From Worcester we went on to a little town called Robertson, which is

also the capital of an electoral division. The country here is

altogether a country of mountains, varying from three to seven thousand

feet high. The valleys between them are broad, so as to give ample space

for agriculture,--if only agriculture can be made to pay. Having heard

much of the continual plains of South Africa I had imagined that every

thing beyond the hills immediately surrounding Capetown would be flat;

but in lieu of that I found myself travelling through a country in which

one series of mountains succeeds another for hundreds of miles. The Cape

Colony is very large,--especially the Western Province, which extends

almost from the 28th to much below the 34th degree of latitude S., and

from the 17th to the 23rd of longitude E. Of this immense area I was

able to see comparatively only a small part;--but in what I did see I

was never out of the neighbourhood of mountains. The highest mountain in

South Africa is Cathkin Peak, in Natal, and that is over 10,000 feet. In

the districts belonging to the Cape Colony the highest is in Basuto, and

is the Mont aux Sources. The highest in the Western Province is called

The Seven Weeks Poort, which is in the neighbourhood of Swellendam and

belongs to the district of which I am now speaking. It is 7,600 feet

high. As the first and most important consequence of this the making of

roads within a couple of hundred miles of Capetown has been a matter of

great difficulty. In every direction passes through the mountains have

had to be found, which when found have required great skill and a very

heavy expenditure before they could be used for roads. But a second

consequence has been that a large extent of magnificent scenery has been

thrown open, which, as the different parts of the world are made nearer

to each other by new discoveries and advancing science, will become a

delight and a playground to travellers,--as are the Alps and the

Pyrenees and the Apennines in Europe. At present I think that but few

people in England are aware that among the mountains of the Cape Colony

there is scenery as grand as in Switzerland or the south-west of France.

And the fact that such scenery is close to them attracts the notice of

but a small portion of the inhabitants of the Colony itself. The Dutch I

fancy regarded the mountains simply as barriers or disagreeable

obstacles, and the English community which has come since has hardly as

yet achieved idleness sufficient for the true enjoyment of tourist

travelling.

Robertson itself is not an interesting town, though it lies close under

the mountains. Why it should have missed the beauty of The Paarl, of

Ceres, and of Swellendam which we were about to visit, I can hardly say.

Probably its youth is against it. It has none of the quaintness of

Dutch architecture; and the oaks,--for it has oaks,--are not yet large

enough to be thoroughly delightful. We found, however, in its

neighbourhood a modern little wood large enough to enable us to lose

ourselves, and were gratified by the excitement.

I have said that in these districts, mountainous as they are, the

valleys are broad enough for agriculture, if only agriculture can be

made to pay. The fertility of the soil is apparent everywhere. Robertson

itself is devoted to the making of brandy, and its vineyards are

flourishing. Patches of corn were to be seen and trees had grown

luxuriantly here and there. It seemed that almost anything would grow.

But little or nothing useful will grow without the aid of other water

than that bestowed in the regular course of nature. “I plant as many

trees,” said the magistrate of the district, speaking to me of the

streets of the town, “as I can get convicts to water.” “Wheat;--oh yes,

I can grow any amount of wheat,” a farmer said to me in another place,

“where I can lead water.” In Messrs. Silver and Co.’s Guide book, page

99, I find the following passage in reference to the Cape Colony. “The

whole question of the storing of water by means of scientifically

constructed dams is one that cannot be too strongly urged on the Cape

Government.” Of the truth of this there can be no doubt, nor is the

district one in which the fall of rain is deficient, if the rain could

be utilized. It amounts to something over 24 inches annually, which

would suffice for all the purposes required if the supply given could be

made to flow upon the lands. But it falls in sudden storms, is attracted

by the mountains, and then runs off into the rivers and down to the sea

without effecting those beneficent objects which I think we may say it

was intended to produce. The consequence is that agriculture is

everywhere patchy, and that the patches are generally small. The farmer

according to his means or according to his energy will subject 10, 20,

30, or 40 acres to artificial irrigation. When he does so he can produce

anything. When he does not do so he can produce nothing.[11]

There are the mountains and the rains fall upon them, running off

uselessly to the ocean with their purpose unaccomplished. When we want

to store the rain water from our roof for domestic uses we construct

pipes and tanks and keep the blessing by us so as to have it when we

want it. The side of a mountain is much like the roof of a house,--only

larger. And the pipes are for the most part made to our hand by nature

in the shape of gullies, kloofs, and rivulets. It is but the tanks that

we want, and some adjustment as to the right of using them. This, if

ever done, must be done by the appliance of science, and I of all men am

the last to suggest how such appliance should be made. But that it is

practicable appears to be probable, and that if done it would greatly

increase the produce of the lands affected and the general well being of

the Colony no one can doubt. But the work is I fear beyond the compass

of private enterprise in a small community, and seems to be one which

requires the fostering hand of Government. If a Governor of the Cape

Colony,--or a Prime Minister,--could stop the waters as they rush down

from the mountains and spread them over the fields before they reach the

sea he would do more for the Colony than has been effected by any

conqueror of Kafirs.

From Robertson we went a little off our road to Montague for the sake of

seeing Cogman’s Pass. That also is interesting though not as fine as

some others. Whence it has taken its name I could not discover. It was

suggested to me that it was so called because of its lizards;--and the

lizards certainly were there in great numbers. I could not find that

Cogman meant lizard either in Hottentot language or in Dutch. Nor did it

appear that any man of note of the name of Cogman had connected himself

with the road. But there is the Pass with its ugly name leading

gallantly and cleverly through the rocks into the little town of

Montague.

Montague like Oudtshoorn and Robertson makes brandy, the Montague brandy

being, I was assured, equal to the Cango brandy which comes from

Oodtshoorn, and much superior to that made at Robertson. I tasted them

all round and declare them to be equally villainous. I was assured that

it was an acquired taste. I hope that I may not be called on to go

through the practice necessary for acquiring it. I shall perhaps be told

that I formed my judgment on the new spirit, and that the brandy ought

to be kept before it is used. I tried it new and old. The new spirit is

certainly the more venomous, but they are equally nasty. It is generally

called Cape Smoke. Let me warn my readers against Cape Smoke should they

ever visit South Africa.

At Montague, as we were waiting outside the inn for our cart, two sturdy

English beggars made their appearance before us, demanding charity. They

could get no work to do,--so they said,--in this accursed land, and

wanted money to buy bread. No work to do! And yet every farmer, every

merchant, every politician I had met and spoke with since I had put my

foot on South African soil, had sworn to me that the country was a

wretched country simply because labour could not be had! The two men had

Cape Smoke plainly developed in every feature of their repulsive faces.

As we were seated and could not rid ourselves of our countrymen without

running away, we entered into conversation with them. Not get work! It

was certainly false! They were on their way, they said, from the Eastern

Province. Had they tried the railway? We knew that at the present moment

labour was peculiarly wanted on the railway because of the disturbance

created by Kreli and his Galekas. For the disturbance of which I shall

speak in one of the concluding chapters of my work was then on hand.

“Yes,” said the spokesman who, as on all such occasions, was by far the

more disreputable of the two. “They had tried the railway, and had been

offered 2s. 6d. a day. They were not going to work along side of niggers

for 2s. 6d., which would only supply them with grub! Did we want real

Englishmen to do that?” We told them that certainly we did want real

Englishmen to earn their grub honestly and not to beg it; and then,

having endeavoured to shame them by calling them mean fellows, we were

of course obliged to give them money.

Such rascals might turn up anywhere,--in any town in England much more

probably than in South Africa. But their condition as we saw them, and

the excuse which they made for their condition, were typical of the

state of labour in South Africa generally. The men, if worth anything,

could earn more than 2s. 6d. a day,--as no doubt those other men could

have done of whom I spoke some chapters back;--but an Englishman in

South Africa will not work along side of a coloured man on equal terms

with the coloured man. The English labourer who comes to South Africa

either rises to more than the labouring condition, or sinks to something

below it. And he will not be content simply to supply his daily wants.

He at once becomes filled with the idea that as a Colonist he should

make his fortune. If he be a good man,--industrious, able to abstain

from drink and with something above ordinary intelligence,--he does make

some fortune, more or less adequate. At any rate he rises in the world.

But if he have not those gifts,--then he falls, as had done those two

ugly reprobates.

On our way from Montague to Swellendam, where was to be our next short

sojourn, our Cape cart broke down. The axle gave way, and we were left

upon the road;--or should have been left, some fifteen miles from

Montague in one direction and the same distance from Swellendam in the

other, had not the accident happened within sight of a farm house. As

farm houses occur about once in every six or seven miles, this was a

blessing; and was felt so very strongly when a young Dutch farmer came

at once to our rescue with another cart. “I might as well take it,” he

said with a smile when we offered him half a sovereign, “but you’d have

had the cart all the same without it.” This was certainly true as we

were already taking our seats when the money was produced. I am bound to

say that I was never refused anything which I asked of a Dutchman in

South Africa. I must remark also that often as I broke down on my

travels,--and I did break down very often and sometimes in circumstances

that were by no means promising,--there always came a Deus ex machina

for my immediate relief. A generous Dutchman would lend me a horse or a

cart;--or a needy Englishman would appear with an animal to sell when

the getting of a horse under any circumstances had begun to appear

impossible. On one occasion a jibbing brute fell as he was endeavouring

to kick everything to pieces, and nearly cut his leg in two;--but a

kindhearted colonist appeared immediately on the scene, with a very

pretty girl in his cart, and took me on to my destination. And yet one

often travels hour after hour, throughout the whole day, without meeting

a fellow traveller.

Swellendam is such another village as The Paarl, equally enticing,

equally full of oaks, though not equally long. From end to end it is but

three miles, while The Paarl measures eight. But the mountains at

Swellendam are finer than the mountains at The Paarl, and with the

exception of those immediately over George, are the loveliest which I

saw in the Colony. Swellendam is close under the Langeberg range,--so

near that the kloofs or wild ravines in the mountains can be reached by

an easy walk. They are very wild and picturesque, being thickly wooded,

but so deep that from a little distance the wood can hardly be seen.

Here at the foot of the hills were exquisite sites for country

houses,--to be built, perhaps, by the future coloured millionaires of

South Africa,--with grand opportunities for semi-tropical gardens, if

only the water from the mountains could be used. Oranges, grapes, and

bananas grow with the greatest profusion wherever water has been “led

on.” And yet it seems that the district is the very country for oaks. I

had found more oaks during this last little tour through a portion of

the Western Province of the Cape Colony than I have ever seen during the

same time in England.

My kind host at Swellendam told me that it was imperative to go to the

Tradouw,--or Southey’s Pass through the mountains. The Tradouw is the

old Dutch name for the ravine which was used for a pass before the

present road was made. An energetic traveller will do as he is bid,

especially when he is in the hands of an energetic host. The traveller

wishes to see whatever is to be seen but has to be told what he should

see. To such commands I have generally been obedient. He is too often

told also what he should believe. Against this I have always

rebelled;--mutely if possible, but sometimes, under coercion, with

outspoken vehemence. “If it be true,” I have had to say, “that I mean to

write a book, I shall write my book and not yours.” But as to the seeing

of sights absolute obedience is the best. Therefore I allowed my host to

take me to the Tradouw, though my bones were all bruised and nearly

dislocated with Cape cart travelling and the sweet idea of a day of rest

under the Swellendam oaks had taken strong hold of my imagination. I was

amply repaid for my compliance.

