We reached Cape Town after a run of thirteen days. On the morning of
the 24th of January we made the long, low sandhills in the vicinity
of Saldanha bay, South Africa, and continuing our run in sight of
the coast during the day, anchored after nightfall, with bright
moonlight around, in Table bay. We encountered the whole way a strong
head wind and sea, and at one time doubted whether our coal would be
sufficient to enable us to reach our port. The men were exercised at
target practice, with pistol and musket. On the 15th, the sun being
_vertical_, the friendly wish “May your _shadow_ never be less,” would
have been superfluous, as on that day the thing was impossible. As we
neared the guano islands, lying off the harbor, we were surrounded
by booby-birds and sea-gulls innumerable; the “albatross” also “did
cross,” and very large birds they were.
Cape Town, from the water, looks like a long, low, yellow
fortification. Its population is about thirty thousand, made up of
the representatives of nearly every nation. It was captured from the
Dutch by the English in 1806. Being the great stopping-place for
vessels bound round the Cape of Good Hope, or returning from Australia
and the East Indies, the occupations of the inhabitants are mostly
mercantile. The streets are wide and well laid out. They have a
number of fine churches, a botanical garden, and quite an extensive
library. High behind the town, flanked on either side by the conical
hills of the “Lion’s Rump” and “Devil’s hill,” rises that remarkable
formation, which is visible a great distance from the sea, called
_Table Mountain_, four thousand feet high, and level on the top. The
weather is nearly always unsettled, but a blow may be expected when the
inhabitants remind you that the “cloth is spread” on Table mountain,
which is suddenly covered with a thick white cloud, which curls over
the steep face of the mountain, and extends itself down it, as a deep
snow from the roof of a house when the melting begins. When this
continues, the ships in the harbor, which is a very unsafe one, look
to their moorings, and are frequently driven ashore. The day after our
arrival we were compelled to change our berth: the old Mississippi
reared and plunged at her anchors like an impatient steed endeavoring
to slip his rein, and at night the royal mail steamer Bosphorus
broke from her moorings and went ashore. We were unable to go to her
assistance because the weather had prevented our getting any coal
aboard.
[Illustration: _LITH. OF SARONY & Co. NEW YORK._
CAPE OF GOOD HOPE.]
As your boat approaches the mole, you pass through large flocks of the
black gull and cormorant, and nearer the shore, groups of the pelican
are feeding. Should a southeast wind prevail when you reach the wharf,
you will scarcely be able to see the place. Dense clouds, not of dust,
but of coarse red sand, fill the streets, and are borne in fitful
eddies around the corners. It fills your eyes, if you are so rash as to
open them but for a second, your ears, nostrils, and insinuates itself
underneath every garment that you wear; you are doing the penance of
walking with gravel under your sock, although sandal-shoon be on.
The male residents who move about wear veils attached to their hats,
but to a stranger the annoyance is horrible. During the prevalence
of this wind, the houses are closed as well as they may be, but it
is insufficient to keep out the plague. In the parlor-windows of an
English hotel at which I dined, the dust had accumulated in a morning
to the thickness of velvet, and from the front of the house I saw a
Hottentot servant removing the sand piled on the pavement, as we would
a small snow-drift in our own country.
But when you can open your eyes, strange-looking people and strange
things meet them. At the hotel, you were waited upon by Bengalese
servants, with their fantastically-wound turbans of cashmere nearly the
size of a market-basket, their blue gowns reaching to the knee, tied
with red riband in front, making their waist appear just under their
arms, and moving so stealthily with their bare feet, as they came and
went, that you were not conscious of their presence. In the streets
you see the high-cheeked-bone Malay, the emaciated-looking cooley, and
the red-capped, half-naked, simial-faced Hottentot, whom the mistaken
philanthropy of English law has removed from the authority of the
Dutch boor, that they may go lower in the scale of humanity. By you
wheels some lately-arrived cockney in one of the patent safety cabs
from London, the driver perched behind, and slowly following comes a
lumbering wagon, its tents covering some large casks, it may be, drawn
by sixteen or eighteen yoke of the enormous horned oxen of this colony,
who are ever reminded of the proximity of their Hottentot driver, by
his unceasing guttural calls and the continual application of his
immense whip, whose lash, after being whirled in air an instant, he can
cause to descend with unfailing accuracy on the back of any particular
ox in his team, though he be a leader. In the windows of the stores you
notice the graceful feathers of the ostrich, and its eggs; elephants’
tusks, and those too of the wild boar left in the skull; and the skins
of the leopard and lion, remind you that you are where “Afric’s sunny,”
&c. Innumerable jargons salute your ear as you move about.
