RESIDENCE AT CAPE TOWN.
View from the Sea—Wrecks—Cape Town—The Fish Market—The
Seasons—Slavery—Washerwomen on the Mountain—Target
Practice—Beautiful Flowers—Cape Sheep—The Bushwoman—Green
Point—Shells—The Honey-bush—Bracelets of Ivory—High Price of
Curiosities—Auctions—Robberies—Camp’s Bay—Fine Aloes—Effect of
the Fog-wreaths on the Lion Mountain—The Lion’s Rump—Enormous
Bulbs—The Botanical Gardens—Remarkable Trees and Shrubs—The
Hæmanthus—Poisoned Arrows—The Puff-adder—The Melaleuca—Curious
Trees—The Plaat Clip, or Flat Stone—The Solitary Ruin.
_1843, May._—Cape Town, when viewed from the sea, is beautiful and
singular; the white houses are close to the shore, surrounded by
mountains; the Devil’s Peak, the Table, and the Lion Mountain form a fine
picture, enlivened by the number of vessels in the bay, lying close to
the town. From the New Jetty, where you land, in the early morning of a
clear day, the Blue Mountains, to the right of Robin’s Island, on the
opposite side of the bay, are very beautiful. From the Old Jetty under
the Table Mountain you see, to the right, the wreck of the “Abercrombie
Robertson,” and that of the “Reform;” these lie near together. At the
same place the “Waterloo” went on shore, but being rotten, instantly went
to pieces, and disappeared. A little to the right, nearer the castle, are
two other wrecks, now fast disappearing.
The castle and the barracks are close to this jetty; the latter was
formerly the storehouse of the Dutch merchants. The principal street in
Cape Town is the Heerengracht, which runs up from the shore: the George
Hotel—the best hotel in the place, is in this street: we went there, it
was quite full, and the passengers from the “Carnatic” found a difficulty
in procuring rooms; from its being the race-week the place was full.
I found my husband residing in the house of a French lady in
Roeland-street, close under Table Mountain. This house is reckoned
amongst the most respectable houses of the class, and its situation at
the farthest end of the town is desirable; you have quiet and fresh air.
Had I arrived in the summer season at the Cape I should have preferred
a house at Wynberg; during the winter time, Wynberg being damp, the
inhabitants generally come into Cape Town. In a boarding-house there are
many inconveniences, but you are saved the trouble of house-keeping,
which to an Indian is a most vile affair; therefore I was content to
remain. The terms at a boarding-house are seven shillings and sixpence a
day for each person, which includes one bed-room, food and wine; the food
is good; the wine, which is Cape, is only drinkable for those accustomed
to it; and the Cape beer I did not venture to taste. House-rent is very
cheap, and food also; meat, threepence per pound; an enormous fish costs
twopence; a great craw-fish one penny; a fine fowl, thirteen-pence
halfpenny; a small cart of fire-wood, seven shillings and sixpence.
The reports I heard in Cape Town respecting house-keeping in the country
were not favourable; they say the houses in the country are generally
leaky, and the landlords will not repair them; that the servants are
thieves and liars, and, moreover, extremely dirty, requiring constant
overlooking in the kitchen. The houses in Cape Town are infested with
myriads of fleas—and such fleas!—perfect monsters! They have also a fair
proportion of bugs.
_10th._—I went to the fish market, a square-walled enclosure near the Old
Jetty. The scene was curious and animated; Malays, Hottentots, Bushmen,
and queer-looking people of all sorts, ages, and tribes, dressed out in
their gayest colours, and grinning like so many monkeys, were all huddled
together selling or buying fish. Cartloads of the most enormous craw-fish
lay on the ground, crawling about and fighting each other; and on the
ground near to them were heaps of silver-fish, and quantities of Cape
salmon, and fish without scales, with long thin bodies and pointed heads,
which were sold for one penny each,—good when salted and smoked; and
there were also a number of queer-looking fish, of all sorts and sizes,
with unpronounceable names. The porters who attend the market carry the
fish away in baskets slung to each end of a long pole balanced on the
shoulder;—and such creatures as these porters are! I bought a gielbeck
or yellow beak, for which I paid twopence; the palate of the gielbeck
is yellow, whence its name. A Malay porter carried it to the house on a
stick through its gills, for which his pay was also twopence,—a great
price for a very short distance, compared with the price of the fish,
which was a _very large_ one. One day I met a Bush-boy dragging off a
fish as long as himself; he had a great stick over his shoulder, the end
of which was passed through one of the gills of the fish, whilst the
tail of the creature swept the ground. The high cheek-boned little black
monster laughed and grinned as I could not repress an exclamation at his
exceeding and picturesque ugliness.