On our way to the Tradouw we passed through a long straggling village

inhabited exclusively by coloured people, and called the Caledon

Missionary Institution. It had also some native name which I heard but

failed to note. It was under the charge of a Dutch pastor upon whom we

called and from whom I learned something of the present condition of the

location. I will say, however, before I describe the Institution, that

it is already doomed and its days numbered. That this should be its fate

was not at all marvellous to me. That it should have been allowed to

live so long was more surprising.

The place is inhabited by and belongs to persons of colour to whom it

was originally granted as a “location” in which they might live. The

idea of course has been that as the Colonists made the lands of the

Colony their own, driving back the Hottentots without scruple,

exercising the masterdom of white men for the spoliation of the natives,

something should be secured to the inferior race, the giving of which

might be a balm to the conscience of the invader and at the same time

the means of introducing Christianity among the invaded, Nothing can be

better than the idea,--which has been that on which the South African

missionaries have always worked. Nor will I in this place assail the

wisdom of the undertaking at the time at which it was set on foot.

Whether anything better could then have been done may, perhaps, be

doubted. I venture only to express an opinion that in the present

condition of our South African Colonies all such Institutions are a

mistake. As the Caledon Institution is about to be brought to an end, I

may say this with the less chance of giving offence.

The last census taken of the population of the village gave its numbers

as 3,000. I was told that at present there might be perhaps 2,000

coloured persons living there. I should have thought that to be a very

exaggerated number, judging from the size of the place and the number of

ruined and deserted huts, were it not that the statement was made to me

in a tone of depreciation rather than of boasting. “They call it three

thousand,” said the pastor, “but there are not more than two.” Looking

at the people as I passed through the village I should be inclined to

describe them as Hottentots, were it not for the common assertion that

the Hottentot race is extinct in these parts. The Institution was

originally intended for Hottentots, and the descendants of Hottentots

are now its most numerous inhabitants. That other blood has been mixed

with the Hottentot blood,--that of the negroes who were brought to the

Cape as slaves and of the white men who were the owners of the

slaves,--is true here as elsewhere. There is a church for the use of

these people,--and a school. Without these a missionary institution

would be altogether vain;--though, as I have stated some pages back, the

school belonging to the Institution at Pacaltsdorp had gone into

abeyance when I visited that place. Here the school was still

maintained; but I learned that the maximum number of pupils never

exceeded a hundred. Considering the amount of the population and the

fact that the children are not often required to be absent on the score

of work, I think I am justified in saying that the school is a failure.

M. Esselin in his schools at Worcester, which is a town of 4,000

inhabitants of whom a large proportion are white, has an average

attendance of 500 coloured children. The attendance at the missionary

church is no better, the number of customary worshippers being the same

as that of the scholars,--namely a hundred. With these people there is

nothing to compel them to send their children to school, and nothing but

the eloquence of the pastor to induce them to go to church. The same may

be said as to all other churches and all other congregations. But we are

able to judge of the utility of a church by the force of example which

it creates. Among these people the very fashion of going to church is

dying out.

But I was more intent, perhaps, on the daily employment than the

spiritual condition of these people, and asked whether it sent out girls

as maid-servants to the country around. The pastor assured me that he

was often unable to get a girl to assist his wife in the care of their

own children. The young women from the Missionary Institution do not

care for going into service.

“But how do they live?” Then it was explained to me that each resident

in the Institution had a plot of ground of his own, and that he lived on

its produce, as far as it went, like any other estated gentleman. Then

the men would go out for a little sheep-shearing, or the picking of

Buchus in the Buchu season. The Buchu is a medicinal leaf which is

gathered in these parts and sent to Europe. Such an arrangement cannot

be for the welfare either of the Colony or of the people concerned.

Nothing but work will bring them into such communion with civilization

as to enable them to approach the condition of the white man. The

arcadian idea of a coloured man with his wife and piccaninnies living

happily under the shade of his own fig tree and picking his own grapes

and oranges is very pretty in a book, and may be made interesting in a

sermon. But it is ugly enough in that reality in which the fig tree is

represented by a ruined mud-hut and the grapes and oranges by stolen

mutton. The sole effect of the missionary’s work has too often been that

of saving the Native from working for the white man. It was well that he

should be saved from slavery;--but to save him from other work is simply

to perpetuate his inferiority.

The land at the Caledon Institution is the property of the resident

Natives. Each landowner can at present sell his plot with the sanction

of the Governor. In ten years’ time he will be enabled to sell it

without such sanction. The sooner he sells it and becomes a simple

labourer the better for all parties. I was told that the Governor’s

sanction is rarely if ever now refused.

Then we went on to the Tradouw, and just at the entrance of the ravine

we came upon a party of coloured labourers, with a white man over them,

making bricks in the close vicinity of an extensive building. A party of

convicts was about to come to the spot for the purpose of mending the

road, and the bricks were being made so that a kitchen might be built

for the cooking of their food. The big building, I was told, had been

erected for the use of the convicts who a few years since had made the

road. But it had fallen out of repair, and the new kitchen was

considered necessary, though the number of men needed for the repair

would not be very large, and they would be wanted only for a few months.

I naturally asked what would become of the kitchen afterwards,--which

seemed to be a spacious building containing a second apartment, to be

used probably as a scullery. The kitchen would again be deserted and

would become the property of the owner of the land. I afterwards heard

by chance of a contract for supplying mutton to the convicts at 6½d.

a pound,--a pound a day for each man;--and I also heard that convict

labour was supposed to be costly. The convicts are chiefly coloured

people. With such usage as they receive the supply, I should imagine,

would be ample. The ordinary Hottentot with his daily pound of mutton,

properly cooked in a first-class kitchen and nothing but convict labour

to do, would probably find himself very comfortable.

Southey’s Pass,--so called from Mr. Southey who was Colonial Secretary

before the days of parliamentary government, and is now one of the

stoutest leaders of the opposition against the Ministers of the day,--is

seven miles from end to end and is very beautiful throughout. But it is

the mile at the end,--furthest from Swellendam,--in which it beats in

sublimity all the other South African passes which I saw, including even

the Montague Pass which crosses the Outiniqua mountains near George.

South Africa is so far off that I cannot hope to be able to excite

English readers to visit the Cape Colony for the sake of the

scenery,--though for those whose doctors prescribe a change of air and

habits and the temporary use of a southern climate I cannot imagine that

any trip should be more pleasant and serviceable;--but I do think that

the inhabitants of Capetown and the neighbourhood should know more than

they do of the beauties of their own country. I have never seen rocks of

a finer colour or twisted about into grander forms than those which make

the walls of that part of Southey’s Pass which is furthest from

Swellendam.

When we were in the ravine two small bucks called

Klip-springers,--springers that is among the stones,--were disturbed by

us and passing down from the road among the rocks, made their way to the

bottom of the ravine. Two dogs had followed the Hottentot who was

driving us, a terrier and a large mongrel hound, and at once got upon

the scent of the bucks. I shall never forget the energy of the Hottentot

as he rushed down from the road to a huge prominent rock which stood

over the gorge, so as to see the hunt as near as possible, or my own

excitement as I followed him somewhat more slowly. The ravine was so

narrow that the clamour of the two dogs sounded like the music of a pack

of hounds. The Hottentot as he leant forward over his perch was almost

beside himself with anxiety. Immediately beneath us, perhaps twenty feet

down, were two jutting stones separated from each other by about the

same distance, between which was a wall of rock with a slant almost

perpendicular and perfectly smooth, so that there could be no support to

the foot of any animal. Up to the first of these stones one of the

Klip-springers was hunted with the big hound close at his heels. From it

the easiest escape was by a leap to the other rock which the buck made

without a moment’s hesitation. But the dog could not follow. He knew the

distance to be too great for his spring, and stood on his rock gazing

at his prey. Nor could the buck go further. The stone it occupied just

beneath ourselves was altogether isolated, and it stood there looking up

at us with its soft imploring eyes, while the Hottentot in his

excitement cheered on the dog to make the leap which the poor hound knew

to be too much for him. I cannot say which interested me most, the man

beside me, the little buck just below my feet, or the anxious eager

palpitating hound with his short sharp barks. There was no gun with us,

but the Hottentot got fragments of stone to throw at the quarry. Then

the buck knew that he must shift his ground if he meant to save himself,

and, marking his moment, he jumped back at the dog, and was then up

among the almost perpendicular rocks over our heads before the brute

could seize it. I have always been anxious for a kill when hunting, but

I was thoroughly rejoiced when that animal saved himself. The Hottentot

who was fond of venison did not at all share my feelings.

This occurred about 22 miles from Swellendam, and delayed us a little.

My host, who had accompanied me, had asked a house full of friends to

dine with him at seven, and it was five when the buck escaped. South

African travelling is generally slow; but under the pressure of the

dinner party our horses were made to do the distance in an hour and

fifty minutes.

From Swellendam we went on to Caledon another exquisitely clean little

Dutch town. The distance from Swellendam to Caledon is nearly eighty

miles, through the whole of which the road runs under the Zondereinde

mountains through a picturesque country which produces some of the best

wool of the Colony. Caledon is another village of oak trees and pleasant

detached Dutch-looking houses, each standing in its own garden and never

mounting to a story above the ground. In winter no doubt the feeling

inspired by these village-towns would be different; but when they are

seen as I saw them, with the full foliage and the acorns on the oaks,

and the little gardens over-filled with their luxuriance of flowers,

with the streets as clean and shaded as the pet road through a

gentleman’s park, the visitor is tempted to repine because Fate did not

make him a wine-growing, orange-planting, ostrich-feeding Dutch farmer.

From Caledon we returned through East Somerset, a smaller village and

less attractive but still of the same nature, to Capetown, getting on to

the railway about twenty miles from the town at the Eerste River

Station. In making this last journey we had gone through or over two

other Passes, called How Hoek and Sir Lowry’s Pass. They are, both of

them, interesting enough for a visit from Capetown, but not sufficiently

so to be spoken of at much length after the other roads through the

mountains which I had seen. The route down from Sir Lowry’s Pass leads

to the coast of False Bay,--of which Simon’s Bay is an inlet. Between

False Bay to the South and Table Bay to the North is the flat isthmus

which forms the peninsula, on which stands Capetown and the Table

Mountains, the Southern point of which is the Cape of Good Hope.

In this journey among the Dutch towns which lie around the capital I

missed Stellenbosch, which is, I am told, the most Dutch of them all.

As good Americans when dead go to Paris, so do good Dutchmen while still

alive go to Stellenbosch,--and more especially good Dutchwomen, for it

is a place much affected by widows. The whole of this country is so

completely Dutch that an Englishman finds himself to be altogether a

foreigner. The coloured people of all shades talk Dutch as their native

language. It is hard at first to get over the feeling that a man or

woman must be very ignorant who in an English Colony cannot speak

English, but the truth is that many of the people are much less ignorant

than they are at home with us, as they speak in some fashion both

English and Dutch. In the Eastern Province of the Colony, as in the

other Colonies and divisions of South Africa, the native speaks some

native language,--the Kafir, Zulu, or Bechuana language as the case may

be; but in the part of the Western Province of which I am

speaking,--that part which the Dutch have long inhabited,--there is no

native language left among the coloured people. Dutch has become their

language. The South African language from the mouths of Kafirs and Zulus

does not strike a stranger as being odd;--but Dutch volubility from

Hottentot lips does do so.