On a bright Saturday morning, a Malay, with a good coach and four very
good horses, drove a party of us out to Constantia, famous for the
making of the celebrated wine of that name. The distance from town is
about nine miles, and the road a very good one. You pass through long
rows of the pine-tree, which I saw planted for ornamental effect for
the first time, and here and there you see the native silver-tree, its
bright leaves glistening prettily in the sun. The residences on the
route are very cosy-looking, and much taste is displayed in laying off
the approaches to them. A house not long before occupied by Sir Harry
Smith, while governor of the colony, was a very attractive place.
The proprietors of the wine-producing establishments are very polite
in their receptions and show you over their places with pleasure.
We visited their brightly white-washed and steep-thatched roofed
wine-houses, in whose extended walls were seen the huge wine butts like
those of Madeira, but filled with the thicker-bodied and sweeter Pontac
and Frontenac. The wine-house of Mr. Cloete has on its front quite a
well-executed bacchanalian scene in _basso-relievo_, and was erected in
1793. The roofs of their houses are steep and smoothly thatched, which
covering is said to last for forty years, without the accident of fire,
of which they are very careful. The decorations of their grounds are
tasty, and the sire, bending outward the limbs of the oak when young,
leaves a canopied place for table and chairs in the centre of its
branches, for the son.
The mode of cultivating the grape for the production of wine at
Constantia is peculiar. They use no arbor for the support of the
vines, but sustain them, a small distance from the ground, with sticks.
When the fruit has reached maturity, the leaves are cut away to permit
its being reached by the rays of the sun, and is only plucked for
pressing when it has become nearly as sweet as a raisin; hence the
taste of the wine, its high value, and its body.
During our stay at Cape Town, the Kaffir war still continued, and on
our way back from Constantia, we drove to the little settlement of
Wynberg to take a look at the captive Kaffir chief Seyolo, whom the
English had confined in the prison at that place. We found the prisoner
in a small cell, a stalwart woolly-headed negro, not of the darkest
complexion, standing six feet one and three quarters inches high. His
dress consisted of a lit cigar, and a single blanket thrown round his
person. His wife, Niomese, with a good countenance and very small hands
and feet, was with him. In an adjoining cell was his chief counsellor
and his wife. They appeared quite cheerful and decidedly lazy. When
the unintelligent face and elongated heel of Seyolo, was considered,
it was a matter of surprise, how such a creature could have exercised
with any force the power of command, or displayed any strategic skill
to the annoyance of the English; but it was said that he had not been
anything like as troublesome to the colonists as a withered-legged
Kaffir chief named Sandilli, who having been once taken and turned
out on his parole, would be shot in obedience to the sentence of
a drum-head courtmartial, if again captured. The accounts from the
seat of hostilities, during the time we lay at Cape Town were very
unpropitious, owing to the severe fatigue and exhaustion which the
hale hearty soldiers in their illy-adapted uniform, were compelled to
undergo in bush-fighting or climbing steep places in pursuit of the
alert and fleet-footed Kaffir, while with the best protection that
could be extended to the kraals of the settlers, their cattle were
continually being driven off by the thieving enemy.
A stroll through the botanical garden remunerates one very well. The
exotics are rare and tastefully displayed, while the Fuchias and the
Cape Jasmin laden the air with sweet perfume. The wheat of the colony
is ground in steam-mills situated in the midst of the city.