_16th._—The year, they tell me, is divided into two parts, the dry and
the wet,—nine months of dry weather, and three months of rain; June,
July, and August being the cold and rainy months. This day, the 16th of
May, it is very cold, and may be reckoned a winter month; the thermometer
in my bed-room at noon 58°. Since my arrival on the 26th April we have
had daily showers, and some few days of rain; still, between the heavy
showers the sun bursts forth, and a walk is delightful.
At breakfast-time a gentleman related to me an extraordinary history
respecting slavery at the Cape; the particulars are as follow:—“The
‘Cleopatra’ has seized a Brazilian vessel—the ‘Progresso;’ she is a
slaver. The ‘Cleopatra’ has taken from her thirteen prisoners and
forty-eight slaves; with these people she has arrived at Pappendosh, a
place near Cape Town, where the slaves have been landed; the rest of the
slaves will follow in the ‘Progresso:’ she has not come in at present;
she was taken in the Mozambique Channel. The slaves will now be examined
and classed according to their ages,—the age is arbitrarily settled.
They generally arrive branded; and as without some distinguishing mark
they cannot be known, it is supposed those who may happen to have no mark
will be branded by the authorities at the Cape. Blank indentures are to
be drawn out, in which the age of the slave, his marks, &c., will be
shown forth. The slaves are generally young, and they, supposing the age
to be about ten years, will be bound to the purchaser of the indenture
until the age of twenty-one; these indentures are to be sold by auction
on the Parade at Cape Town to the highest bidder. The slaves who may be
more aged are to be bound for a certain term of years to the person who
buys them, so that their slavery may be the same with those of earlier
years. These proceedings are under the authority of the Government; the
motive is to conciliate the Dutch, who are generally the purchasers of
the slaves.”
As the English hold forth that they abolish slavery, these proceedings
appear curious, and I will go, if possible, to see the slaves sold on the
parade. Although we do not originally capture the slaves we capture the
vessels when carrying them away, take them into the Cape, and sell them
for our own profit for a certain term of years to the highest bidder at
public auction. It is mentioned in the indentures that the slaves are to
be brought up in the Christian religion. It is said the slaves generally
have no religion at all, and their masters leave them in utter ignorance.
The Table Mountain is to me a source of constant enjoyment; I delight
in its varied appearance: at times a dense white vapour is spread over
it,—when that passes away, the deep clear ultramarine blue of the sky,
covered with bright clouds, forms a background to the dark mountain,
whilst, every now and then, a stormy grey cloud passes over all, and
gives a beautiful effect of light and shade.
I roamed the other day up the mountain by the side of the torrent,
the bed of which is filled with large stones, over which the stream
gurgles and runs with velocity. Hundreds of women and some few men were
all employed washing clothes by beating them upon the stones in the
stream: some of the women, with their infants tied upon their backs,
were washing away, and the whole side of the mountain was covered with
linen drying on the grass. How many of the groups would have formed an
admirable picture, in spite of the ugliness of these Malay and Hottentot
animals! They ask four shillings and sixpence, or three and sixpence a
dozen for washing clothes, but will generally take two shillings and
sixpence, including large and small. For the ship passengers they wash
very badly; for people resident in Cape Town they wash well.
We accompanied a gentleman and his family up the mountain under the
Devil’s Peak; he was going to teach his boys to fire at a target. They
produced a great heavy old pair of flint pistols, and with these they
amused themselves. I was enrolled amongst the Tyros; the two gentlemen
were the best shots,—I took rank as the third; my success charmed me,
although I was afraid of the pistol,—the crazy old weapon was so heavy I
could scarcely take aim. A few evenings afterwards a pretty young French
lady accompanied the party, and fired remarkably true.