I must not finish this short record of my journeys in the Western

Province of the Cape Colony without repeating the expression of my

opinion as to the beauty of the scenery and the special charms of the

small towns which I had visited.

CHAPTER X.

PORT ELIZABETH AND GRAHAMSTOWN.

From Capetown I went on by sea to Port Elizabeth or Algoa Bay, thus

travelling from the Western to the Eastern Province,--leaving the former

when I had as yet seen but little of its resources because it was

needful that I should make my tour through Natal and the Transvaal

before the rainy season had commenced.[12] The run is one which

generally occupies from thirty to forty hours, and was effected by us

under the excellent auspices of Captain Travers in something but little

in excess of the shorter period. It rained during the whole of our

little journey, so that one could not get out upon the deck without a

ducking;--which was chiefly remarkable in that on shore every one was

complaining of drought and that for many weeks after my first arrival in

South Africa this useless rain at sea was the only rain that I saw.

Persons well instructed in their geography will know that Algoa Bay and

Port Elizabeth signify the same seaport,--as one might say that a ship

hailed from the Clyde or from Glasgow. The Union Steam Ship Company

sends a first-class steamer once a month from Southampton to Algoa Bay,

without touching at Capetown.

Port Elizabeth, as I walked away from the quay up to the club where I

took up my residence, seemed to be as clean, as straight, and as regular

as a first class American little town in the State of Maine. All the

world was out on a holyday. It was the birthday of the Duke of

Edinburgh, and the Port-Elizabethians observed it with a loyalty of

which we know nothing in England. Flags were flying about the ships in

the harbour and every shop was closed in the town. I went up all alone

with my baggage to the club, and felt very desolate. But everybody I met

was civil, and I found a bedroom ready for me such as would be an

Elysium, in vain to be sought for in a first class London hotel. My

comfort, I own, was a little impaired by knowing that I had turned a

hospitable South African out of his own tenement. On that first day I

was very solitary, as all the world was away doing honour somewhere to

the Duke of Edinburgh.

In the evening I went out, still alone, for a walk and, without a guide,

found my way to the public park and the public gardens. I cannot say

that they are perfect in horticultural beauty and in surroundings, but

they are spacious, with ample room for improvement, well arranged as far

as they are arranged, and with a promise of being very superior to

anything of the kind at Capetown. The air was as sweet, I think, as any

that I ever breathed. Through them I went on, leaving the town between

me and the sea, on to a grassy illimitable heath on which, I told

myself, that with perseverance I might walk on till I came to Grand

Cairo. I had my stick in my hand and was prepared for any lion that I

might meet. But on this occasion I met no lion. After a while I found

myself descending into a valley,--a pretty little green valley

altogether out of sight of the town, and which as I was wending along

seemed at first to be an interruption in my way to the centre of the

continent. But as I approached the verge from which I could look down

into its bosom, I heard the sound of voices, and when I had reached a

rock which hung over it, I saw beneath me a ring, as it might be of

fairy folk, in full glee,--of folk, fairy or human, running hither and

thither with extreme merriment and joy. After standing awhile and gazing

I perceived that the young people of Port Elizabeth were playing

kiss-in-the-ring. Oh,--how long ago it was since I played

kiss-in-the-ring, and how nice I used to think it! It was many many

years since I had even seen the game. And these young people played it

with an energy and an ecstasy which I had never seen equalled. I walked

down, almost amongst them, but no one noticed me. I felt among them like

Rip Van Winkle. I was as a ghost, for they seemed not even to see me.

How the girls ran, and could always have escaped from the lads had they

listed, but always were caught round some corner out of the circle! And

how awkward the lads were in kissing, and how clever the girls in taking

care that it should always come off at last, without undue violence! But

it seemed to me that had I been a lad I should have felt that when all

the girls had been once kissed, or say twice,--and when every girl had

been kissed twice round by every lad, the thing would have become tame,

and the lips unhallowed. But this was merely the cynicism of an old man,

and no such feeling interrupted the sport. There I left them when the

sun was setting, still hard at work, and returned sadly to my dinner at

the club.

The land round the town, though well arranged for such purpose as that

just described, is not otherwise of a valuable nature. There seems to be

an unlimited commonage of grass, but of so poor and sour a kind that it

will not fatten and will hardly feed cattle. For sheep it is of no use

whatever. This surrounds the town, and when the weather is cool and the

air sweet, as it was when I visited the place, even the land round Port

Elizabeth is not without its charms. But I can understand that it would

be very hot in summer and that then the unshaded expanse would not be

attractive. There is not a tree to be seen.

The town is built on a steep hill rising up from the sea, and is very

neat. The town hall is a large handsome building, putting its rival and

elder sister Capetown quite to shame. I was taken over a huge store in

which, it seemed to me, that every thing known and wanted in the world

was sold, from American agricultural implements down to Aberdeen red

herrings. The library and reading room, and public ball room or concert

hall, were perfect. The place contains only 15,000 inhabitants, but has

every thing needed for instruction, civilization and the general

improvement of the human race. It is built on the lines of one of those

marvellous American little towns in which philanthropy and humanity

seem to have worked together to prevent any rational want.

Ostrich feathers and wool are the staples of the place. I witnessed a

sale of feathers and was lost in wonder at the ingenuity of the

auctioneer and of the purchasers. They seemed to understand each other

as the different lots were sold, with an average of 30 seconds allowed

to each lot. To me it was simply marvellous, but I gathered that the

feathers were sold at prices varying from £5 to £25 a pound. They are

sold by the pound, but in lots which may weigh perhaps not more than a

few ounces each. I need only say further of Port Elizabeth that there

are churches, banks, and institutions fit for a town of ten times its

size,--and that its club is a pattern club, for all Colonial towns.

Twenty miles north west of Port Elizabeth is the pleasant little town of

Uitenhage,--which was one of the spots peopled by the English emigrants

who came into the Eastern Province in 1820. It had previously been

settled and inhabited by Dutch inhabitants in 1804, but seems to have

owed its success to the coming of the English,--and is now part of an

English, as distinct from a Dutch Colony. It is joined to Port Elizabeth

by a railway which is being carried on to the more important town of

Graff Reynet. It is impossible to imagine a more smiling little town

than Uitenhage, or one in which the real comforts of life are more

accessible. There is an ample supply of water. The streets are well laid

out, and the houses well built. And it is surrounded by a group of

mountains, at thirty miles distance, varying from 3,000 to 6,000 feet in

height, which give a charm to the scenery around. It has not within

itself much appearance of business, but everything and everybody seems

to be comfortable. I was told that it is much affected by well-to-do

widows who go thither to spend the evenings of their lives and enjoy

that pleasant tea-and-toast society which is dear to the widowed heart.

Timber is generally scarce in South Africa;--but through the streets of

Uitenhage there are lovely trees, which were green and flowering when I

was there in the month of August, warning me that the spring and then

the heats of summer were coming on me all too soon.

During the last few years a special industry has developed itself at

Uitenhage,--that of washing wool by machinery. As this is all carried

on, not in stores or manufactories within the place, but at suburban

mills placed along the banks of the river Swartzcop outside the town,

they do not affect the semi-rural and widow-befitting aspect of the

place. I remarked to the gentleman who was kindly driving me about the

place that the people I saw around me seemed to be for the most part

coloured. This he good-humouredly resented, begging that I would not go

away and declare that Uitenhage was not inhabited by a white population.

I have no doubt that my friend has a large circle of white friends, and

that Uitenhage has a pure-blooded aristocracy. Were I to return there,

as I half promised, for the sake of meeting the charming ladies whom he

graciously undertook to have gathered together for my gratification, I

am sure that I should have found this to be the case. But still I

maintain that the people are a coloured people. I saw no white man who

looked as though he earned his bread simply with his hands. I was driven

through a street of pleasant cottages, and in asking who lived in the

best looking of the lot I was told that he was an old Hottentot. The men

working at the washing machines were all Kafirs,--earning on an average

3s. 6d. a day. It is from such evidence as this that we have to form an

opinion whether the so called savage races of South Africa may or may

not ultimately be brought into habits of civilization. After visiting

one of the washing mills and being driven about the town we returned to

Port Elizabeth to dine.

Starting from Port Elizabeth I had to commence the perils of South

African travel. These I was well aware would not come from lions,

buffaloes, or hippopotamuses,--nor even, to such a traveller as myself,

from Kafirs or Zulus,--but simply from the length, the roughness and the

dustiness of roads. I had been told before I left England that a man of

my age ought not to make the attempt because the roads were so long, so

rough,--and so dusty. In travelling round the coast there is nothing to

be dreaded. The discomforts are simply of a marine nature, and may

easily be borne by an old traveller. The terrible question of luggage

does not disturb his mind. He may carry what he pleases and revel in

clean shirts. But when he leaves the sea in South Africa every ounce has

to be calculated. When I was told at Capetown that on going up from

Natal to the Transvaal I should be charged 4s. extra for every pound I

carried above fifteen I at once made up my mind to leave my bullock

trunk at Government House. At Port Elizabeth a gentleman was very kind

in planning my journey for me thence up to Grahamstown, King

Williamstown &c.,--but, on coming into my bed room, he strongly

recommended me to leave my portmanteau and dispatch box behind me, to be

taken on, somewhither, by water, and to trust myself to two bags. So I

tied on addresses to the tabooed receptacles of my remaining comforts,

and started on my way with a very limited supply of wearing apparel. In

the selection which one is driven to make with an agonized mind,--when

the bag has been stamped full to repletion with shirts, boots, and the

blue books which are sure to be accumulated for the sake of statistics,

the first thing to be rejected is one’s dress suit. A man can live

without a black coat, waistcoat, and trousers. But so great is colonial

hospitality wherever the traveller goes, and so similar are colonial

habits to those at home, that there will always come a time,--there will

come many times,--in which the traveller will feel that he has left

behind him the very articles which he most needed, and that the blue

books should have been made to give way to decent raiment. These are

difficulties which at periods become almost heartbreaking. Nevertheless

I made the decision and rejected the dress suit. And I trusted myself to

two pair of boots. And I allowed my treasures to be taken from me, with

a hope that I might see them again some day in the further Colony of

Natal.

From Port Elizabeth there is a railway open on the road to Grahamstown

as far as a wretched place called Sand Flat. From thence we started in a

mail cart,--or Cobb’s omnibus as it is called. The whole distance to

Grahamstown is about 70 miles, and the journey was accomplished in

eleven hours. The country through which we passed is not favourable for

agriculture or even for pasture. Much of it was covered with bush, and

on that which is open the grass is too sour for sheep. It is indeed

called the Zuurveld, or sour-field country. But as we approached

Grahamstown it improved, and farming operations with farm steads,--at

long distances apart,--came in view. For some miles round Port Elizabeth

there is nothing but sour grass and bush and the traveller inspecting

the country is disposed to ask where is the fertility and where the

rural charms which produced the great effort at emigration in 1820, when

5,000 persons were sent out from England into this district. The Kafirs

had driven out the early Dutch settlers, and the British troops had

driven out the Kafirs. But the country remained vacant, and £50,000 was

voted by Parliament to send out what was then a Colony in itself, that

the land might be occupied. But it is necessary to travel forty or fifty

miles from Port Elizabeth, or Algoa Bay, before the fertility is

discovered.

