Letters from the Cape | Page 9

V-'s farm. Imagine St. George's Hill,
and the most beautiful bits of it, sloping gently up to Table Mountain,
with its grey precipices, and intersected with Scotch burns, which water
it all the year round, as they come from the living rock; and sprinkled
with oranges, pomegranates, and camelias in abundance. You drive
through a mile or two as described, and arrive at a square, planted with
rows of fine oaks close together; at the upper end stands the house, all
on the ground-floor, but on a high stoep: rooms eighteen feet high; the

old slave quarters on each side; stables, &c., opposite; the square as big
as Belgrave Square, and the buildings in the old French style.
We then went on to Newlands, a still more beautiful place. Immense
trenching and draining going on--the foreman a Caffre, black as ink, six
feet three inches high, and broad in proportion, with a staid, dignified
air, and Englishmen working under him! At the streamlets there are the
inevitable groups of Malay women washing clothes, and brown babies
sprawling about. Yesterday, I should have bought a black woman for
her beauty, had it been still possible. She was carrying an immense
weight on her head, and was far gone with child; but such stupendous
physical perfection I never even imagined. Her jet black face was like
the Sphynx, with the same mysterious smile; her shape and walk were
goddess-like, and the lustre of her skin, teeth, and eyes, showed the
fulness of health;--Caffre of course. I walked after her as far as her
swift pace would let me, in envy and admiration of such stately
humanity.
The ordinary blacks, or Mozambiques, as they call them, are hideous.
Malay here seems equivalent to Mohammedan. They were originally
Malays, but now they include every shade, from the blackest nigger to
the most blooming English woman. Yes, indeed, the emigrant-girls
have been known to turn 'Malays', and get thereby husbands who know
not billiards and brandy--the two diseases of Capetown. They risked a
plurality of wives, and professed Islam, but they got fine clothes and
industrious husbands. They wear a very pretty dress, and all have a
great air of independence and self-respect; and the real Malays are very
handsome. I am going to see one of the Mollahs soon, and to look at
their schools and mosque; which, to the distraction of the Scotch, they
call their 'Kerk.'
I asked a Malay if he would drive me in his cart with the six or eight
mules, which he agreed to do for thirty shillings and his dinner (i.e. a
share of my dinner) on the road. When I asked how long it would take,
he said, 'Allah is groot', which meant, I found, that it depended on the
state of the beach--the only road for half the way.
The sun, moon, and stars are different beings from those we look upon.

Not only are they so large and bright, but you SEE that the moon and
stars are BALLS, and that the sky is endless beyond them. On the other
hand, the clear, dry air dwarfs Table Mountain, as you seem to see
every detail of it to the very top.
Capetown is very picturesque. The old Dutch buildings are very
handsome and peculiar, but are falling to decay and dirt in the hands of
their present possessors. The few Dutch ladies I have seen are very
pleasing. They are gentle and simple, and naturally well-bred. Some of
the Malay women are very handsome, and the little children are
darlings. A little parti-coloured group of every shade, from ebony to
golden hair and blue eyes, were at play in the street yesterday, and the
majority were pretty, especially the half-castes. Most of the Caffres I
have seen look like the perfection of human physical nature, and seem
to have no diseases. Two days ago I saw a Hottentot girl of seventeen, a
housemaid here. You would be enchanted by her superfluity of flesh;
the face was very queer and ugly, and yet pleasing, from the sweet
smile and the rosy cheeks which please one much, in contrast to all the
pale yellow faces--handsome as some of them are.
I wish I could send the six chameleons which a good-natured parson
brought me in his hat, and a queer lizard in his pocket. The chameleons
are charming, so monkey-like and so 'caressants'. They sit on my
breakfast tray and catch flies, and hang in a bunch by their tails, and
reach out after my hand.
I have had a very kind letter from Lady Walker, and shall go and stay
with them at Simon's Bay as soon as I feel up to the twenty- two miles
along the beaches and bad roads in the mail-cart with three