FALSE BAY
The old road from Wynberg to Muizenberg is no longer traceable. I
imagine it started from Waterloo Green, as all old Wynberg was centred
round the hill. A convent stands back from the green, but, like the
poem in the story of 'Through the Looking-Glass,' if you look again
you will see it isn't a convent at all, but the old Wynberg homestead,
one of the early grants of land to a freeman, the home of Mynheer
Cloete.
Wynberg hides its archives in overgrown gardens of oleander,
wild-olive, blue plumbago hedges, cool white gardenias and red
hibiscus flowers, cypress-trees and date-palms, brought from the East
by retired soldiers from India, with large livers and small pensions,
making their curries and their chutneys in the little thatched
bungalows of old Wynberg. To one of these, still standing and acting
as a stable to a big white house in the oak avenue which we fancy is
part of the old road, came Wellington on his way to India, and gave
his name to the avenue. On our way along the main road to Muizenberg
we passed a renovated homestead, probably one of the old rest-houses,
now used as a convalescent home, but its gardens are full of old-world
memories, willows, and myrtle-hedge, and arbours of strange trees,
bent and twisted into fantastic coolnesses.
There is a dull stretch of wattled road running through Plumstead,
Diep River, and Retreat. At Diep River the flooded lands grow
potatoes, at Plumstead they grow vegetables, all in amongst the
wildness of the big plain covered with vleis and protea-bush and
purple and crimson heath. The Retreat is historical. It lies on the
Cape Town side of the Muizenberg Mountains, which seem to spring up in
granite and green from the sea. A narrow strip of land at their base
spoils the illusion--'The Thermopylæ of the Cape,' says an old
enthusiast some hundred years ago. Through the narrow pass between the
sea and mountains retreated the famous Burgher Cavalry, abandoning
their position at Muizenberg before the guns of the _America_. But
history, I fancy, regards the Battle of Muizenberg more as a
diplomatic coup than as a serious fight. Even the cannon-balls, which
are dotted along the road from Kalk Bay to Muizenberg, are ending
their uneventful days in seaside peace, and their resting-places in
soft sand speak of further diplomacy.
Near Lakeside are several old farms with lost identity. Over the
hill, leaving the lovely vleis behind us, we came upon Muizenberg,
from an architectural point of view the saddest sight in the world;
here are two old landmarks, the one so renovated that it is almost
unrecognizable, the other a ruin. The first was a low, whitewashed,
thatched homestead--an old inn, or rest-house, as the Dutch called
it--and it was named 'Farmer Pecks.' The oldest inhabitant cannot tell
why, but I remember the original building with its celebrated
signboard. The story of the signboard is as follows: 'Two middies,
many, many years ago, returning to Simonstown from Cape Town, where
they had been on a jaunt, arrived one dark night at Muizenberg. It was
a twenty-mile walk--twenty miles along a difficult track, across a
dangerous beach of quicksands (Fish Hoek), and they were travelling on
foot, because very few people could afford a cart. It was too late and
too dark to continue their journey, so they had to put up at Farmer
Pecks'. When it came to paying for the night's board and lodging there
was no money--all left in Cape Town. "We'll paint you a signboard,"
they said--a Utopian mode of finance to solve the difficulty and pay
their debt. They must have come from Salisbury Plain, or Farmer Peck
had, for the signboard portrayed a mild-looking shepherd of a Noah's
Ark type, gazing over a hill at some fat wooden sheep, grazing in
emerald grass, and in the background a very English-looking little
farmhouse with rows of stiff Noah's Ark trees. Quite a premature
attempt at modern conventional design, inspired by the ideals of "Two
Years Old" playing at Creation and landscape-gardening in the nursery.
Here the momentous questions are: whether Mr. and Mrs. Noah, in red
and blue æsthetic garments of a wondrous purity of line, shall stand
under perfectly symmetrical trees which are on dear little rounds of
wood, or whether they shall be dotted over the farm together with
Shem, Ham, and Japheth, in pure yellow, pink, and green, in close
proximity to two pink cows, two red geese, two black pigs, and two
purple horses.'
