CHARACTERS

Marinus and The Writer, two slightly sentimental travellers, in modern dress, generally riding-clothes.

Immortals.

And some others.

Chorus.

Hottentots, Bushmen, Saldanhas, Dutch Soldiers and Sailors, English Soldiers and Sailors, Burghers, Slaves, Market-Gardeners, Wine-Makers, Fishermen, and ordinary people from 1651 to 1910.

THE CAPE PENINSULA

CHAPTER I
THE CASTLE

Under three purple-flowered trees standing in the Castle courtyard, one blazing hot morning, we, more sentimentally than travellingly inclined, sat and rested while a khaki-clothed Tommy wandered round to find a guide to show us over the old Dutch fort. We thanked Heaven for his half-heartedness and for some shade. Marinus, fortunately for us both, smoked his pipe of peace and of Transvaal tobacco, and I opened the Brass Bottle, which, indeed, is no bottle at all, but, as everyone not vulgarly inclined knows, a fairy-tale metaphor for one's imagination. The barometer registered 97° F. in the shade, which is a perfect state of atmosphere for the fumes of the Brass Bottle, in which, all mingling with the smoke from Marinus' pipe, the building of the Castle began.

The walls dissolved into blue air: the brasswork of the 'Kat,' the block of buildings dividing the Castle into two courtyards, melted into one small spot of liquid, leaving a dry, dusty, levelled yellow plain, with an earthwork wall embodying the spirit of the dykes of the Netherlands in its composition—for the green waves of Table Bay lapped at its base. It was the second day of January, 1666; under the blazing sun three hundred discontented-looking men were digging and levelling the hard earth. At the westerly land-points were the foundations of two bastions. Suddenly a group of men appeared, looking like Rembrandt's 'Night-Watch' come to life, carrying sealed parchments and plans, followed by many Madagascar slaves in clean white linen tunics not to be renewed for six whole months, this being the New Year. The slaves carried bags of food and a long tray made of wood, on which were about one hundred small moneybags. One of the Night-Watch, who was the Commander Wagenaar, walked up to a long table whereon was a white stone; the guns of the old fort, crumbling to pieces across the parade-ground, fired. It was noon, and the foundation-stone of the Castle was laid. The three hundred weary, sweating men raised a feeble cheer, the masons, carpenters, and smiths, advancing separately, received from the hands of the 'Fiscal,' Chief Magistrate and Attorney-General of the Colony, the gift of the General Netherlands East India Company of thirty Rds., or rix-dollars, tied up in the small black bags. Then the Company moved across to another part of the ground, and the Predikant, the Rev. Joan van Arckel, proceeded to lay another stone, followed by the Fiscal, Sieur Hendrick Lucas, to whose honour fell the laying of the third great corner-stone. Then were the entire three hundred malcontents, as well as the soldiers who had also laboured, presented with two oxen, six sheep, one hundred fresh-baked wheaten loaves, and eight casks of Cape-brewed beer, 'which food and drink, well cooked and well prepared,' whispered the Chief Surgeon, Sieur Pieter van Clinckenberg, to Lieutenant Abraham Schut, 'let us hope may induce these sluggish fellows to be better encouraged and made more willing to work.'

Lieutenant Abraham Schut, to whose duties of supervising the Company's stables and the Mounted Guards in the country, and the watch-houses, and the supervising of the workings and workers of the vineyards, the orchards, and the granary, were also added those of 'keeping an eye' on the 'lazy fellows at work in the brick and tile fields,' very solemnly stared before him at the 'encouraged' diggers, and wondered what reward the General Netherlands East India Company had laid up for him.

But the Fiscal was addressing the crowd gathered round the Commander. I had missed some of his speech because of these two babbling Night-Watchers next me, but I now listened: 'And that it may also somewhat be evident that by this continual digging and delving in and under the ground, poets have also been found and thrown up, a certain amateur this day presents to the Commander the following eight verses.' The crowd drew closer to the Fiscal, who continued with the amateur's verses:

Den Eersten steen van 't Nieuwe Casteel Goede Hoop heeft Wagenaar gelecht met Hoop van Goede Hoop.

Ampliatie.

Soo worden voort en voort de rijcken uijtgespreijt,

Soo worden al de swart en geluwen gespreijt,

Soo doet men uijt den aerd' een steen wall oprechten,

Daer't donderend metael seer weijnigh (an ophecten)

Voor Hottentoosen waren 't altijts eerde wallen.