Having had the good fortune to have such weather as we could coal ship
in, and also employed carpenters to build frames for the protection
of our fire-room hatches, against the water which might extinguish
our fires, should we have the misfortune to undergo one of the severe
gales that are so frequently met with in the ocean which we had to
traverse before reaching our next port, we sent our letter-bag to a
merchant-ship bound to Boston, raised anchor on the 3d of February, and
steamed away out, passing the Lion’s Rump, False Bay, and Cape Hanglip,
bound to the Isle of France, or as now called, the Mauritius. On
getting a short distance from the place we encountered a mountainous,
foamless swell, which did not break, but rolled up to a very great
height with regularity. Our ship was sluggish in the extreme, and when
we slid slowly down into the trough of the sea, the wave before and
behind us was apparently as high as our mizzen top. The colors of a
ship hoisted at her mizzen peak, but only a short way off, at times,
were entirely shut in from our view by the swell. If this sea had
only broken it would have proved the propriety of the old Dutch name
for the cape—“the Stormy cape.” In rounding the cape the fate of the
unfortunate “Birkenhead,” an English transport steamer, lost off it
some years ago by running on a sunken rock, came to mind; and we also
thought of the collected bravery of the large number of troops on board
of her. It is one thing to face death from the belching mouth of cannon
or the deadly rifle, for then a man is hurried on by the clangor and
excitement of the strife, and moves under the illusory belief that
makes more than half the soldiers of the world, that somebody else may
be killed, but that he will not. But what is to be said in praise of
the placid courage of the poor soldiers on the Birkenhead, who, with
death inevitable, not amid “the sulphurous canopy,” but death from the
yawning wave _facing them_, yet fell into rank at the roll of drum, as
if on a dress-parade, and sank into the yesty deep with the engulfed
vessel, patterns of discipline and martyrs to duty.
We ran to the eastward for some days for the purpose of getting a
favorable wind and then headed northward for our port. The weather
continued rough and disagreeable. The anti-scorbutic notions of the
commander-in-chief—although we were not a sailing vessel liable to
be out of port for any considerable length of time, but a steamer
whose necessity for coal would require short runs, caused to be put on
board of us before leaving Cape Town, twelve of the large, wide horned
cape-bullocks, and a number of the cape-sheep with tails as wide as a
dinner plate. The stalls of the larger cattle were on the forecastle
and on the quarter-deck, tied up to the halyard racks. When the ship
rolled heavily, the noise of these poor animals endeavoring to conform
to her movement, or disturbed by the men in getting at the ropes which
their large horns covered, and their continued tramping over the heads
of those below deck, was of course increasing the comfort of shipboard
hugely. Then during a rough night although cleats had been nailed on
the deck to steady them, some steer would tumble down and dislocate his
thigh, requiring the butcher’s axe to despatch him next morning. On the
port side of the “quarter-deck,” y’clepted, I believe, in the time of
Drake, the “king’s walk,” the impromptu bleating of the sheep from a
fold made by lashing oars from the breach of one gun to another, was
quite mellifluous.
If the necessity had arisen of fighting the ship, overboard would
have to go the beef-cattle: if the ship had been required to salute
a superior command met on the sea, the orders would have been given,
perhaps, as follows: “Starboard (look out for the bull) fire!” “Port
(you’ll get kicked) fire!” “Starboard (don’t hurt those sheep) fire!”
&c. The efficiency of the ship for war purposes was seriously impaired,
if not destroyed, during their presence.
Two days from port, the anti-scurvy idea still predominant, punch made
with ship’s whiskey and lime juice, was served out to the crew, but
many an old shell-back as he took his tot, looked as if he would have
preferred the ardent minus the other ingredients.
On the 14th of February we discovered a tant vessel to the windward of
us. It proved to be a steamer under sail alone, her engines out of gear
and dragging her wheels. She stood down in our direction as if desirous
of speaking us, and many expressed much surprise at our not stopping,
but all at once we had stopped, and the stranger shot across our
stern. In answer to the hail, “What ship is that?” the reply was: “Her
majesty’s steamer Styx, bound to the Mauritius; please report us under
sail.” Our stopping was involuntary, a screw of one of the “cut-offs”
to our engines having come out, which was promptly fixed with a block
of wood by one of the admirable engineers which it was the good fortune
of the Mississippi to have; so that we were ready to go ahead again in
a very few minutes. The Englishman, no doubt, was none the wiser for
the belief that we stopped in courtesy to him.
The weather just before reaching Mauritius was much smoother than it
had been; the sun now came up upon the right, and his going down in the
Indian ocean at night, was a sight most beautiful to look upon, its
whole bosom bathed in fiery floods, and way above, tower above tower,
rose in radiance and glory illuminated clouds. When our band’s best
strains were filling the ship at evening and these sights preceded
night, we could hardly realize that we were in the Indian ocean—the
ocean of squalls, calms, heavy rains, gale, storm, and hurricane.