[Illustration: AT LAKESIDE, LOOKING TOWARDS CONSTANTIA]
[Illustration: AT LAKESIDE, LOOKING SOUTH-EAST]
A domesticated sequel to the story of the Flood.
Everyone has played 'Noah,' so everyone will understand the design of
the poster.
The following verses were painted under the board, springing from the
same talented and amusing brains, a quaint mixture of English, Dutch,
and Latin:
'Multum in parvo, pro bono publico,
Entertainment for man and beast all of a row.
Lekker kost as much as you please,
Excellent beds without any fleas.
'Nos patriam fugimus now we are here,
Vivamus, let us live by selling beer.
On donne à boire et à manger ici,
Come in and try, whosoever you be.'
In a balloon issuing from the mouth of the gentle shepherd was this
motto, carrying a deeper philosophy: 'Life's but a journey; let us
live well on the road, says the gentle shepherd of Salisbury Plain.'
On the opposite side of the road are the ruins of the barracks, a low,
stone, thatched house in a green field, surrounded by a stone wall.
Anne Barnard drove down at the peril of her life, she thought, to
Simonstown, or False Bay as it was called, and, passing Muizenberg on
her way, found the garrison living in huts, and was regaled on boiled
beef and Constantia wine served by the late steward of the Duke of
Orleans. 'Un mauvais sujet,' says Lady Anne.
The main road runs at the foot of the mountains, with a railway-line
and a few yards of beach and rock between it and the sea. The most
wonderful sea in the world! emerald green, with mauve reefs of rock
showing through its clearness; sapphire blue towards Simonstown, the
colour of forget-me-nots sweeping the white crescent of Muizenberg
sands.
We passed St. James and Kalk Bay, where the steam-trawler was coming
in like a big brown hen to roost surrounded by all the fishing-boats,
some still on the horizon, like straggling chickens, flying along with
their white wings sparkling and fluttering in the sun and south-east
breeze.
[Illustration: ON FISHHOEK BEACH, NORDHOEK MOUNTAINS IN DISTANCE]
At Fish Hoek, the dangerous beach of quicksands, the setting sun
poured through the Kommetje and Noord Hoek Valley, tinting the
sandhills until they glowed like gigantic opals; the lights swept pink
over the blue streams running across the beach into the sea, and the
long line of wave, which rolled in to meet them, made a bank of
transparent aquamarine before it curled itself on to the shore--thin
blueness with foam-scalloped edges.
We rounded another mountain corner and came upon Glen Cairn with its
beach-streams and quarries. Clusters of stone huts, like prehistoric
dwellings on the mountain slopes, are the homes of the quarrymen.
Simonstown had begun to consider its nightcap when we rode slowly
round the last corner. The dark grey cruisers were hardly discernible
in the dusk; across the bay, on the Hottentot's Holland, a fire
crawled like a red snake up the mountains; the light on the Roman Rock
Lighthouse was lit. The gardens of Admiralty House are terraced above
the sea by a long, low white wall; to the right is an enormous white
plaster figure of Penelope, the old figure-head from the ship of that
name, and the unseeing eyes of the watchful Penelope are turned
towards the decrepit hulk lying a few hundred yards away. Great
magenta masses of bougainvillæa hid the low house, and soon the
darkness hid all.
The strains of 'God save the King' from the flagship woke me to the
day, and an hour later we were riding along the gum-tree avenue into
the town. The quaint little town was named after Governor Simon Van
der Stel; before that it was called False Bay, or the Bay of Falso.
Here for five months, beginning with March, the ships from Table Bay
would anchor, while for five months Table Bay was given over to
intolerable gales.
A traveller of the eighteenth century describes the town:
'Close to the shore of the Bay there are a number of
warehouses, in which the provisions are deposited for the
use of the East India Company's ships. A very beautiful
hospital has been erected here for the crews, and a
commodious house for the Governor, who usually comes hither
and spends a few days while the ships are lying in the Bay.
Commerce draws hither also a great number of individuals
from the Cape, who furnish the officers with lodgings.
