Life in South Africa. Lady Barker

opening in four corridors. After lunch a couple of nice, light Cape carts came to the door, and we set off to see a beautiful garden whose owner had all a true Dutchman’s passion for flowers. Here was fruit as well as flowers. Pineapples and jasmine, strawberries and honeysuckle, grew side by side with bordering orange trees, feathery bamboos and sheltering gum trees. In the midst of the garden stood a sort of double platform, up whose steep border we all climbed: from this we got a good idea of the slightly undulating land all about, waving down like solidified billows to where the deep blue waters sparkled and rolled restlessly beyond the white line of waves ever breaking on the bar. I miss animal life sadly in these parts: the dogs I see about the streets are few in number, and miserably currish specimens of their kind. “Good dogs don’t answer out here,” I am told: that is to say, they get a peculiar sort of distemper, or ticks bite them, or they got weak from loss of blood, or become degenerate in some way. The horses and cattle are small and poor-looking, and hard-worked, very dear to buy and very difficult to keep and to feed. I don’t even see many cats, and a pet bird is a rarity. However, as we stood on the breezy platform I saw a most beautiful wild bird fly over the rosehedge just below us. It was about as big as a crow, but with a strange iridescent plumage. When it flitted into the sunshine its back and wings shone like a rainbow, and the next moment it looked perfectly black and velvety in the shade. Now a turquoise-blue tint comes out on its spreading wings, and a slant in the sunshine turns the blue into a chrysoprase green. Nobody could tell me its name: our Dutch host spoke exactly like Hans Breitmann, and declared it was a “bid of a crow,” and so we had to leave it and the platform and come down to more roses and tea. There was so much yet to be seen and to be done that we could not stay long, and, laden with magnificent bouquets of gloire de Dijon roses and honeysuckle, and divers strange and lovely flowers, we drove off again in our Cape carts. I observed that instead of saying “Whoa!” or checking the horses in any way by the reins, the driver always whistles to them—a long, low whistle—and they stand quite still directly. We bumped up and down, over extraordinarily rough places, and finally slid down a steep cutting to the brink of the river Buffalo, over which we were ferried, all standing, on a big punt, or rather pontoon. A hundred yards or so of rapid driving then took us to a sort of wharf which projected into the river, where the important-looking little tug awaited us; and no sooner were we all safely on board—rather a large party by this time, for we had gone on picking up stragglers ever since we started, only three in number, from the hotel—than she sputtered and fizzed herself off upstream. By this time it was the afternoon, and I almost despair of making you see the woodland beauty of that broad mere, fringed down to the water’s edge on one side with shrubs and tangle of roses and woodbine, with ferns and every lovely green creeping thing. That was on the bank which was sheltered from the high winds: the other hillside showed the contrast, for there, though green indeed, only a few feathery tufts of pliant shrubs had survived the force of some of these south-eastern gales. We paddled steadily along in mid-stream, and from the bridge (where little G—— and I had begged “Capting Florence” to let us stand) one could see the double of each leaf and tendril and passing cloud mirrored sharp and clear in the crystalline water. The lengthening shadows from rock and fallen crag were in some places flung quite across our little boat, and so through the soft, lovely air, flooded with brightest sunshine, we made our way, up past Picnic Creek, where another stream joins the Buffalo, and makes miniature green islands and harbors at its mouth, up as far as the river was navigable for even so small a steamer as ours. Every one was sorry when it became time to turn, but there was no choice: the sun-burned, good-looking captain of the tug held up a warning hand, and round we went with a wide sweep, under the shadows, out into the sunlight, down the middle of the stream, all too soon to please us.