_25th._—The sun during the day is very powerful; it does not answer in
these latitudes to expose one’s self to its rays during the noontide
heat. At 4 P.M. we went on the mountain to practise pistol-shooting; we
found that after sunset there was scarcely any twilight, and warned by
the very cold, sharp exhalations from the wet ground, we quitted the spot
quickly, but not before we had all taken cold.
_June 11th._—The thermometer in my room at noon 53°, the air sharp and
very cold. Rambled up Table Mountain, beyond the mill, from which place
the narrow pathway is surrounded by flowers, even at this early season.
I gathered great branches of what is called in England the Duke of
York’s geranium; it was not in flower, but the scent of the leaves was
delicious; it grew there most luxuriantly; when in blossom the flower is
lilac and white. The purple and white prickly heath, and the white heath,
were abundant; the deep orange-coloured aromatic azalia, the bossistroph
or honey-plant, the fine white arum, and the tall slender Ixia, with its
pendant crimson and graceful blossom, and its small bulb, which shot up
every here and there, delighted me with their beauty. These plants,
cultivated with so much care in England, were growing wild in every
direction surrounding the little stony sheep-path I was ascending.
They say mechanics use the oil from the tip of the tail of the Cape
sheep for their machinery, and that it does not become foul in the
works. Five pounds’ weight of the _tips_ of the tails of the sheep costs
two shillings and sixpence, and produces two quarts and a half of fine
clear oil, after having been melted over the fire and strained through a
flannel bag. Animals in southern Africa appear to run to tail: see the
enormous size of the tail of the sheep into which all the fat of the
body appears to be collected: see the pretty mousehunt (a sort of fox),
the Hottentot women in Cape Town, and the Bushwomen; all these have the
beauty of the Hottentot Venus. Some of the Malays, both men and women,
are handsome: the Africanders are too universally well known to need
description.
THE BUSHWOMAN.
The Bojesmāns or Bushmen are a most remarkable race. In one of my
solitary rambles on Table Mountain, I came suddenly upon three of these
people, who were squatting round a small fire in a cleft of the rock.
Curiosity induced me to stop and look at them; they appeared to dislike
my presence and scrutiny, and, as far as I could judge from the angry
tone of their words and their suspicious glances, they were glad when I
walked on.
The speech of the Bojesmāns is a most remarkable and extraordinary _clack
clack_—unlike any other language under the sun, something resembling the
striking together of harsh castanets. The sketch represents a Bushwoman;
it is a portrait; she has a bunch of bulbs in her hand: they principally
feed on roots and vegetables. Her attire is of leather; coloured beads
are around her neck, her ear-rings are of ivory, a curious ornament is in
front of her body, and her _kraal_ or hut is in the distance.
In 1847, I saw four Bojesmāns who were exhibited at the Egyptian Hall;
they were handsome specimens of their kind; the women were younger than
the one represented in the sketch, still the peculiarity of the figure
and the style of countenance stamp them of the same race.
[Illustration: A BUSHWOMAN.
On Stone by فاني پارکس]
The following extract from Harris’s “Wild Sports of Southern Africa,”
contains a most interesting description of the Bushmen:—
“At Kramers-fontein the next day, a horrible spectacle presented itself
to us in the form of an emaciated old Bushwoman, who had come down from
her kraal, five miles distant, to fill two ostrich eggs with water. ‘Grim
misery had worn her to the bones,’ and it is no exaggeration to say that
her attenuated form appeared a skeleton covered with a wet cloth. Those
rounded proportions, which are given to the human form divine, had no
existence in her. Her skin resembled wrinkled leather; and I can compare
her legs and arms to nothing but straightened sticks, knobbed at the
joints. Her body was actually crawling with vermin, with which she was
constantly feeding a little half-inanimate miniature of herself in arms.
‘⸺Wither’d and wild in her attire,
She look’d not like a habitant of earth,
And yet was on it.’
We were glad to bribe her to depart by a present of tobacco; and the
wretched creature’s countenance evinced thankfulness at our liberality.