Grahamstown when it is reached is a smiling little town lying in a

gentle valley on an elevated plateau 1,700 feet above the sea. It

contains between eight and nine thousand inhabitants of whom a third are

coloured. The two-thirds are almost exclusively British, the Dutch

element having had little or no holding in this small thriving capital

of the Eastern Province. For Grahamstown is the capital of the East, and

there are many there who think that it should become a Capital of a

Colony, whether by separation of the East from the West, or by a general

federation of South African States--in which case the town would, they

think, be more eligible than any other for all the general honours of

government and legislation. I do not know but that on the whole I am

inclined to agree with them. I think that if there were an united South

Africa, and that a site for a capital had to be chosen afresh, as it was

chosen in Canada, Grahamstown would receive from an outside commission

appointed to report on the matter, more votes than any other town. But I

am far from thinking that Grahamstown will become the capital of a South

African Confederation.

The people of Grahamstown are very full of their own excellencies. No

man there would call his town a “beastly place.” The stranger on the

other hand is invited freely to admire its delights, the charm of its

position up above the heat and the musquitoes, the excellence of its

water supply, the multiplicity of its gardens, the breadth and

prettiness of its streets, its salubrity,--for he is almost assured that

people at Grahamstown never die,--and the perfection of its

Institutions. And the clock tower appended to the cathedral! The clock

tower which is the work of the energetic Dean was when I was there,--not

finished indeed for there was the spire to come,--but still so far

erected as to be a conspicuous and handsome object to all the country

round. The clock tower was exercising the minds of men very much, and

through a clever manœuvre,--originating I hope with the Dean,--is

supposed to be a town-clock tower and not an appanage of the cathedral.

In this way all denominations have been got to subscribe, and yet, if

you were not told to the contrary, you would think that the tower

belongs to the cathedral as surely as its dome belongs to St. Paul’s.

In truth Grahamstown is a very pretty town, and seen, as it is on all

sides, from a gentle eminence, smiles kindly on those who enter it. The

British troops who guarded the frontier from our Kafir enemies were

formerly stationed here. As the Kafirs have been driven back eastwards,

so have the troops been moved in the same direction and they are now

kept at King Williamstown about 50 miles to the North East of

Grahamstown, and nearer to the Kei river which is the present boundary

of the Colony;--or was till the breaking out of the Kafir disturbance in

1877. The barracks at Grahamstown still belong to the Imperial

Government, as does the castle at Capetown, and are let out for various

purposes. Opening from the barrack grounds are the public gardens which

are pretty and well kept. Grahamstown altogether gives the traveller an

idea of a healthy, well-conditioned prosperous little town, in which it

would be no misfortune to be called upon to live. And yet I was told

that I saw it under unfavourable circumstances, as there had been a

drought for some weeks, and the grasses were not green.

I was taken from Grahamstown to see an ostrich farm about fifteen miles

distant. The establishment belongs to Mr. Douglas, who is I believe

among the ostrich farmers of the Colony about the most successful and

who was if not the first, the first who did the work on a large scale.

He is, moreover, the patentee for an egg-hatching machine, or incubator,

which is now in use among many of the feather-growers of the district.

Mr. Douglas occupies about 1,200 acres of rough ground, formerly devoted

to sheep-farming. The country around was all used not long since as

sheep walks, but seems to have so much deteriorated by changes in the

grasses as to be no longer profitable for that purpose. But it will feed

ostriches.

At this establishment I found about 300 of those birds, which, taking

them all round, young and old, were worth about £30 a piece. Each bird

fit for plucking gives two crops of feathers a year, and produces, on an

average, feathers to the value of £15 per annum. The creatures feed

themselves unless when sick or young, and live upon the various bushes

and grasses of the land. The farm is divided out into paddocks, and,

with those which are breeding, one cock with two hens occupies each

paddock. The young birds,--for they do not breed till they are three

years old,--or those which are not paired, run in flocks of thirty or

forty each. They are subject to diseases which of course require

attention, and are apt to damage themselves, sometimes breaking their

own bones, and getting themselves caught in the wire fences. Otherwise

they are hardy brutes, who can stand much heat and cold, can do for long

periods without water, who require no delicate feeding, and give at

existing prices ample returns for the care bestowed upon them.

But, nevertheless, ostrich farming is a precarious venture. The birds

are of such value, a full grown bird in perfect health being worth as

much as £75, that there are of course risks of great loss. And I doubt

whether the industry has, as yet, existed long enough for those who

employ it to know all its conditions. The two great things to do are to

hatch the eggs, and then to pluck or cut the feathers, sort them, and

send them to the market. I think I may say that ostrich farming without

the use of an incubator can never produce great results. The birds

injure their feathers by sitting and at every hatching lose two months.

There is, too, great uncertainty as to the number of young birds which

will be produced, and much danger as to the fate of the young bird when

hatched. An incubator seems to be a necessity for ostrich farming.

Surely no less appropriate word was ever introduced into the language,

for it is a machine expressly invented to render unnecessary the process

of incubation. The farmer who devotes himself to artificial hatching

provides himself with an assortment of dummy eggs,--consisting of

eggshells blown and filled with sand,--and with these successfully

allures the hens to lay. The animals are so large and the ground is so

open that there is but little difficulty in watching them and in

obtaining the eggs. As each egg is worth nearly £5 I should think that

they would be open to much theft when the operation becomes more

general, but as yet there has not come up a market for the receipt of

stolen goods. When found they are brought to the head quarters and kept

till the vacancy occurs for them in the machine.

The incubator is a low ugly piece of deal furniture standing on four

legs, perhaps eight or nine feet long. At each end there are two

drawers in which the eggs are laid with a certain apparatus of flannel,

and these drawers by means of screws beneath them are raised or lowered

to the extent of two or three inches. The drawer is lowered when it is

pulled out, and is capable of receiving a fixed number of eggs. I saw, I

think, fifteen in one. Over the drawers and along the top of the whole

machine there is a tank filled with hot water, and the drawer when

closed is screwed up so as to bring the side of the egg in contact with

the bottom of the tank. Hence comes the necessary warmth. Below the

machine and in the centre of it a lamp, or lamps, are placed which

maintain the heat that is required. The eggs lie in the drawer for six

weeks, and then the bird is brought out.

All this is simple enough, and yet the work of hatching is most

complicated and requires not only care but a capability of tracing

results which is not given to all men. The ostrich turns her egg

frequently, so that each side of it may receive due attention. The

ostrich farmer must therefore turn his eggs. This he does about three

times a day. A certain amount of moisture is required, as in nature

moisture exudes from the sitting bird. The heat must be moderated

according to circumstances or the yolk becomes glue and the young bird

is choked. Nature has to be followed most minutely, and must be observed

and understood before it can be followed. And when the time for birth

comes on the ostrich farmer must turn midwife and delicately assist the

young one to open its shell, having certain instruments for the purpose.

And when he has performed his obstetrical operations he must become a

nursing mother to the young progeny who can by no means walk about and

get his living in his earliest days. The little chickens in our farm

yards seem to take the world very easily; but they have their mother’s

wings, and we as yet hardly know all the assistance which is thus given

to them. But the ostrich farmer must know enough to keep his young ones

alive, or he will soon be ruined,--for each bird when hatched is

supposed to be worth £10. The ostrich farmer must take upon himself all

the functions of the ostrich mother, and must know all that instinct has

taught her, or he will hardly be successful.

The birds are plucked before they are a year old, and I think that no

one as yet knows the limit of age to which they will live and be

plucked. I saw birds which had been plucked for sixteen years and were

still in high feather. When the plucking time has come the necessary

number of birds are enticed by a liberal display of mealies,--as maize

or Indian corn is called in South Africa,--into a pen one side of which

is moveable. The birds will go willingly after mealies, and will run

about their paddocks after any one they see, in the expectation of these

delicacies. When the pen is full the moveable side is run in, so that

the birds are compressed together beyond the power of violent

struggling. They cannot spread their wings or make the dart forward

which is customary to them when about to kick. Then men go in among

them, and taking up their wings pluck or cut their feathers. Both

processes are common but the former I think is most so, as being the

more profitable. There is a heavier weight to sell when the feather is

plucked; and the quil begins to grow again at once, whereas the process

is delayed when nature is called upon to eject the stump. I did not see

the thing done, but I was assured that the little notice taken by the

animal of the operation may be accepted as proof that the pain, if any,

is slight. I leave this question to the decision of naturalists and

anti-vivisectors.

The feathers are then sorted into various lots, the white primary

outside rim from under the bird’s wing being by far the most

valuable,--being sold, as I have said before, at a price as high as £25

a pound. The sorting does not seem to be a difficult operation and is

done by coloured men. The produce is then packed in boxes and sent down

to be sold at Port Elizabeth by auction.

As far as I saw all labour about the place was done by black men except

that which fell to the lot of the owner and two or three young men who

lived with him and were learning the work under his care. These black

men were Kafirs, Fingos, or Hottentots--so called, who lived each in his

own hut with his wife and family. They received 26s. a month and their

diet,--which consisted of two pound of meat and two pound of mealies a

day each. The man himself could not eat this amount of food, but would

no doubt find it little enough with his wife and children. With this he

has permission to build his hut about the place, and to burn his

master’s fuel. He buys coffee if he wants it from his master’s store,

and in his present condition generally does want it. When in his hut he

rolls himself in his blanket, but when he comes out to his work attires

himself in some more or less European apparel according to regulation.

He is a good humoured fellow, whether by nature a hostile Kafir, or a

submissive Fingo, or friendly Basuto, and seems to have a pleasure in

being enquired into and examined as to his Kafir habits. But, if

occasion should arise, he would probably be a rebel. On this very spot

where I was talking to him, the master of the farm had felt himself

compelled during the last year,--1876--to add a couple of towers to his

house so that in the event of an attack he might be able to withdraw his

family from the reach of shot, and have a guarded platform from whence

to fire at his enemies. Whether or not the danger was near as he thought

it last year I am unable to say; but there was the fact that he had

found it necessary so to protect himself only a few months since within

twenty miles of Grahamstown! Such absence of the feeling of security

must of course be injurious if not destructive to all industrial

operations.

I may add with regard to ostrich farming that I have heard that 50 per

cent. per annum on the capital invested has been not uncommonly made.

But I have heard also that all the capital invested has not been

unfrequently lost. It must be regarded as a precarious business and one

which requires special adaptation in the person who conducts it. And to

this must be added the fact that it depends entirely on a freak of

fashion. Wheat and wool, cotton and coffee, leather and planks men will

certainly continue to want, and of these things the value will

undoubtedly be maintained by competition for their possession. But

ostrich feathers may become a drug. When the nurse-maid affects them the

Duchess will cease to do so.