      Before we left East London, however, there was one more great work to be glanced at, and accordingly we paid a hasty visit to the office of the superintendent of the new harbor-works, and saw plans and drawings of what will indeed be a magnificent achievement when carried out. Yard by yard, with patient under-sea sweeping, all that waste of sand brought down by the Buffalo is being cleared away; yard by yard, two massive arms of solidest masonry are stretching themselves out beyond those cruel breakers: the river is being forced into so narrow a channel that the rush of the water must needs carry the sand far out to sea in future, and scatter it in soundings where it cannot accumulate into such a barrier as that which now exists. Lighthouses will guard this safe entrance into a tranquil anchorage, and so, at some not too far distant day, there is good hope that East London may be one of the most valuable harbors on this vast coast; and when her railway has reached even the point to which it is at present projected, nearly two hundred miles away, it will indeed be a thriving place. Even now, there is a greater air of movement and life and progress about the little seaport, what with the railway and the harbor-works, than at any other place I have yet seen; and each great undertaking is in the hands of men of first-rate ability and experience, who are as persevering as they are energetic. After looking well over these most interesting plans there was nothing left for us to do except to make a sudden raid on the hotel, pick up our shawls and bags, pay a most moderate bill of seven shillings and sixpence for breakfast for three people and luncheon for two, and the use of a room all day, piteously entreat the mistress of the inn to sell us half a bottle of milk for G—— ’s breakfast to-morrow—as he will not drink the preserved milk—and so back again on board the tug. The difficulty about milk and butter is the first trouble which besets a family traveling in these parts. Everywhere milk is scarce and poor, and the butter such as no charwoman would touch in England. In vain does one behold from the sea thousands of acres of what looks like undulating green pasturage, and inland the same waving green hillocks stretch as far as the eye can reach: there is never a sheep or cow to be seen, and one hears that there is no water, or that the grass is sour, or that there is a great deal of sickness about among the animals in that locality. Whatever the cause, the result is the same—namely, that one has to go down on one’s knees for a cupful of milk, which is but poor, thin stuff at its best, and that Irish salt butter out of a tub is a costly delicacy.

      Having secured this precious quarter of a bottle of milk, for which I was really as grateful as though it had been the Koh-i-noor, we hastened back to the wharf and got on board the little tug again. “Now for the bridge!” cry G—— and I, for has not Captain Florence promised us a splendid but safe tossing across the bar? And faithfully he and the bar and the boat keep their word, for we are in no danger, it seems, and yet we appear to leap like a race-horse across the strip of sand, receiving a staggering buffet first on one paddle-wheel and then on the other from the angry guardian breakers, which seem sworn foes of boats and passengers. Again and again are we knocked aside by huge billows, as though the poor little tug were a walnut-shell; again and again do we recover ourselves, and blunder bravely on, sometimes with but one paddle in the water, sometimes burying our bowsprit in a big green wave too high to climb, and dashing right through it as fast as if we shut our eyes and went at everything. The spray flies high over our heads, G—— and I are drenched over and over again, but we shake the sparkling water off our coats, for all the world like Newfoundland dogs, and are all right again in a moment. “Is that the very last?” asks G—— reluctantly as we take our last breaker like a five-barred gate, flying, and find ourselves safe and sound, but quivering a good deal, in what seems comparatively smooth water. Is it smooth, though? Look at the Florence and all the other vessels. Still at it, seesaw, backward and forward, roll, roll, roll! How thankful we all are to have escaped a long day of sickening, monotonous motion! But there is the getting on board to be accomplished, for the brave little tug dare not come too near to her big sister steamboat or she would roll over on her. So we signal for a boat, and quickly the largest which the Florence possesses is launched and manned—no easy task in such a sea, but accomplished in the smartest and most seamanlike fashion. The sides of the tug are low, so it is not very difficult to scramble and tumble into the boat, which is laden to the water’s edge by new passengers from East London and their luggage. When, however, we have reached the rolling Florence it is no easy matter to get out of the said boat and on board. There is a ladder let down, indeed, from the Florence’s side, but how are we to use it when one moment half a dozen rungs are buried deep in the sea, and the next instant ship and ladder and all have rolled right away from us? It has to be done, however, and what a tower of strength and encouragement does “Capting Florence” prove himself at this juncture! We are all to sit perfectly still: no one is to move until his name is called, and then he is to come