Nu komt men hier met steen van anderen oock brallen,

Dus maeckt men dan een schrik soowel d'Europiaen,

Als vor den Aes! Ame! en wilden Africaen,

Dus wort beroemt gemaeckt 't geheijligst Christendom,

Die zetels stellen in het woeste heijdendom,

Wij loven 't Groot Bestier, en zeggen met malcander,

Augustus heerschappij, noch winnend' Alexander,

Noch Caesars groot beleijd zijn noijt daermee geswaerd,

Met 't leggen van een steen op 't eijnde van de Aerd!

The First Stone of the New Castle Good Hope has Wagenaar laid with Hope of Good Hope.

Thus more and more the kingdoms are extended;

Thus more and more are black and yellow spread;

Thus from the ground a wall of stone is raised,

On which the thundering brass can no impression make.

For Hottentoos the walls were always earthen,

But now we come with stone to boast before all men,

And terrify not only Europeans, but also

Asians, Americans, and savage Africans.

Thus holy Christendom is glorified;

Establishing its seats amidst the savage heathen.

We praise the Great Director, and say with one another:

'Augustus's dominion, nor conquering Alexander,

Nor Cæsar's mighty genius, has ever had the glory

To lay a corner-stone at earth's extremest end!'

ON THE RAMPARTS OF THE OLD CASTLE (MOONLIGHT)

Lieutenant Abraham Schut came towards me; no, it was not this wonderful Abraham, though he wore a uniform—the cheering of the crowd still rung in my ears. 'Who wrote it?' I said. 'Wrote what?' The subaltern stared at me. 'Built it, I suppose you mean,' he smiled. 'Oh yes, built, of course, of course,' I muttered, hotter than ever. Marinus' pipe had burnt out, and the officer who stood before us wore khaki.

With the last words of the quaint Dutch poem ringing in my ears, we followed our guide across the courtyard into an arched white doorway. The old entrance, the sea entrance to the Castle, was blocked up, because on the other side runs the Cape Government Railway, with all its paraphernalia of tin walls, engine-rooms, dirty, ugly workshops, gasometers, coal-heaps, all making up the foreshore scenery of Table Bay, and delighting the eyes of the workers and drones who are daily hurried (sic) along like 'animated packages in a rabbit hutch.'[1]

In the plaster ceiling of this archway is such a charming miniature plan, in raised stucco, of the Castle buildings. From here we climbed some stone steps and came on to the ramparts, called after the ships that first brought Company rule to the Cape—the Reiger, the Walvis, the Dromedaris. We climbed up stone stairs, and in white stucco, in the wall, were the Company's arms—the big galleon in full sail. We passed the cells—the one used by Cetewayo, the rebellious Chief of the Zulus, the 'Children of Heaven,' had a special little fireplace sunk into the wall—walked along wonderfully neat, bricked ramparts past the Guard Tower, and climbed down more steps into the courtyard.

We rambled through the quarters of the old Governors. Everything is groaning under heavy military paint—teak doors, beautiful brass fittings and beamed ceilings—and about a mile away, shut up in a small ugly museum room, are the Rightful Inhabitants—the proper belongings of these long rooms: the oak tables, the big chairs, which once held the old Dutch Governors, the glass they used, the huge silver spittoons, their swords, the flowered panniers of their wives' dresses, fire-irons, brasses, china, the old flags, someone's sedan-chair—all bundled together in grotesque array. The teak-beamed rooms in the Castle would make a better setting than the little room in the museum.

'Marinus,' I said, 'isn't it awful—this horrible clean paint and these little tin sheds in the old garden? Oh, Marinus, do let us scrape this tiny bit of latch, just to peep at the lovely brass beneath! And let us pretend we are putting back the old cupboards, and coffers, and china, and let us burn all that'—with my eye on sheets of neat military maps and deal tables. But Marinus, with the fear of God and of the King, pushed me rudely past a Georgian fireplace into a large room with a big open chimney. Over the grate, let into the wood, I saw the most ridiculous old painting—like a piece of ancient sampler in paint instead of silk—an absurd tree with an impossible bird on a bough, and beneath it a terraced wall with some animals like peacocks, with the paysage background à la Noah's ark, but slightly less accurate. 'There is a superstitious story about that picture,' said Marinus. 'They say some treasure was hidden in the thick wooden screen over the chimney, and the picture was gummed over it. The story goes that whoever should touch this picture, or attempt to remove it, would die shortly afterwards. It may be that the curse, or a bit of it, landed on the old, stamped brass screen which was taken to Groote Schuur, shortly before Rhodes died. But no one would want this horror, would they?' This story made me love the chintz picture, and, after all, the colours were good; it was antique; it was old; and there was treasure behind it!

