The Grand Tour: Letters and photographs from the British Empire Expedition 1922. Agatha Christie

thing it was that there should be a Llandudno and a Clift on in South Africa ‘Just the same names as in England!’ I hinted that it was a phenomenon fairly often encountered in our colonies, but she repeated ‘Actually the same as in England’ and seemed to think it was a clear case of thought transference! They are quite attached to me. I iron their clothes for them, tell them what trams to take in the town to get back to the Hotel, and deal and shuffle for them when we play cards, neither of which accomplishments they can master!

      Half holiday today! Archie came back from Muizenberg boasting that he can surf at last! Nobody believes him! But he rambles on while at the same time Hiam and Bates explain how really they practically got to the top of Table Mountain. Nobody believes them either, and Bates branches off earnestly to describe a particularly vicious looking spider that blocked his path, and how he distinctly heard a snake hiss. Bates has been convinced ever since leaving England (which he has never left before) that he is going into deadly peril and will never return alive. He insisted on the B.E.E. insuring his life before he started! Madeira he eyed askance as being full of pirates, and when a shark was seen at sea, it was sure to be Bates who saw it. Belcher has told him that there are young leopards on Table Mountain, and he believes it. We sent him a P.C. yesterday with a picture of a Puff Adder on it, and an earnest warning purporting to come from the ‘Society of the Protection of Visitors’ and Bates has been busily looking them up in the Telephone Directory, and cannot understand why no one seems to know where their offices are!

      Thursday [February 16]

      Yesterday afternoon, Mrs Blake and I went to the museum where we met two cousins of hers, one a very pretty girl, Marye Cole, who has been a great success with the Connaughts and others out here, and the other a Mrs Thomas who lives in Italy but has come out here to lecture on art. She dug out the head of the Museum and made him show us round. They have models from life of all the various Bushmen tribes, some of which are now dying out – extraordinary little women with enormous behinds trained out in a point! He explained them all very interestingly, and then we went on to the rock carvings and paintings done by prehistoric people. (Just like the reindeer ones, Punkie.) He showed how they were not just a lot of odd animals grouped together, but actually represented a particular hunt or drive. One eland’s legs look all out of drawing, but if you look closely, you see a tiny red spot, and the hunter indicated sketchily behind is holding a red tipped arrow, so you realise that the animals legs were supposed to be broken and that is why it is ‘all queer’. Most of the beasts have white foam coming out of their mouths, but one has red, and is sinking to the ground evidently dying. All the animals were finished minutely, but the hunters are very sketchy, and that is supposed to be on account of the superstitious idea that some tribes still hold – that it is unlucky to make a likeness of anyone – like the Egyptians wax figures. All the carved animals were begun the same way, from the round of the stomach, and if they saw the beginning had gone wrong, they abandoned it and began again.