From Capetown to Ladysmith | Page 2

FROM CAPETOWN TO LADYSMITH

I.
FIRST GLIMPSES OF THE STRUGGLE.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS--DENVER WITH A DASH OF
DELHI--GOVERNMENT HOUSE--THE LEGISLATIVE
ASSEMBLY--A WRANGLING DEBATE--A DEMONSTRATION
OF THE UNEMPLOYED--THE MENACE OF COMING WAR.
CAPETOWN, _Oct. 10._
This morning I awoke, and behold the Norman was lying alongside a
wharf at Capetown. I had expected it, and yet it was a shock. In this
breathless age ten days out of sight of land is enough to make you a
merman: I looked with pleased curiosity at the grass and the horses.
After the surprise of being ashore again, the first thing to notice was the
air. It was as clear--but there is nothing else in existence clear enough
with which to compare it. You felt that all your life hitherto you had
been breathing mud and looking out on the world through fog. This, at
last, was air, was ether.
Right in front rose three purple-brown mountains--the two supporters
peaked, and Table Mountain flat in the centre. More like a coffin than a
table, sheer steep and dead flat, he was exactly as he is in pictures; and
as I gazed, I saw his tablecloth of white cloud gather and hang on his
brow.
It was enough: the white line of houses nestling hardly visible between
his foot and the sea must indeed be Capetown.
Presently I came into it, and began to wonder what it looked like. It
seemed half Western American with a faint smell of India--Denver
with a dash of Delhi. The broad streets fronted with new-looking,
ornate buildings of irregular heights and fronts were Western America;
the battle of warming sun with the stabbing morning cold was Northern
India. The handsome, blood-like electric cars, with their impatient

gongs and racing trolleys, were pure America (the motor-men were
actually imported from that hustling clime to run them). For Capetown
itself--you saw it in a moment--does not hustle. The machinery is the
West's, the spirit is the East's or the South's. In other cities with
trolley-cars they rush; here they saunter. In other new countries they
have no time to be polite; here they are suave and kindly and even
anxious to gossip. I am speaking, understand, on a twelve hours'
acquaintance--mainly with that large section of Capetown's inhabitants
that handled my baggage between dock and rail way-station. The
niggers are very good-humoured, like the darkies of America. The
Dutch tongue sounds like German spoken by people who will not take
the trouble to finish pronouncing it.
All in all, Capetown gives you the idea of being neither very rich nor
very poor, neither over-industrious nor over-lazy, decently successful,
reasonably happy, whole-heartedly easy-going.
The public buildings--what I saw of them--confirm the idea of a placid
half-prosperity. The place is not a baby, but it has hardly taken the
trouble to grow up. It has a post-office of truly German stability and
magnitude. It has a well-organised railway station, and it has the merit
of being in Adderley Street, the main thoroughfare of the city: imagine
it even possible to bring Euston into the Strand, and you will get an
idea of the absence of push and crush in Capetown.
When you go on to look at Government House the place keeps its
character: Government House is half a country house and half a country
inn. One sentry tramps outside the door, and you pay your respects to
the Governor in shepherd's plaid.
Over everything brooded peace, except over one flamboyant
many-winged building of red brick and white stone with a garden about
it, an avenue--a Capetown avenue, shady trees and cool but not large:
attractive and not imposing--at one side of it, with a statue of the Queen
before and broad-flagged stairs behind. It was the Parliament House.
The Legislative Assembly--their House of Commons--was
characteristically small, yet characteristically roomy and
characteristically comfortable. The members sit on flat green-leather

cushions, two or three on a bench, and each man's name is above his
seat: no jostling for Capetown. The slip of Press gallery is above the
Speaker's head; the sloping uncrowded public gallery is at the other end,
private boxes on one side, big windows on the other. Altogether it
looks like a copy of the Westminster original, improved by leaving
nine-tenths of the members and press and public out.
Yet here--alas, for placid Capetown!--they were wrangling. They were
wrangling about the commandeering of gold and the
sjamboking--shamboking, you pronounce it--of Johannesburg refugees.
There was Sir Gordon Sprigg, thrice Premier, grey-bearded, dignified,
and responsible in bearing and speech, conversationally reasonable in
tone. There was Mr Schreiner, the Premier, almost boyish with plump,
smooth cheeks and a dark moustache. He looks capable, and looks as if
he knows it: he, too, is conversational, almost jerky, in speech, but with
a flavour of bitterness added to his