“The pigmy race, of which this woman was a characteristic specimen,
usually reside in holes and crannies of rocks, and sometimes in wretched
huts, incapable of protecting them from the inclemency of the seasons.
These, their constant fear of discovery induces them to erect in secluded
spots at a great distance from water: a precaution to which they are
further prompted by a desire to leave the pools open for wild animals,
which they occasionally shoot from an ambush with poisoned arrows,
and devour on the spot. They possess neither flocks nor herds—are
unacquainted with agriculture—and the most wealthy can boast of no
property beyond his weapons and his starving dog. With no cares beyond
the present moment, they live almost entirely upon bulbous roots,
locusts, reptiles, and the larvæ of ants, with the habitations of which
latter the country is in many places thickly strewed. Not a trace of
their hovels could be seen from the road; and a traveller might even pass
through their country without seeing a human being, or suspecting that it
was inhabited. Such is their general distrust of visitors, that the males
would never willingly approach us, evincing great trepidation when forced
to do so—no object being more unwelcome to their sight than a troop of
horsemen on the plain.
“The women, who were much less shy, and who never failed to follow the
tracks of our waggons when they happened to come upon them, with the
hope of obtaining tobacco in exchange for ostrich eggs, are of small
and delicate proportions, with hands and feet of truly Lilliputian
dimensions. Their footprints reminded us of Gulliver’s adventures, and
are not larger than those of a child. When young, they have a pleasing
expression of countenance, which they take care to render as captivating
as possible by bedaubing their flat noses and prominent cheek-bones
with a mixture of red-ochre and fat. The toilets of many were made with
scrupulous attention, the effect of the paint being enhanced by necklaces
composed of the fresh entrails of wild beasts—a few cowrie shells, old
bones, and buttons being also interwoven with their matted hair; but the
life they lead, their frequent long abstinence, and constant exposure
to the wind and glare of light in a dry open country, soon inducing
the habit of keeping their naturally small eyes more than half closed,
their comeliness is very ephemeral, and never extends beyond youth. The
females possess much greater volubility and animation of gesture than the
men; but the sounds they utter are a succession of claps of the tongue
produced by forcing that unruly member against different parts of the
teeth and palate: and whilst the enunciation is thus rendered troublesome
and full of impediment, it resembles rather the chattering of monkeys
than the language of human beings.”
_18th._—Thermometer at noon 52°.—Sharp and very cold: the scarlet fever
in Cape Town.
_19th._—Walked to Green Point, and gathered shells beyond the second
lighthouse, which is situated on a rocky shore, where vessels are
frequently wrecked, both accidentally and, it is said, intentionally. The
waves break beautifully over the rocks that run out far into the sea.
The sand on the shore glitters like silver, being composed of fragments
of pounded shells: there are numerous shells to be found, but generally
broken by the ruggedness of the coast. The people dig for them here, and
procure them in great quantities out of the sand, which they sift; they
are sold to burn for lime, which is made at a less cost from the shells
than from the limestone quarries, as on the latter a duty is levied by
the municipality.
The rocks are covered with limpets of all sorts, and cockles: the great
ear shell (haliotis) is common, the coat-of-mail shell (chiton) and other
species are also numerous. The great ear shells I have seen carried about
for sale in Cape Town at twopence each; the people consider the contents
good food.
In Camp’s Bay, and other bays, I understand fine and perfect specimens of
a great variety of shells are found where the shore is less rugged and
the sand good. The enormous size of the sea-weed is quite surprising, its
great stem is of such length and thickness. On removing a clump of the
sea-weed, the sand is alive with millions of wood-lice, at least I think
they are so called; they make great bounds by rolling themselves up in a
ball, and suddenly opening, the strength of the scales and the breadth
of the tail sending them on at a surprising rate. It brought to my mind
those early days in which a mouse, with a tail turned under the body, and
fixed with a bit of cobbler’s wax, was made to jump about the room to my
great delight.
_21st._—Heavy rain—thermometer 56° at noon; the rain has taken away
the great sharpness of the cold, which was too cutting to be pleasant.
