THE BLUE SHADOW ACROSS THE FLATS
Our ponies met us at Muizenberg, and we crossed the railway-line on to
the long white beach.
It was Easter Monday, and trainloads of inhabitants swarmed like gaudy
bees round the bathing-huts. At no other time can one see to better
advantage the wonderful fusion of races which has gone to the making
of the population of the Cape Peninsula.
In the shade of one of the small, stationary wooden bathing-houses I
saw the gardener's family, their colour scheme running through the
gamut of shades from white to chocolate. The gardener had once had a
Cockney wife, and his life was ''ell,' so he married Marlie, the
slightly coloured girl brought up on a German mission-station, who
made excellent stews, washed his shirts well, and sang Lutheran hymns
to the children when they howled. There were ancestors, black and
white, on both sides--and everyone hasn't ancestors.
[Illustration: TABLE MOUNTAIN FROM RETREAT FLATS]
We passed a wagon-load of Malays in gala dress of silks and
spangles--our washerwomen--possessing the wondrous Oriental gift
of elusive speech, which will turn away good Christian wrath. One old
Malay told us he remembered the days when all the Malays made their
pilgrimage yearly to the grave of Sheik Joseph. A political prisoner
of the East India Company, of great wealth and position in the East,
he was exiled to the Cape, and lived at the mouth of the Eerste River,
near the farm of the Governor's witty brother, Franz Van der Stel.
There is a sepulchre which is called the 'Kramat,' or resting-place of
a holy man. The wanderers of the Flats in those early days would often
come upon the Sheik and his forty followers galloping across the
sand-hills. This generation of followers wore suits of neat blue
serge, and, over the fez, a wide reed hat with a low, pointed crown.
Marinus and I thought it would require a Shakespeare to describe the
heterogeneous mass we passed through. Pathetic sometimes--a
knock-kneed clerk from Cape Town, shivering in a new, dark-blue
bathing suit, vainly trying to acclimatize his pasty-faced offspring
to the waves. Complexions are hard to keep in South Africa; the sun is
our master, all-absorbing and requiring all--colour, brain,
energy--your puny effort of concentration useless against this fierce,
concentrated mass, this alluring South African sun--Lorelei of the
South.
The very people here are an example--not one concentrated type.
Marinus and I soliloquized quietly until we reached the shallow river
which feeds the Lakeside Vleis (lakes). We avoided the beach and kept
close up to the sand-dunes, the white sand protected from the tearing
gales of the 'south-easters' by a network of creeping 'Hottentot fig,'
a fleshy plant with wonderful bright flowers of every hue, and bearing
an acquired taste in fruit--a small, dried-up-looking fig.
Tall flowering reeds grow in 'klompjes,'[7] and dotted about are small
green bushes covered with red berries--'dinna bessies,' the coloured
folk call them. 'Not much cover for the hippo,' laughed Marinus.
My mind went back with a jerk to the old days of Muizenberg, the
Mountain of Mice, its cannon buried in the sand, its battle, its fort
and barracks, the Caapmans, who wandered with their herds over the
flats and killed sea-cows, or hippo, on the very spot where the
enterprising boatman of Lakeside had built his café.
'And elephants roamed,' I quoted; 'and always the reflection of Table
Mountain--always the same blue lotus lilies, and the sand-hills, and
the blue river flowing across the beach.'
We made for Strandfontein, regaining the beach as the tide was going
out and we could avoid the quicksands. Strandfontein, a little
desolate bay boasting one reed-covered house and a celebrated
beach--celebrated for its shells, huge blue mussels, pale pink
mussels, daintily carved nautili, and rows and rows of coral and mauve
fan shells.
[Illustration: SAND DUNES]
Again we talked of the old 'Company days,' and the wonderful plan of
Commander Van Riebeek to drain the Liesbeek and the Salt Rivers into
one big canal which would cut off the peninsula from the mainland,
and, like the great Wall of Hadrian, would keep the barbarians out,
away from the Company's freemen growing flax, wheat, and disaffection
on the swampy flats.
Van Riebeek bewails the impracticability in his journal, which, bound
in ancient brown leather, and written in heavy Dutch lettering, is
carefully preserved in Cape Town.
'_February 4, 1656._
'Dry, calm weather. Riebeeck proceeds to False Bay (roads
being favourable), accompanied by a guard of soldiers, to
see whether the Canal, proposed by Van Goens, could be made
across the Isthmus. Took the river course to see whether it
at all approached False Bay. Found that the Sweet River,
now Liesbeek, which with the Salt River runs into Table
Bay, runs snake-like three or four leagues crosswise over
the Isthmus, and at some places appears to be stagnant,
forming small lakes, between which low and sandy lands lie,
until within a league of certain high sand-hills of False
Bay, where it again turns into small streams, which
gradually become broader, and form a river of fresh water
running further on into a large lake, almost as broad as
the Meuse and about two hours on foot in circumference,
with deep and brackish water full of sea-cows and
sea-horses, and supplied from the downs of False Cape.