Grahamstown is served by two ports. There is the port of Port Elizabeth

in Algoa Bay which I have already described as a thriving town and one

from which a railway is being made across the country, with a branch to

Grahamstown. All the mail steamers from England to Capetown come on to

Algoa Bay, and there is also a direct steamer from Plymouth once a

month. The bulk of the commerce for the whole adjacent district comes no

doubt to Port Elizabeth. But the people of Grahamstown affect Port

Alfred, which is at the mouth of the Kowie river and only 35 miles

distant from the Eastern Capital. I was therefore taken down to see Port

Alfred.

I went down on one side of the river by a four-horsed cart as far as the

confluence of the Mansfield, and thence was shewn the beauties of the

Kowie river by boat. Our party dined and slept at Port Alfred, and on

the following day we came back to Grahamstown by cart on the other side

of the river. I was perhaps more taken with the country which I saw than

with the harbour, and was no longer at a loss to know where was the land

on which the English settlers of 1820 were intended to locate

themselves. We passed through a ruined village called Bathurst,--a

village ruined while it was yet young, than which nothing can be more

painful to behold. Houses had been built again, but almost every house

had at one time,--that is in the Kafir war of 1850,--been either burnt

or left to desolation. And yet nothing can be more attractive than the

land about Bathurst, either in regard to picturesque situation or

fertility. The same may be said of the other bank of this river. It is

impossible to imagine a fairer district to a farmer’s eye. It will grow

wheat, but it will also grow on the slopes of the hills, cotton and

coffee. It is all possessed, and generally all cultivated;--but it can

hardly be said to be inhabited by white men, so few are they and so

far-between. A very large proportion of the land is let out to Kafirs

who pay a certain sum for certain rights and privileges. He is to build

his hut and have enough land to cultivate for his own purposes, and

grass enough for his cattle;--and for these he contracts to pay perhaps

£10 per annum, or more, or less, according to circumstances. I was

assured that the rent is punctually paid. But this mode of disposing of

the land, excellent for all purposes as it is, has not arisen of choice

but of necessity. The white farmer knows that as yet he can have no

security if he himself farms on a large scale. Next year there may be

another scare, and then a general attack from the Kafirs; or the very

scare if there be no attack, frightens away his profits;--or, as has

happened before, the attack may come without the scare. The country is a

European country,--belongs that is to white men,--but it is full of

Kafirs;--and then, but a hundred miles away to the East, is Kafraria

Proper where the British law does not rule even yet.

No one wants to banish the Kafirs. Situated as the country is and will

be, it cannot exist without Kafirs, because the Kafirs are the only

possible labourers. To utilize the Kafir and not to expel him must be

the object of the white man. Speaking broadly it may be said of the

Colony, or at any rate of the Eastern district, that it has no white

labourers for agricultural purposes. The Kafir is as necessary to the

Grahamstown farmer as is his brother negro to the Jamaica sugar grower.

But, for the sake both of the Kafir and of the white man, some further

assurance of security is needed. I am inclined to think that more evil

is done both to one and the other by ill defined fear than by actual

danger.

Along the coast of the Colony there are various sea ports, none of which

are very excellent as to their natural advantages, but each of which

seems to have a claim to consider itself the best. There is Capetown of

course with its completed docks, and Simon’s Bay on the other side of

the Cape promontory which is kept exclusively for our men of war. Then

the first port, eastwards, at which the steamers call is Mossel Bay.

These are the chief harbours of the Western Province. On the coast of

the Eastern Province there are three ports between which a considerable

jealousy is maintained, Port Elizabeth, Port Alfred, and East London.

And as there is rivalry between the West and East Provinces, so is there

between these three harbours. Port Elizabeth I had seen before I came up

to Grahamstown. From Grahamstown I travelled to Port Alfred, taken

thither by two patriotic hospitable and well-instructed gentlemen who

thoroughly believed that the commerce of the world was to flow into

Grahamstown via Port Alfred, and that the overflowing produce of South

Africa will, at some not far distant happy time, be dispensed to the

various nations from the same favoured harbour. “Statio bene fida

carinis,” was what I heard all the way down,--or rather promises of

coming security and marine fruitfulness which are to be results of the

works now going on. It was all explained to me,--how ships which now

could not get over the bar would ride up the quiet little river in

perfect safety, and take in and discharge their cargoes on comfortable

wharves at a very minimum of expense. And then, when this should have

been completed, the railway from the Kowie’s mouth up to Grahamstown

would be a certainty, even though existing governments had been so

shortsighted as to make a railway from Port Elizabeth to

Grahamstown--carrying goods and passengers ever so far out of their

proper course.

It is a matter on which I am altogether unable to speak with any

confidence. Neither at Port Elizabeth, or at the mouth of the Kowie

where stands Port Alfred, or further eastwards at East London of which I

must speak in a coming chapter, has Nature done much for mariners, and

the energy shown to overcome obstacles at all these places has certainly

been very great. The devotion of individuals to their own districts and

to the chances of prosperity not for themselves so much as for their

neighbours, is almost sad though it is both patriotic and generous. The

rivalry between places which should act together as one whole is

distressing;--but the industry of which I speak will surely have the

results which industry always obtains. I decline to prophesy whether

there will be within the next dozen years a railway from Port Alfred to

Grahamstown,--or whether the goods to be consumed at the Diamond Fields

and in the Orange Free State will ever find their way to their

destinations by the mouth of the Kowie;--but I think I can foresee that

the enterprise of the people concerned will lead to success.

CHAPTER XI.

BRITISH KAFRARIA.

It is not improbable that many Englishmen who have not been altogether

inattentive to the course of public affairs as affecting Great Britain

may be unaware that we once possessed in South Africa a separate colony

called British Kafraria, with a governor of its own, and a form of

government altogether distinct from that of its big brother the Cape

Colony. Such however is the fact, though the territory did not, perhaps,

attract much notice at the time of its annexation. Some years after the

last Kafir war which may have the year 1850 given to it as its date, and

after that wonderful Kafir famine which took place in 1857,--the famine

which the natives created for themselves by destroying their own cattle

and their own food,--British Kafraria was made a separate colony and was

placed under the rule of Colonel Maclean. The sanction from England for

the arrangement had been long given, but it was not carried out till

1860. It was not intended that the country should be taken away from the

Kafirs;--but only the rule over the country, and the privilege of living

in accordance with their own customs. Nor was this privilege abrogated

all at once, or abruptly. Gradually and piecemeal they were to be

introduced to what we call civilization. Gradually and piecemeal the

work is still going on,--and so progressing that there can hardly be a

doubt that as far as their material condition is concerned we have done

well with the Kafirs. The Kafir Chiefs may feel,--certainly do

feel,--that they have been aggrieved. They have been as it were knocked

about, deprived of their power, humiliated and degraded, and, as far as

British Kafraria is concerned, made almost ridiculous in the eyes of

their own people. But the people themselves have been relieved from the

force of a grinding tyranny. They increase and multiply because they are

no longer driven to fight and be slaughtered in the wars which the

Chiefs were continually waging for supremacy among each other. What

property they acquire they can hold without fear of losing it by

arbitrary force. They are no longer subject to the terrible

superstitions which their Chiefs have used for keeping them in

subjection. Their huts are better, and their food more constantly

sufficient. Many of them work for wages. They are partially

clothed,--sometimes with such grotesque partiality as quite to justify

the comical stories which we have heard at home as to Kafir full dress.

But the habit of wearing clothes is increasing among them. In the towns

they are about as well clad as the ordinary Irish beggar,--and as the

traveller recedes from the towns he perceives that this raiment

gradually gives way to blankets and red clay. But to have got so far as

the Irish beggar condition in twenty years is very much, and the custom

is certainly spreading itself. The Kafir who has assiduously worn

breeches for a year does feel, not a moral but a social shame, at going

without them. As I have no doubt whatever that the condition of these

people has been improved by our coming, and that British rule has been

on the whole beneficent to them, I cannot but approve of the annexation

of British Kafraria. But I doubt whether when it was done the

justification was as complete as in those former days, twenty years

before, when Lord Glenelg reprimanded Sir Benjamin D’Urban for the

extension he made in the same territory, and drew back the borders of

British sovereignty, and restored their lands and their prestige and

their customs to the natives, and declared himself willing to be

responsible for all results that might follow,--results which at last

cost so much British blood and so much British money!

The difficult question meets one at every corner in South Africa. What

is the duty of the white man in reference to the original inhabitant?

The Kafir Chief will say that it is the white man’s duty to stay away

and not to touch what does not belong to him. The Dutch Colonist will

say that it is the white man’s duty to make the best he can of the good

things God has provided for his use,--and that as the Kafir in his

natural state is a bad thing he should either be got rid of, or made a

slave. In either assertion there is an intelligible purpose capable of a

logical argument. But the Briton has to go between the two, wavering

much between the extremes of philanthropy and expansive energy. He knows

that he has to get possession of the land and use it, and is determined

that he will do so;--but he knows also that it is wrong to take what

does not belong to him and wrong also to treat another human being with

harshness. And therefore with one hand he waves his humanitarian

principles over Exeter Hall while with the other he annexes Province

after Province. As I am myself a Briton I am not a fair critic of the

proceeding;--but it does seem to me that he is upon the whole

beneficent, though occasionally very unjust.

After the wars, when this Kafraria had become British, a body of German

emigrants were induced to come here who have thriven wonderfully upon

the land,--as Germans generally do. The German colonist is a humble hard

working parsimonious man, who is content as long as he can eat and drink

in security and put by a modicum of money. He cares but little for the

form of government to which he is subjected, but is very anxious as to a

market for his produce. He is unwilling to pay any wages, but is always

ready to work himself and to make his children work. He lives at first

in some small hovel which he constructs for himself, and will content

himself with maize instead of meat till he has put by money enough for

the building of a neat cottage. And so he progresses till he becomes

known in the neighbourhood as a man who has money at the bank. Nothing

probably has done more to make Kafraria prosperous than this emigration

of Germans.

But British Kafraria did not exist long as a separate possession of the

Crown, having been annexed to the Cape Colony in 1864. From that time it

has formed part of the Eastern Province. It has three thriving English

towns, King-Williamstown, the capital, East London the port, and

Queenstown, further up the country than King-Williamstown;--towns which

are peculiarly English though the country around is either cultivated by

German farmers or held by Kafir tenants. The district is still called

British Kafraria. I myself have some very dim remembrance of British

Kafraria as a Colony, but like other places in the British empire it has

been absorbed by degrees without much notice at home.