Above this room are Anne Barnard's apartments, where she came to live when the Secretary of State, Melville, gave 'the prettiest appointment in the world for any young fellow'—the Secretaryship to the Governor of the Cape—to Lady Anne's husband in 1797. She had to write Melville several letters before she got this appointment. 'To pay me all you have owed and still owe me, you never can—but what you can you should do, and you have got before you the pleasure of obliging me,' she wrote. There is stuff for a novel in this sentence. The last appeal, 'You owe me some happiness, in truth you do,' brought this pretty appointment with a salary of £3,500 a year.

I looked out of a window of her room, which opened on to a small balcony, and conjured up the procession she saw the day after she landed—the taking of the oath of allegiance to King George III., the crowd trooping in through the yellow-bricked gateway, clattering over the cobble-stones, every man with his hat off (an old Dutch regulation on entering the Castle on a public occasion). 'Well-fed, rosy-cheeked men, well-powdered and dressed in black! "Boers" from the country, farmers and settlers, in blue cloth jackets and trousers and very large flat hats, with a Hottentot slave slinking behind, each carrying his master's umbrella, a red handkerchief round his head, and a piece of leather round his waist comprising his toilette.'

I heard voices under the arch-gateway leading to the inner courtyard; the subaltern had another party in tow, and his nice voice was very clear: 'Oh yes, wonderful people, these old Dutch Johnnies; everything they built lasts so well. Now look at this old sundial; same old thing! there it is, keeping the right time still—what?'

I laughed quite loudly, and the party looked up, but I had flown back into Anne's room, which is haunted, so perhaps they thought it was the ghost—same old ghost! a good lusty ghost—what?

I met Marinus in the inner court with a man carrying a lantern and some huge keys—our guide to the magazine and armoury, which might have been the crypt of some old European monastery, with what seemed to be miles of white arches, arches with broad brass shutters over the windows, covered with red or grey army paint.

The garden of this second courtyard exists no longer, though the man with the lantern and the keys told us he remembered it—a pond with bamboos and trees. Beyond the moat on the mountain side, on a low level, is a disused Tennis court, a real court for the 'Jeu de Paume' of the seventeenth century, with hard cement walls and cement floor.

Although Governor Borghorst, with his entire family, amused themselves by carrying the earth in baskets from the ditch which was to form the moat, the real work of the Castle was carried out from old plans of Vauban by Isbrand Goski, in a great hurry, with the shadows of French cannon and French flags disturbing his dreams. The shadows proved worthless phantoms, for peace was declared before the fort was ready. Later on, Sir James Craig, filled with zeal for the defence of this ultra-important outpost, which had come, with some slight misunderstanding, into the hands of England, caused more blockhouses to be built along the slopes of the Devil's Peak, realizing the ridiculous position of the Castle for defence purposes. Fort Knokke was connected with the Castle by a long, low, fortified wall, called the 'Sea Lines.' Beyond the Castle stood the 'Rogge Bay,' the 'Amsterdam,' and the 'Chavonnes' batteries, while at the water edge of the old Downs—now called Green Point Common—stood the little 'Mouille' battery. The land on which, unfortunately, the Amsterdam battery was built has become a valuable adjunct of the docks, and it now stands a scarred, maimed thing with its sea-wall lying in débris. A sad spectacle, like a deserted beehive, with all its cells and secrets exposed to the dock world—half solid rock, half small, yellow Dutch brick.

It is Wednesday morning in present Cape Town, we have left the Castle, wept over the Amsterdam battery, and marched up Adderley Street.

At the top of Adderley Street is the old Slave Lodge, now used for Government Offices and the Supreme Court, low and white, with cobbled courtyard and thick walls. About here, in the old days, began the Government Gardens or 'Company's' Gardens, a long oak avenue running through them. At the time of the Cession of the Cape to the English, the Gardens had been very much neglected. Lord Macartney appropriated a large slice for the rearing of curious and rare plants (the Botanical Gardens).

Government House, on the left, was originally built as a pleasure pavilion or overflow guesthouse during the 'Company's' régime. One or two of the later Dutch Governors used it as their residence, and during the short English rule in 1797 Lord Macartney and his successor, Sir George Younge, ceased to use the large suite of rooms in the old Castle. Poor Lord Macartney, because of his gout, found the narrow, steep stairs in the Gardens House a great trial. He hopped up the stairs like a parrot to its perch, says one of his staff in a private letter; but Sir George Younge, fresh from Holyrood, rebuilt the stairs and kitchens and the high wall round a part of the garden. For the occasion the avenue was shut to the public, which nearly caused a revolution. It has seen much, this low, yellow 'Pavilion in the Gardens.' It has sheltered French, English, and Dutch: famous for its ancient hospitality, its big white ball-room saw our great-grandmothers, in white muslin and cashmere shawls, dancing under the tallow candles: every tree in the garden hung with lights: Van Rheenen and Mostaert ladies dancing away, while their husbands and fathers and mothers stood outside and cursed their partners: but one must dance, no matter what one's politics may be.

