this illiterate folk.