In these slightly-built houses, when the thermometer was 52° under the
mountain, the air was very cold and clear, and peculiarly sharp and
crisp. I roamed as usual up the mountain; it is covered with honey bush,
at present in full flower, both the red and the white; the protea, a sort
of honey bush, is now also in flower. As I made my way along, myriads of
small sugar birds started from the bushes, where, fluttering over the
flowers, they had been dipping their long slender beaks into the sweet
juice below. The people collect the juice which flows in great abundance
from the flower of the honey bush; they warm it, and sell it in quart
bottles at three shillings a piece to the druggists, who recommend it for
coughs.
_23rd._—Bought four rings of ivory, which the Kaffirs wear as bracelets
and anklets, formed after a very simple fashion. From the hollow end of
the elephant’s tusk, where it is three-quarters of an inch in thickness,
a circle is cut off one inch in breadth; in this rude state it is worn
as an ornament, three or four on each leg and arm. Purchased a pair of
bullocks’ horns, well polished, for four shillings; but the enormous
price asked for specimens in Cape Town deterred me from making as many
purchases as I should otherwise have done.
_July 5th._—Heavy rain and very unpleasant weather: the people are
suffering from colds and sore throats; which illness, they say, has been
brought by the wind that blows over from the sea between Table Mountain
and the Lion’s Head.
_6th._—An illness, called by _the Capers_ the Sinkings, is very
prevalent; it appears to be a swelling or inflammation of the glands of
the throat.
_7th._—The middle of the Cape winter. Auctions are conducted on a curious
principle, the lowest bidder being the purchaser: it is a Dutch practice,
and rather difficult to comprehend.
_9th._—Walked beyond the hospital on the shore, where several wrecks lie
scattered—found some pretty shells. Robberies are daily committed during
the night in Cape Town by the Malays. At this time of the year it is
their custom to make presents to their priests: the presents _must_ be
made, whether the men have it in their power to offer them or not. In the
latter case they commit robbery to satisfy the demands of their spiritual
advisers—several houses have been broken into.
_14th._—Walked towards Camp’s Bay over the Lion Mountain; sketched some
Cape aloes which were growing most luxuriantly on the road-side, where
they had been planted as a hedge—the stem was of the most brilliant
crimson tint—the prickly pear in full bloom, with its white and crimson
flower, and its deep crimson buds mixed beautifully with the aloes in
the foreground; and in the distance beyond lay the sea and the Blueberg
Mountains. I found a great variety of the most beautiful heaths, also a
number of bulbs. The Africander was in bloom, as well as those bulbs that
give forth their scent at sunset. The Malays are extremely partial to
these sweet night-scented flowers, and collect them by the handful.
_17th._—From the foot of the Devil’s Peak I sketched the Lion Mountain;
it was covered with a deep driving fog that hung in wreaths not unlike a
mane around it; the fog covered the shipping that was just visible below
it, and the town looked indistinct: it was a most cold and unwholesome
day; but I gathered beautiful flowers; the arums and prickly pears were
in full bloom.
_29th._—Ascended the Lion’s Rump, and arrived at the signal-post in time
to see a magnificent sunset: took a sketch of the Lion’s Head, to the
right of which was the back of Table Mountain, and the Southern Ocean
to the left. The town and the bay from this mountain are seen to great
advantage; the regularity of the plan on which the town was built by
the Dutch is excellent. The walk this evening delighted me; my young
companions and I sat down many times, and employed ourselves with digging
up the bulbs with which the mountain is literally covered. The size of
some of the bulbous roots is surprising, one weighed three pounds and
a quarter, and measured in circumference twenty inches and a half; the
height of the bulb was five inches and a half, and the leaves were eleven
inches long. The fragrance of the flowers of the night-scented bulbs
became delicious as we descended the mountain very late in the evening;
it is rich in fine grass, and bulbs innumerable.