Starting from Grahamstown on a hired Cape cart I entered British

Kafraria somewhere between that town and Fort Beaufort. A “Cape cart” is

essentially a South African vehicle, and is admirably adapted for the

somewhat rough roads of the country. Its great merit is that it travels

on only two wheels;--but then so does our English gig. But the English

gig carries only two passengers while the Cape cart has room for

four,--or even six. The Irish car no doubt has both these

merits,--carries four and runs on two wheels; but the wheels are

necessarily so low that they are ill adapted for passing serious

obstructions. And the Cape cart can be used with two horses, or four as

the need may be. A one-horse vehicle is a thing hardly spoken of in

South Africa, and would meet with more scorn than it does even in the

States. But the chief peculiarity of the Cape cart is the yoke of the

horses, which is somewhat similar in its nature to that of the curricle

which used to be very dangerous and very fashionable in the days of

George IV. With us a pair of horses is now always connected with four

wheels, and with the idea of security which four wheels give. Though the

horse may tumble down the vehicle stands. It was not so with the

curricle. When a horse fell, he would generally bring down his comrade

horse with him, and then the vehicle would go,--to the almost certain

destruction of the pole and the imminent danger of the passengers. But

with the Cape cart the bar, instead of passing over the horse’s

back--the bar on which the vehicle must rest when for a moment it loses

its balance on the two wheels with a propulsion forwards--passes under

the horses’ necks, with straps appended to the collars. I have never

seen a horse fall with one of them;--but I can understand that when such

an accident happens the falling horse should not bring the other animal

down with him. The advantage of having two high wheels,--and only

two,--need not be explained to any traveller.

On the way to Fort Beaufort I passed by Fort Brown,--a desolate barrack

which was heretofore employed for the protection of the frontier when

Grahamstown was the frontier city. I arrived there by a fine pass,

excellently well engineered, through the mountains, called the Queen’s

Road,--very picturesque from the shape of the hills, though desolate

from the absence of trees. But at Fort Brown the beauty was gone and

nothing but the desolation remained. The Fort stands just off the road,

on a plain, and would hold perhaps 40 or 50 men. I walked up to it and

found one lonely woman who told me that she was the wife of a policeman

stationed at some distant place. It had become the fate of her life to

live here in solitude, and a more lonely creature I never saw. She was

clean and pleasant and talked well;--but she declared that unless she

was soon liberated from Fort Brown she must go mad. She was eloquent in

favour of hard work, declaring that there was nothing else which could

give a real charm to life;--but perhaps she had been roused to that

feeling by knowing that there was not a job to be done upon the earth to

which in her present circumstances she could turn her hand. Optat arare

caballus. She told me of a son who was employed in one of the distant

provinces, and bade me find him if I could and tell him of his mother.

“Tell him to think of me here all alone,” she said. I tried to execute

my commission but failed to find the man.

I had intended sleeping at Fort Beaufort and on going from thence up the

Catsberg Mountain. But I was prevented by the coming of a gentleman, a

Wesleyan minister, who was very anxious that I should see the Kafir

school at Healdtown over which he presided. From first to last through

my tour I was subject to the privileges and inconveniences of being

known as a man who was going to write a book. I never said as much to

any one in South Africa,--or even admitted it when interrogated. I could

not deny that I possibly might do so, but I always protested that my

examiner had no right to assume the fact. All this, however, was quite

vain as coming from one who had written so much about other Colonies,

and was known to be so inveterate a scribbler as myself. Then the

argument, though never expressed in plain words, would take, in

suggested ideas, the following form. “Here you are in South Africa, and

you are going to write about us. If so I,--or we, or my or our

Institution, have an absolute claim to a certain portion of your

attention. You have no right to pass our town by, and then to talk of

the next town merely because such an arrangement will suit your

individual comfort!” Then I would allege the shortness of my time. “Time

indeed! Then take more time. Here am I,--or here are we, doing our very

best; and we don’t intend to be passed by because you don’t allow

yourself enough of time for your work.” When all this was said on behalf

of some very big store, or perhaps in favour of a pretty view, or--as

has been the case,--in pride at the possession of a little cabbage

garden, I have been apt to wax wroth and to swear that I was my own

master;--but a Kafir missionary school, to which some earnest Christian

man, with probably an earnest Christian wife, devotes a life in the hope

of making fresh water flow through the dry wilderness, has claims,

however painful they may be at the moment. This gentleman had come into

Fort Beaufort on purpose to catch me. And as he was very eloquent, and

as I did feel a certain duty, I allowed myself to be led away by him. I

fear that I went ungraciously, and I know that I went unwillingly. It

was just four o’clock and, having had no luncheon, I wanted my dinner. I

had already established myself in a very neat little sitting-room in the

Inn, and had taken off my boots. I was tired and dusty, and was about to

wash myself. I had been on the road all day, and the bedroom offered to

me looked sweet and clean;--and there was a pretty young lady at the Inn

who had given me a cup of tea to support me till dinner should be ready.

I was anxious also about the Catsberg Mountain, which under the

minister’s guidance I should lose, at any rate for the present. I spoke

to the minister of my dinner;--but he assured me that an hour would take

me out to his place at Healdtown. He clearly thought,--and clearly

said,--that it was my duty to go, and I acceded. He promised to convey

me to the establishment in an hour,--but it was two hours and a half

before we were there. He allured me by speaking of the beauty of the

road,--but it was pitch dark all the way. It was eight o’clock before my

wants were supplied, and by that time I hated Kafir children thoroughly.

Of Healdtown and Lovedale,--a much larger Kafir school,--I will speak in

the next chapter, which shall be exclusively educational. Near to

Lovedale is the little town of Alice in which I stayed two days with the

hospitable doctor. He took me out for a day’s hunting as it is called,

which in that benighted country means shooting. I must own here to have

made a little blunder. When I was asked some days previously whether I

would like to have a day’s hunting got up for me in the neighbourhood of

Alice, I answered with alacrity in the affirmative. Hunting, which is

the easiest of all sports, has ever been an allurement to me. To hunt,

as we hunt at home, it is only necessary that a man should stick on to

the back of a horse,--or, failing that, that he should fall off. When

hunting was offered to me I thought that I could at any rate go out and

see. But on my arrival at Alice I found that hunting meant--shooting, an

exercise of skill in which I had never even tried to prevail. “I haven’t

fired off a gun,” I said, “for forty years.” But I had agreed to go out

hunting, and word had passed about the country, and a hundred naked

Kafirs were to be congregated to drive the game. I tried hard to escape.

“Might I not be allowed to go and see the naked Kafirs, without a

gun,--especially as it was so probable that I might shoot one of them if

I were armed?” But this would not do. I was told that the Kafirs would

despise me. So I took the gun and carried it ever so many miles, on

horseback, to my very great annoyance.

At a certain spot on a hill side,--where the hill downwards was covered

with bush and shrubs, we met the naked Kafirs. There were a hundred of

them, I was told, more or less, and they were as naked as my heart could

desire,--but each carrying some fragment of a blanket wound round on his

arm, and many of them were decorated with bracelets and earrings. There

were some preliminary ceremonies, such as the lying down of a young

Kafir and the pretence of all the men around him,--and of all the dogs,

of which there was a large muster,--that the prostrate figure was a dead

buck over whom it was necessary to lick their lips and shake their

weapons;--and after this the Kafirs went down into the bush. Then I was

led away by my white friend, carrying my gun and leading my horse, and

after a while was told that the very spot had been found. If I would

remain there with my gun cocked and ready, a buck would surely come by

almost at once so that I might shoot him. I did as I was bid, and sat

alert for thirty minutes holding my gun as though something to be shot

would surely come every second. But nothing came and I gradually went to

sleep.

Then of a sudden I heard the Kafirs approaching. They had beaten the

woods for a mile along the valley; and then a gun was fired and then

another, and gradually my white friends reappeared among the Kafirs. One

had shot a bird, and another a hare; and the most triumphant of the

number had slaughtered a very fat monkey of a peculiarly blue colour

about his hinder quarters. This was the great battue of the day. There

were two or three other resting places at which I was instructed to

stand and wait; and then we would be separated again, and again after a

while would come the noise of the Kafirs. But no one shot anything

further, and during the whole day nothing appeared before my eyes at

which I was even able to aim my gun. But the native Kafirs with their

red paint and their blankets wound round their arms, passing here and

there through the bush and beating for game, were real enough and very

interesting. I was told that to them it was a day of absolute delight,

and that they were quite satisfied with having been allowed to be there.

I have spoken before of the Kafir scare of 1876 during which it was

certainly the general opinion at Grahamstown that there was about to be

a general rising among the natives, and that it would behove all

Europeans in the Eastern Province to look well to their wives and

children and homesteads. I have described the manner in which my friend

at the ostrich farm fortified his place with turrets, and I had heard of

some settlers further east who had left their homes in the conviction

that they were no longer safe. Gentlemen at Grahamstown had assured me

that the danger had been as though men were going about a powder

magazine with lighted candles. Here, where was our hunting party, we

were in the centre of the Kafirs. A farmer who was with us owned the

land down to the Chumie river which was at our feet, and on the other

side there was a wide district which had been left by Government to the

Kafirs when we annexed the land,--a district in which the Kafirs live

after their old fashion. This man had his wife and children within a

mile or two of hordes of untamed savages. When I asked him about the

scare of last year, he laughed at it. Some among his neighbours had

fled;--and had sold their cattle for what they would fetch. But he, when

he saw that Kafirs were buying the cattle thus sold, was very sure that

they would not buy that which they could take without price if war

should come. But the Kafirs around him, he said, had no idea of war;

and, when they heard of all that the Europeans were doing, they had

thought that some attack was to be made on them.[13] The Kafirs as a

body no doubt hate their invaders; but they would be well content to be

allowed to hold what they still possess without further struggles with

the white man, if they were sure of being undisturbed in their holdings.

But they will be disturbed. Gradually, for this and the other reason,

from causes which the white man of the day will be sure to be able to

justify at any rate to himself, more and more will be annexed, till

there will not be a hill side which the Kafir can call his own

dominion. As a tenant he will be admitted, and as a farmer, if he will

farm the land, he will be welcomed. But the Kafir hill sides with the

Kafir Kraals,--or homesteads,--and the Kafir flocks will all gradually

be annexed and made subject to British taxation.

From Alice I went on to King Williamstown,--at first through a cold but

grandly mountainous country, but coming, when half way, to a spot

smiling with agriculture, called Debe Nek, where too there were forest

trees and green slopes. At Debe Nek I met a young farmer who was full of

the hardships to which he was subjected by the unjust courses taken by

the Government. I could not understand his grievance, but he seemed to

me to have a very pleasant spot of ground on which to sow his seed and

reap his corn. His mother kept an hotel, and was racy with a fine Irish

brogue which many years in the Colony had failed in the least to

tarnish. She had come from Armagh and was delighted to talk of the

beauty and bounty and great glory of the old primate, Beresford. She

sighed for her native land and shook her head incredulously when I

reminded her of the insufficiency of potatoes for the needs of man or

woman. I never met an Irishman out of his own country, who, from some

perversity of memory, did not think that he had always been accustomed

to eat meat three times a day, and wear broad cloth when he was at home.

King Williamstown was the capital of British Kafraria, and is now the

seat of a British Regiment. I am afraid that at this moment it is the

Head Quarters of much more than one. This perhaps will be the best

place in which to say a few words on the question of keeping British

troops in the Cape Colony. It is held to be good colonial doctrine that

a Colony which governs itself, which levies and uses its own taxes, and

which does in pretty nearly all things as seems good to itself in its

own sight, should pay its own bills;--and among other bills any bill

that may be necessary for its own defence. Australia has no British

soldiers,--not an English redcoat; nor has Canada, though Canada be for

so many miles flanked by a country desirous of annexing it. My readers

will remember too that even while the Maoris were still in arms the last

regiment was withdrawn from New Zealand,--so greatly to the disgust of

New Zealand politicians that the New Zealand Minister of the day flew

out almost in mutiny against our Secretary of State at the time. But the

principle was maintained, and the measure was carried, and the last

regiment was withdrawn. But at that time ministerial responsibility and

parliamentary government had not as yet been established in the Cape

Colony, and there were excuses for British soldiers at the Cape which no

longer existed in New Zealand.