There was apparently no opening, but the water percolated
through the sands. The Lake is still about one and a half
hours on foot from the seashore, which is about half an
hour's walk broad. The Downs about a league, and so high,
that they are almost mountains, twenty or twenty-four
behind each other, it would therefore be impossible to cut
them through. Besides, there would be lakelets on the
Flats, some a quarter, some half a league broad to be cut
through. This would also be difficult, because of the rocky
ground, as we found the next day, after having spent the
night in the veldt. The matter is therefore impossible, and
would be useless and most injurious to the Company, as the
Canal could not be made so wide and deep as to prevent the
natives swimming across with their cattle. In case it is
supposed that on this side the passage would be closed to
them, it must be borne in mind that a large sheet of water
on the south side of False Cape about three hours' walk in
circumference, becomes a large dry and salt flat in summer,
so that no proper Canal could be pierced through it--as the
sand is soft and the downs are high--which latter would
continually fill up the channel; thousands of men would be
required to keep it open; so that the Company cannot
for a moment think of it, as the expense would be enormous
in comparison with the advantages derived. _Millions of
gold would be required!_ and if finally the work be
finished and communication with the natives cut off, it
would be absurd to suppose that they could be confined on
this side--for the artificial island would have such
dimensions that, in order to control it, a large number of
men would be required, scattered in the veldt, not a few,
but a good many, soldiers.
'The idea that such a canal would enable the householders
to live more securely is hardly worth considering, as those
who may choose to live here and there may build stone
dwellings sufficiently strong to protect them from the
natives. Should such free householders cost the Company so
much that soldiers are to be kept for their defence,
instead of their assisting the Company?...'
[Illustration: ON THE SANDHILLS NEAR MUIZENBERG]
We cantered over some small sand-hills, and came down to the plains,
covered with 'quick' grass, dotted with small yellow protea-bush, tiny
pink flowers, and scarlet heath called 'erica,' intersected by blue
pools of water, their surfaces almost covered by a sweet-smelling,
white waterweed. The Malays gather the flower, 'water-eintje,' and
curry it or stew it into a thick soup. A narrow, white, sandy pathway
ran between the pools, and far away, in a blue haze, we saw Table
Mountain and the Devil's Peak.
Quoting again from the Diary:
'_June 29, 1656._
'Proceeded to the Flats where Van Goens wished to have
canal dug. Find the whole country so inundated with rapid
streams that the whole cutting, with redoubts and all,
would, if made, be swept away at once. The Flats had become
a combination of lakes; the work would therefore at present
be left in abeyance.'
The ponies slopped through the wet sand, and ahead lay the big lake
called Zeekoe Vlei (_i.e._, Sea-Cow Lake), separated from a smaller
lake, Ronde Vlei, by a narrow isthmus.
Skirting a huge, precipitous mountain of sand, we rode round the vlei,
disturbing great flocks of heron, gulls, and wild-duck.
Straight up out of a yellow protea-bush flew a brown bird with a dull
orange-red breast--a wip-poor-will, or, as the coloured people say,
the 'Christmas bird,' or 'Piet, mij vrouw.' Its call is more surely
'Piet, mij vrouw' than anything else.
'Do you know Le Vaillant's story?' said Marinus. I did. But Marinus
loves to tell a story, and he has to listen to many; so I said: 'His
story of what?' Then Marinus, being a dear, told me the tale:
'Le Vaillant and the faithful Hottentot chief, or Piet, as his master
called him, were out shooting. Le Vaillant shot and killed a female
bird. Piet brought up the bird. "Go back, you adorable Hottentot,"
said the traveller, "to the spot where you found this bird, for surely
there you will find Monsieur le Mari." The "adorable Piet" began to
weep; that Baas would excuse him, but this he could not do--never
could he fire at the male bird. "Go--I insist!" said Le Vaillant. "No,
no, Baas!" And the astonished Baas listened to the reason: that no
sooner had Piet shot the female, when the male, to quote the old
story, "began to pursue him with great fury, continually repeating,
'Piet, mij vrouw! Piet, mij vrouw!' This, in English, is, 'Piet, my
wife! Piet, my wife!' Small wonder that Le Vaillant wrote of the
misjudged, Dutch-ridden Hottentot as being "full of sensibility"!'
The sun had begun to set when we reached the other side of the vlei,
and a coloured woman, carrying a mass of blue lotus lilies up to Town
for sale, told us 'we had v-e-ry far way still to go.'
Marinus agreed that it was quite worth a hurried ride home, seeing
this wonderful kaleidoscope of colouring reflected in the vleis.
The sand-hills around were pink, and over the tops of some appeared
the purple of the Muizenberg Mountains. In the north were the
Stellenbosch Mountains, with the Helderberg, in a blaze of red,
underlined by long patches of shining white sand-hills.
But all the while the great blue shadow of Table Mountain crept over
the Flats, over the vleis, until we watched it reach the north
barriers. Slowly the blue mounted, absorbing the flush of sunset,
reached the summits, and drove the pink into the fleecy, detached
clouds above; these, like blazing balloons, floated over the bay.
I sat up--to reality.
'I have been lost on these Flats, Marinus, and still remember with
horror the growing darkness and the interminable miles of sandy road
and dense wattle plantations. Let us get on.'
So we rode and rode, through the brown rushes, splashing through
water, over mealie patches, dozens of little German children from the
tiny farms hidden in low wattle rushing out to see us pass.
On we flew into the darkening blue shadow; behind us, whirlwinds of
sand rising like white wraiths of pursuing Erlkings; and before, the
smoke from the Kaffir location near the mouth of the Salt River
curling into the mist.
FOOTNOTE:
[7] _I.e._, clumps.
BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD
[Illustration: AT THE HEAD OF FALSE BAY]