_Aug. 4th._—Visited the Botanical Garden under the Lion’s Head; a
number of trees and plants from Australia are collected there. The most
brilliant African plant in blossom was the Strelitzia regina, with its
orange and purple blossom, and its long wand-like leaves. The Kaffir
bread-tree (Zamia horrida) and the Zamia longifolia are very remarkable;
grass trees from Australia were there, but they had perished from the
cold. When on the Lion’s Head we saw a very curious bulb, the hæmanthus
or blood-flower; the bulb is of large size, and produces only two leaves,
which turn back and lie open upon the ground; they have no stalk, and lie
close upon the earth, the colour a bright green; some of this class have
spotted leaves. The gardener told me that the Bushmen use the juice of
the spotted hæmanthus as poison for their arrows; and my young companions
said, when they were on the frontier they saw a Bushman stick his arrow
between the two leaves down into the bulb, and he told them, in that
manner the Bushmen poisoned their weapons[40].
In India the Hill-men from Rajmal use poison on their arrows; it is most
powerful and fatal, but they will not disclose from what plant they
obtain it. The Hill-men at Almorah preserve the same secrecy on the
subject. The hæmanthus toxicaria has spotted leaves; of these plants
there were many in the garden, newly placed there, and they had not been
there long enough to flower.
Harris, in speaking of African poisons, says:—“The Bechuana, with what
truth I know not, are said occasionally to domesticate this stately
bird (the ostrich) for equestrian purposes; and the puny Bushman avails
himself of the disguise afforded by its skin to mix with a troop of wild
animals, and select his victim. At the twang of his tiny bow away scours
the herd in dire consternation, and, more alarmed than all, off scuds
the impostor with them, again propelling a shaft as soon as the panic
has subsided. The destruction committed in this manner is incredible: a
slender reed, only slightly barbed with bone or iron, but imbued with a
subtle poison, and launched with unerring dexterity, being sufficient to
destroy the most powerful animal.
“The principal ingredient of this deadly bane is said, by Pringle, to
consist of the venom of the most dangerous serpents that infest the
desert. In seizing and extracting the poison from beneath the fangs of
the fatal puff-adder, or the cobra-di-capello, the despised African
displays the most wonderful dexterity and boldness; simply placing his
naked foot on the neck of the writhing reptile, and not unfrequently
closing the exhibition of his intrepidity by fearlessly swallowing the
contents of the bag he has extracted, as a supposed antidote, or rather
as an effectual charm against the deleterious consequence of the venom,
should it ever be accidentally brought into contact with his blood. Being
of itself too thin and volatile to retain its powers long unimpaired,
this animal poison is skilfully concocted into a black glutinous
substance, by the due admixture of powerful vegetable and mineral
poisons; the former being generally obtained from the root of a species
of amaryllis, called by the colonists the gift-bol, or poison-bulb;
whilst the latter is an unctuous or bituminous substance, which is said
to exude from certain rocks and caverns that exist in particular parts of
the Bushman’s country.”
On the mountain we found the ornithogalum, the star of Bethlehem, in
abundance; it was like a weed in the garden. The ferania was there,
with its spider-like flower; and the oxalis (woodsorrel), with its most
brilliant pink flowers; the name of the enormous bulb I was unable to
discover. The Australian pine was in great beauty in the garden; also
the melaleuca kȳápootie, with its most curious bark. When you tear off
a part of it you may separate it into layers as fine as gold-beaters’
skin, and it is of the same colour. Another sort has a coarser bark,
and is used to cover hooqŭ snakes in India; fire-screens are made of
this bark in America, and ingeniously ornamented with beads. The Zamia
longifolia and the grass tree are distorted-looking productions, holding
in outward appearance the same place amongst plants as a man afflicted
with elephantiasis does amongst human beings. The bottle brush tree was
in full bloom. The garden is very well worth visiting; the gardener is
civil and intelligent.
_5th._—I started to walk to the Plaat Clip, or flat stone; it is
half-way up Table Mountain; a favourite place of resort for parties from
Cape Town. It is a beautiful spot: over the broad top of a bare rock a
stream of water pours down with great velocity, and rushes down the side,
forming a beautiful but small waterfall. Trees ornament the spot, and
luxuriant bunches of the arum in full bloom are dotted amongst the rocks
with picturesque effect. The ruin of a house stands there; its history
appears unknown,—divers romantic tales were told me concerning this ruin.
It is situated on a lovely and picturesque spot, very attractive to a
person fond of solitude. After a long walk and much clambering among the
rocks, we returned laden with flowers. Nothing can be more agreeable than
spending the day at the Plaat Clip.