Now parliamentary government and ministerial responsibility are as

strong at Capetown as at Wellington, but the British troops still remain

in the Cape Colony. There will be, I think, when this book is published

more than three regiments in the Colony or employed in its defence. The

parliamentary system began only in 1872, and it may be alleged that the

withdrawal of troops should be gradual. It may be alleged also that the

present moment is peculiar, and that the troops are all this time

specially needed. It should, however, be remembered that when the troops

were finally withdrawn from New Zealand, disturbance among the Maoris

was still rampant there. I suppose there can hardly be a doubt that it

is a subject on which a so called Conservative Secretary of State may

differ slightly from a so called Liberal Minister. Had Lord Kimberley

remained in office there might possibly be fewer soldiers in the Cape

Colony. But the principle remains, and has I think so established itself

that probably no Colonial Secretary of whatever party would now deny its

intrinsic justice.

Then comes the question whether the Cape Colony should be made an

exception, and if so why. I am inclined to think that no visitor

travelling in the country with his eyes open, and with capacity for

seeing the things around him, would venture to say that the soldiers

should be withdrawn now, at this time. Looking back at the nature of the

Kafir wars, looking round at the state of the Kafir people, knowing as

he would know that they are armed not only with assegais but with guns,

and remembering the possibilities of Kafir warfare, he would hesitate to

leave a quarter of a million of white people to defend themselves

against a million and a half of warlike hostile Natives. The very

withdrawal of the troops might itself too probably cause a prolonged

cessation of that peace to which the Kafir Chiefs have till lately felt

themselves constrained by the presence of the red coats, and for the

speedy re-establishment of which the continued presence of the red coats

is thought to be necessary. The capable and clearsighted stranger of

whom I am speaking would probably decline to take such responsibility

upon himself, even though he were as strong in the theory of colonial

self-defence as was Lord Granville when he took the soldiers away from

New Zealand.

But it does not follow that on that account he should think that the

Cape Colony should be an exception to a rule which as to other Colonies

has been found to be sound. It may be wise to keep the soldiers in the

Colony, but have been unwise to saddle the Colony with full

parliamentary institutions before it was able to bear their weight. “If

the soldiers be necessary, then the place was not ripe for parliamentary

institutions.” That may be a very possible opinion as to the affairs of

South Africa generally.

I am again driven to assert the difference between South Africa, and

Canada, or Australia, or New Zealand. South Africa is a land peopled

with coloured inhabitants. Those other places are lands peopled with

white men. I will not again vex my reader with numbers,--not now at

least. He will perhaps remember the numbers, and bethink himself of what

has to be done before all those negroes can be assimilated and digested

and made into efficient parliamentary voters, who shall have

civilization, and the good of their country, and “God save the Queen”

generally, at their hearts’ core. A mistake has perhaps been made;--but

I do not think that because of that mistake the troops should be

withdrawn from the Colony.

I cannot, however, understand why they should be kept at Capetown, to

the safety of which they are no more necessary than they would be to

that of Sydney or Melbourne. It is alleged that they can be moved more

easily from Capetown, than they might be from any inland depot. But we

know that if wanted at all they will be wanted on the frontier,--say

within 50 miles of the Kei river which is the present boundary of the

Colony. If the Kafirs east of the Kei can be kept quiet, there will be

no rising of those to the west of the river. It was the knowledge that

there were troops at King Williamstown, not that there were troops at

Capetown, which operated so long on the minds of Kreli and other

Transkeian Kafirs. And now that disturbance has come all the troops are

sent to the frontier. If this be so, it would seem that British Kafraria

is the place in which they should be located. But Capetown has been Head

Quarters since the Colony was a Colony, and Head Quarters are never

moved very easily. It is right that I should add that the Colony pays

£10,000 a year to the mother country in aid of the cost of the troops. I

need hardly say that that sum does not go far towards covering the total

expense of two or more regiments on foreign service.

Another difficulty is apt to arise,--which I fear will now be found to

be a difficulty in South Africa. If imperial troops be used in a Colony

which enjoys parliamentary government, who is to be responsible for

their employment? The Parliamentary Minister will expect that they shall

be used as he may direct;--but so will not the authorities at home! In

this way there can hardly fail to be difference of opinion between the

Governor of the Colony and his responsible advisers.

King Williamstown is a thoroughly commercial little city with a

pleasant club, with a railway to East London, and with smiling German

cultivation all around it. But it has no trees. There is indeed a public

garden in which the military band plays with great éclat, and in which

horses can be ridden, and carriages with ladies be driven about,--so as

to look almost like Hyde Park in June. I stayed three or four days at

the place and was made very comfortable; but what struck me most was the

excellence of the Kafir servant who waited upon me. A gentleman had

kindly let me have the use of his house, and with his house the services

of this treasure. The man was so gentle, so punctual, and so mindful of

all things that I could not but think what an acquisition he would be to

any fretful old gentleman in London.

When I was at King Williamstown I was invited to hold a conference with

two or three Kafir Chiefs, especially with Sandilli, whose son I had

seen at school, and who was the heir to Gaika, one of the great kings of

the Kafirs, being the son of Gaika’s “great wife,” and brother to Makomo

the Kafir who in the last war had done more than Kafir had ever done

before to break the British power in South Africa. It was Makomo who had

been Sir Harry Smith’s too powerful enemy,--and Sandilli, who is still

living in the neighbourhood of King Williamstown, was Makomo’s younger

but more royal brother. I expressed, of course, great satisfaction at

the promised interview, but was warned that Sandilli might not

improbably be too drunk to come.

On the morning appointed about twenty Kafirs came to me, clustering

round the door of the house in which I was lodging,--but they declined

to enter. I therefore held my levee out in the street. Sandilli was not

there. The reason for his absence remained undivulged, but I was told

that he had sent a troop of cousins in his place. The spokesman on the

occasion was a chief named Siwani, who wore an old black coat, a flannel

shirt, a pair of tweed trousers and a billycock hat,--comfortably and

warmly dressed,--with a watch-key of ordinary appearance ingeniously

inserted into his ear as an ornament. An interpreter was provided; and,

out in the street, I carried on my colloquy with the dusky princes. Not

one of them spoke but Siwani, and he expressed utter dissatisfaction

with everything around him. The Kafirs, he said, would be much better

off if the English would go away and leave them to their own customs. As

for himself, though he had sent a great many of his clansmen to work on

the railway,--where they got as he admitted good wages,--he had never

himself received the allowance per head promised him. “Why not appeal to

the magistrate?” I asked. He had done so frequently, he said, but the

Magistrate always put him off, and then, personally, he was treated with

very insufficient respect. This complaint was repeated again and again.

I, of course, insisted on the comforts which the Europeans had brought

to the Kafirs,--trousers for instance,--and I remarked that all the

royal princes around me were excellently well clad. The raiment was no

doubt of the Irish beggar kind but still admitted of being described as

excellent when compared in the mind with red clay and a blanket.

“Yes,--by compulsion,” he said. “We were told that we must come in and

see you, and therefore we put on our trousers. Very uncomfortable they

are, and we wish that you and the trousers and the magistrates, but

above all the prisons, would go--away out of the country together.” He

was very angry about the prisons, alleging that if the Kafirs did wrong

the Kafir Chiefs would know how to punish them. None of his own children

had ever gone to school,--nor did he approve of schools. In fact he was

an unmitigated old savage, on whom my words of wisdom had no effect

whatever, and who seemed to enjoy the opportunity of unburdening his

resentment before a British traveller. It is probable that some one had

given him to understand that I might possibly write a book when I

returned home.

When, after some half hour of conversation, he declared that he did not

want to answer any more questions, I was not sorry to shake hands with

the prominent half dozen, so as to bring the meeting to a close. But

suddenly there came a grin across Siwani’s face,--the first look of good

humour which I had seen,--and the interpreter informed me that the Chief

wanted a little tobacco. I went back into my friend’s house and emptied

his tobacco pot, but this, though accepted, did not seem to give

satisfaction. I whispered to the interpreter a question, and on being

told that Siwani would not be too proud to buy his own tobacco, I gave

the old beggar half a crown. Then he blessed me, as an Irish beggar

might have done, grinned again and went off with his followers. The

Kafir boy or girl at school and the Kafir man at work are pleasing

objects; but the old Kafir chief in quest of tobacco,--or brandy,--is

not delightful.

King Williamstown is the head quarters of the Cape mounted frontier

police, of which Mr. Bowker, whose opinion respecting Kafirdom I have

already quoted, was at the period of my visit the Commandant. This is a

force, consisting now of about 1,200 men, maintained by the Colony

itself for its own defence, and was no doubt established by the Colony

with a view of putting its own foot forward in its own behalf and doing

something towards the achievement of that colonial independence of which

I have spoken. It has probably been thought that the frontier police

might at last stand in lieu of British soldiers. The effort has been

well made, and the service is of great use. The brunt of the fighting in

the late disturbance has been borne by the mounted police. The men are

stationed about the country in small parties,--never I think more than

thirty or forty together, and often in smaller numbers. They are very

much more efficacious than soldiers, as every man is mounted,--and the

men themselves come from a much higher class than that from which our

soldiers are enlisted. But the troop is expensive, each private costing

on an average about 7s. a day. The men are paid 5s. 6d. a day as soon as

they are mounted,--out of which they have to buy and keep their horses

and furnish everything for themselves. “When they join the force their

horses and equipments are supplied to them, but the price is stopped out

of their pay. They are recruited generally, though by no means

universally, in England, under the care of an emigration agent who is

maintained at home. I came out myself with six or seven of them,--three

of whom I knew to be sons of gentlemen, and all of whom may have been

so. So terrible is the struggle at home to find employment for young men

that the idea of £100 a year at once has charms, even though the

receiver of it will have to keep not only himself, but a horse also, out

of the money. But the prospect, if fairly seen, is not alluring. The

young men when in the Colony are policemen and nothing more than

policemen. Many of them after a short compulsory service find a better

employment elsewhere, and their places are filled up by new comers.