While the latter are here the Bay is exceedingly lively,
but as soon as the season permits them to heave up their
anchors, it becomes a desert; everyone decamps, and the
only inhabitants are a company of the garrison, who are
relieved every two months. The vessels which arrive then
and have need of provisions are in a dismal situation, for
it often happens that the warehouse has been so much
drained that it is necessary to bring from Cape Town in
carts whatever these new-comers are in want of, and
the carriage usually costs an exorbitant price. The hire of
a paltry cart is from twenty to thirty dollars a day; I
have known of fifty paid for one, and it is to be observed
that they can only make one journey in the twenty-four
hours.'
[Illustration: SIMONSTOWN MOUNTAINS, WITH CAPE POINT AND ROMAN ROCK
LIGHTHOUSES]
We can nowadays, for the exorbitant price of something more than a
dollar, run up to Cape Town in less than an hour; but I have heard
from not too ancient inhabitants wonderful stories of not too long ago
of how, packed like sardines, parties would drive from Town to
Simonstown to dance on a gunboat and home again in the dawn, with some
danger of the wrong tide over the Fish Hoek beach, or of the bad road
to Wynberg.
In an old book of travels I find the _raison d'être_ for the name
given to the 'Roman' Rock:
'The finest fish are caught here, and particularly the
Rooman (or Rooiman), that gives its name to the Roman Rock,
in the neighbourhood of which it is found in great
abundance.'
The Commander of old Simonstown died a millionaire, and his illegal
dealings seem to have been well known and discussed, as all the
writers of this time and later speak of it. He had the rank of 'under
merchant,' and carried on a trade with the foreign vessels, reselling
necessaries at enormous profit.... 'Mr. Trail (a great rogue),' writes
Anne Barnard to Melville.
We rode up the Red Hill--a steep roadway up the mountain--and saw a
precarious-looking aerial car swaying up the mountain-side to the
Sanatorium and Range. We ultimately passed quite close to the Range on
the flat top in thick purple heath. We looked north, over the False
Bay and Noord Hoek Mountains, the Steenbergen, or Tokai Ranges, and
saw Table Mountain in a coronet of cloud. Across these flat-topped
ranges, over three hundred years ago, had fled the Hottentots, before
finding their asylum on the opposite shore--the Hottentot's Holland
Mountains. The two Passes--the Kloof and the road from the Castle to
the Flats--were carefully guarded. The Caapmans, Hottentots, and
Watermen, cattle-thieves, tobacco-thieves, garden-thieves,
wreck-salvagers, hurried along with their cattle from Hout Bay,
Chapmans Bay, and Noord Hoek, to Cape Point. The Commander sent
several parties to hunt them out, and the majority made off over the
Flats, led by their rascally chief 'Herry.' The lowest of them, the
Watermen, remained behind, hiding in caves and underwood. One fine day
Corporal Elias Giero, who, with a considerable force, had wandered for
days round Hout Bay and the Berghvalleyen, reported that eighteen
hours' walk from this neighbourhood, almost at the southern end of the
Cape, he had come upon their camp. It sounds pathetic, this great
expedition for such a small enemy. They found three reed huts, with
thirteen men and as many women and children. They were making
assegais, when their dogs barked, and they fled into the rushes,
crying out that they were Watermen, and not cattle-stealers. But some
were recognized by 'men who had felt their assegais,' and the chief
was captured. The former were killed. The chief and a _ci-devant_
kitchen-boy refused to walk to the fort, 'and, as it was too difficult
to carry them, our men brought with them to the fort _their upper
lips_.' Many of them were recognized as wood and water carriers to the
garrison at the fort, and their names and aliases are carefully
recorded--for example: 'Carbinza,' or 'Plat neus'; 'Egutha,' or 'Hoogh
en Laagh'; 'Mosscha,' or 'Kleine Lubbert'; 'Kaikana Makonkoa';
'Louchoeve'; 'Orenbare'; 'Diknavel'; and so on. Translated into
English--those that are translatable--they run: 'Flat-nose,' 'High and
Low,' 'Quick,' 'Bring,' 'Unweary,' 'Hold him fast,' 'He nearly,' etc.
This is a small bit of history which belongs to Cape Point.