From King Williamstown I went to East London by railway and there waited

till the ship came which was to take me on to Natal. East London is

another of those ports which stubborn Nature seems to have made unfit

for shipping, but which energy and enterprise are determined to convert

to good purposes. As Grahamstown believes in Port Alfred, so does King

Williamstown believe in East London, feeling sure that the day will come

when no other harbour along the coast will venture to name itself in

comparison with her. And East London has as firm a belief in herself,

with a trustworthy reliance on a future day when the commerce of nations

will ride in safety within her at present ill-omened bar. I had heard

much of East London and had been warned that I might find it impossible

to get on board the steamer even when she was lying in the roads. At

Port Elizabeth it had been suggested to me that I might very probably

have to come back there because no boat at East London would venture to

take me out. The same thing was repeated to me along my route, and even

at King Williamstown. But not the less on that account, when I found

myself in British Kafraria of which East London is the port, was I

assured of all that East London would hereafter perform. No doubt there

was a perilous bar. The existence of the bar was freely admitted. No

doubt the sweep of the sea in upon the mouth of the Buffalo river was of

such a nature as to make all intercourse between ships and the shore

both difficult and disagreeable. No doubt the coast was so subject to

shipwreck as to have caused the insurance on ships to East London to be

abnormally high. All these evils were acknowledged, but all these evils

would assuredly be conquered by energy, skill, and money. It was thus

that East London was spoken of by the friends who took me there in order

that I might see the works which were being carried on with the view of

overcoming Nature.

At the present moment East London is certainly a bad spot for shipping.

A vessel had broken from her anchor just before my arrival and was lying

on the shore a helpless wreck. There were the fragments to be seen of

other wrecks; and I heard of many which had made the place noted within

the last year or two. Such was the character of the place. I was told by

more than one voice that vessels were sent there on purpose to be

wrecked. Stories which I heard made me believe in Mr. Plimsoll more than

I had ever believed before. “She was intended to come on shore,” was

said by all voices that day in East London as to the vessel that was

still lying among the breakers, while men were at work upon her to get

out the cargo. “They know that ships will drag their anchor here; so,

when they want to get rid of an old tub, they send her to East London.”

It was a terrible tale to hear, and especially so from men who

themselves believe in the place with all the implicit confidence of

expended capital. On the second day after my arrival the vessel that was

to carry me on to Natal steamed into the roads. It had been a lovely

morning and was yet early,--about eleven o’clock. I hurried down with a

couple of friends to the man in authority who decides whether

communication shall or shall not be had between the shore and the ship,

and he, cocking a telescope to his eye, declared that even though the

Governor wanted to go on board he would not let a boat stir that day. In

my ill-humour I asked him why he would be more willing to risk the

Governor’s life than that of any less precious individual. I own I

thought he was a tyrant,--and perhaps a Sabbatarian, as it was on a

Sunday. But in half an hour the wind had justified him, even to my

uneducated intelligence. During the whole of that day there was no

intercourse possible between the ships and the shore. A boat from a

French vessel tried it, and three men out of four were drowned! Early on

the following day I was put on board the steamer in a life-boat. Again

it was a lovely morning,--and the wind had altogether fallen,--but the

boat shipped so much water that our luggage was wet through.

But it is yet on the cards that the East Londoners may prevail. Under

the auspices of Sir John Coode a breakwater is being constructed with

the purpose of protecting the river’s mouth from the prevailing winds,

and the river is being banked and altered so that the increased force of

the water through a narrowed channel may scour away the sand. If these

two things can be done then ships will enter the Buffalo river and ride

there in delicious ease, and the fortune of the place will be made. I

went to see the works and was surprised to find operations of such

magnitude going on at a place which apparently was so insignificant. A

breakwater was being constructed out from the shore,--not an isolated

sea wall as is the breakwater at Plymouth and at Port Elizabeth,--but a

pier projecting itself in a curve from one of the points of the river’s

mouth so as to cover the other when completed. On this £120,000 had

already been spent, and a further sum of £80,000 is to be spent. It is

to be hoped that it will be well expended,--for which the name of Sir

John Coode is a strong guarantee.

At present East London is not a nice place. It is without a pavement,--I

may almost say without a street, dotted about over the right river bank

here and there, dirty to look at and dishevelled, putting one in mind of

the American Eden as painted by Charles Dickens,--only that his Eden was

a river Eden while this is a marine Paradise. But all that no doubt will

be mended when the breakwater has been completed. I have already spoken

of the rivalry between South African ports, as between Port Alfred and

Port Elizabeth, and between South African towns, as between Capetown and

Grahamstown. The feeling is carried everywhere, throughout everything.

Opposite to the town of East London, on the left side of the Buffalo

river, and connected with it by ferries, is the township of Panmure.

The terminus of the railway is at Panmure and not at East London. And at

Panmure there has gathered itself together an unpromising assemblage of

stores and houses which declares of itself that it means to snuff East

London altogether out. East London and Panmure together are strong

against all the coast of South Africa to the right and left; but between

the two places themselves there is as keen a rivalry as between any two

towns on the continent. At East London I was assured that Panmure was

merely “upstart;”--but a Panmurite had his revenge by whispering to me

that East London was a nest of musquitoes. As to the musquitoes I can

speak from personal experience.

And yet I ought to say a good word of East London for I was there but

three days and was invited to three picnics. I went to two of them, and

enjoyed myself thoroughly, seeing some beautiful scenery up the river,

and some charming spots along the coast. I was, however, very glad to

get on board the steamer, having always had before my eyes the terrible

prospect of a return journey to Port Elizabeth before I could embark for

Natal.

CHAPTER XII.

KAFIR SCHOOLS.

The question of Kafir education is perhaps the most important that has

to be solved in South Africa,--and certainly it is the one as to which

there exists the most violent difference of opinion among those who have

lived in South Africa. A traveller in the land by associating

exclusively with one set of persons would be taught to think that here

was to be found a certain and quick panacea for all the ills and dangers

to which the country is subjected. Here lies the way by which within an

age or two the population of the country may be made to drop its

savagery and Kafirdom and blanket loving vagabondism and become a people

as fit to say their prayers and vote for members of parliament as at any

rate the ordinary English Christian constituent. “Let the Kafir be

caught young and subjected to religious education, and he will soon

become so good a man and so docile a citizen that it will be almost a

matter of regret that more of us were not born Kafirs.” That is the view

of the question which prevails with those who have devoted themselves to

Kafir education,--and of them it must be acknowledged that their efforts

are continuous and energetic. I found it impossible not to be moved to

enthusiasm by what I saw at Kafir schools.

Another traveller falling into another and a different set will be told

by his South African associates that the Kafir is a very good fellow,

and may be a very good servant, till he has been taught to sing psalms

and to take pride in his rapidly acquired book learning;--but that then

he becomes sly, a liar and a thief, whom it is impossible to trust and

dangerous to have about the place. “He is a Kafir still,” a gentleman

said to me, “but a Kafir with the addition of European cunning without a

touch of European conscience.” As far as I could observe, the merchants

and shopkeepers who employ Kafirs about their stores, and persons who

have Kafirs about their houses, do eschew the school Kafir. The

individual Kafir when taken young and raw out of his blanket, put into

breeches and subjected to the general dominion of a white master, is

wonderfully honest, and, as far as he can speak at all, he speaks the

truth. There can I think be no question about his virtues. You may leave

your money about with perfect safety, though he knows well what money

will do for him; you may leave food,--and even drink in his way and they

will be safe. “Is there any housebreaking or shoplifting?” I asked a

tradesman in King Williamstown. He declared that there was nothing of

the kind known,--unless it might be occasionally in reference to a horse

and saddle. A Kafir would sometimes be unable to resist the temptation

of riding back into Kafirdom, the happy possessor of a steed. But let a

lad have passed three or four years at a Kafir school, and then he

would have become a being very much altered for the worse and not at all

fit to be trusted among loose property. The saints in Kafirland will say

that I have heard all this exclusively among the sinners. If so I can

only say that the men of business are all sinners.

For myself I found it very hard to form an opinion between the two, I do

believe most firmly in education. I should cease to believe in any thing

if I did not believe that education if continued will at least civilize.

I can conceive no way of ultimately overcoming and dispelling what I

must call the savagery of the Kafirs, but by education. And when I see

the smiling, oily, good humoured, docile, naturally intelligent but

still wholly uneducated black man trying to make himself useful and

agreeable to his white employers, I still recognise the Savage. With all

his good humour and spasmodic efforts at industry he is no better than a

Savage. And the white man in many cases does not want him to be better.

He is no more anxious that his Kafir should reason than he is that his

horse should talk. It requires an effort of genuine philanthropy even to

desire that those beneath us should become more nearly equal to us. The

man who makes his money by employing Kafir labour is apt to regard the

commercial rather than the philanthropic side of the question. I refuse

therefore to adopt his view of the matter. A certain instinct of

independence, which in the eyes of the employer of labour always takes

the form of rebellion, is one of the first and finest effects of

education. The Kafir who can argue a question of wages with his master

has already become an objectionable animal.

But again the education of the educated Kafir is very apt to “fall off.”

So much I have not only heard asserted generally by those who are

antikafir-educational in their sympathies, but admitted also by many of

those who have been themselves long exercised in Kafir education. And,

in regard to religious teaching, we all know that the singing of psalms

is easier than the keeping of the ten commandments. When we find much

psalm-singing and at the same time a very conspicuous breach of what has

to us been a very sacred commandment, we are apt to regard the

delinquent as a hypocrite. And the Kafir at school no doubt learns

something of that doctrine,--which in his savage state was wholly

unknown to him, but with which the white man is generally more or less

conversant,--that speech has been given to men to enable them to conceal

their thoughts. In learning to talk most of us learn to lie before we

learn to speak the truth. While dropping something of his ignorance the

Savage drops something also of his simplicity. I can understand

therefore why the employer of labour should prefer the unsophisticated

Kafir, and am by no means sure that if I were looking out for black

labour in order that I might make money out of it I should not eschew

the Kafir from the schools.

The difficulty arises probably from our impatience. Nothing will satisfy

us unless we find a bath in which we may at once wash the blackamoor

white, or a mill and oven in which a Kafir may be ground and baked

instantly into a Christian. That much should be lost,--should “fall off”

as they say,--of the education imparted to them is natural. Among those

of ourselves who have spent, perhaps, nine or ten years of our lives

over Latin and Greek how much is lost! Perhaps I might say how little is

kept! But something remains to us,--and something to them. There is need

of very much patience. Those who expect that a Kafir boy, because he has

been at school, should come forth the same as a white lad, all whose

training since, and from long previous to his birth, has been a European

training, will of course be disappointed. But we may, I think, be sure

that no Kafir pupil can remain for years or even for months among

European lessons and European habits, without carrying away with him to

his own people, when he goes, something of a civilizing influence.

My friend the Wesleyan Minister, who by his eloquence prevailed over me

at Fort Beaufort in spite of my weariness and hunger, took me to

Healdtown, the Institution over which he himself presides. I had already

seen Kafir children and Kafir lads under tuition at Capetown. I had

visited Miss Arthur’s orphanage and school, where I had found a most

interesting and cosmopolitan collection of all races, and had been taken

by the Bishop of Capetown to the Church of England Kafir school at

Zonnebloom, and had there been satisfied of the great capability which

the young Kafir has for learning his lessons. I had been assured that up

to a certain point and a certain age the Kafir quite holds his own with

the European. At Zonnebloom a master carpenter was one of the

instructors of the place, and, as I thought, by no means the least

useful. The Kafir lad may perhaps forget the names of the “five great

English poets with their dates and kings,” by recapitulating which he

has gained a prize at Lovedale,--or may be unable some years after he

has left the school to give an “Outline of Thomson’s Seasons,” but when

he has once learned how to make a table stand square upon four legs he

has gained a power of helping his brother Kafirs which will never

altogether desert him.