Hanging on the walls of the present day Government House are portraits of the Past-Governors—Milner with the thinking eyes, dignified Lord Loch, Rosmead, Grey, Bartle Frere benignly gazing. Skip some history, and you have Somerset, stern and disliked; 'Davie' Baird, full of good round oaths, in 'Raeburn' red; Sir Harry Smith of the perfect profile, too short for the greatness of his spirit. Marinus grows sentimental before this portrait, because of Juanita, Lady Smith, her beauty, and her bravery. 'But she was fat'—this from me. Marinus looks compassionately on such doubtful tactics. 'She was not fat when he found her in that sacked Spanish town; she was not fat when he sent her that long ride to return the looted silver candlesticks; she was not fat when she rode with him into danger during the Kaffir wars—wonderful energetic woman!' 'Sir Harry was very short,' continued Marinus, whose methods are quite unoriginal. 'But his dignity, and his beautiful nose!' I said; 'it reminds me of that story told of Napoleon, who tried and failed, through being too short, to reach a certain book from a shelf. A tall Marshal came to his aid, and, looking down at the little Emperor, said: "Ah, sire, je suis plus grand que vous." "Pas du tout, vous êtes plus long," said the Emperor.'

Then there is the portrait of Macartney, looking straight across the room at old Dutch Rhenius in wig and satins, whose shrewd, amused eyes follow one about the room. I think Rhenius' dinner-parties were probably amusing.

There are no other portraits of Dutch Governors; none of those who followed in such quick succession just before the first British occupation.

One of these, De Chavonnes, ruled with pomp and circumstance. There is an amusing story set down in the 1720 Journal wherein the Governor maintained his dignity in the face of a humorous situation.

De Chavonnes was at the Castle, and into Table Bay sailed the English ship, the Marlborough. She failed to salute the Castle on arrival. Much bustle and fuss—such an insult cannot be passed over. The Wharf-master, Cornelius Volk, is ordered to proceed on board and inform the captain that no one will be allowed to land before the usual salute is fired. With more haste arrives an English midshipman, very pink and well-mannered: 'We have on board an elephant, your Excellency, and are afraid the firing might frighten him.' His Excellency and the Wharf-master and the chief merchant, Jan de la Fontaine, together with the members of the Council and officers of the garrison, stared at the pink-faced middy. De Chavonnes hesitated only one minute, which is a long period of time for the middy, who I am quite sure had compromising dimples; then came His Excellency's answer: 'The excuse is allowed.'

A very dignified finale! Smaller things than elephants have unbalanced the scales of peace.

CHAPTER II
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY SOCIETY AND SLAVERY

We walked across the parade-ground, and past the spot where, in my dream, I had seen the old Van Riebeek fort crumbling to pieces, with its canal and little bridges: now, there is a building called the Post Office, and instead of the canal, with its tree-bordered pathways, a street called Adderley Street, with shop-windows where the trees stood. Even the old Exchange is gone, with its stiff row of trees and its chained posts and kiosque, before which, in the turbulent days of Sir Harry Smith's régime, all Cape Town, English, Dutch, Malay, in stock, and crinoline, and turban, with one united voice roared against the Imperial Government's decree, which was to turn the Peninsula into a dumping-ground for convicts. Crinoline, stock, and turban kept the half-starved convict ships with their unwelcome freight for five months at anchor in Simon's Bay. Sir Harry, with an eye of sympathy on the mob, and the other eye of duty on the starving convict ships, ordered food to be sent, offered famine prices: no one moved. A few judicious civil servants, with both eyes on the main chance, smuggled a small supply on board. But the crowd in front of the old Exchange won the day, and Australia profited instead.

At the end of the eighteenth century a young lady described the Cape and its inhabitants in a few words: 'Di menschen zyn moei dik en vet, di huizen moei wit en groen' (The people are very fat and plump; the houses are pretty white and green).

Up Strand Street, which was the 'Beach Street,' lived all the high in the land, the Koopmans, or merchants—'a title,' says an old writer, 'that conferred rank at the Cape to which the military even aspired.' There they lived, in flat-roofed, high-stoeped houses with teak doors and small-paned glass windows, facing the sea; the men smoking, drinking and selling; the women eating, dressing and dancing. Not a decent school in the town, not a sign of a library, only a theatre whose productions bored them intolerably: 'Ach, foei toch, Mijnheer Cook,' says the lady with the smallest feet in all Kaapstad to the famous sailor Cook, who was the guest of her father, Mijnheer Le Roux, 'go to the theatre? to listen for three hours to a conversation?' Cook gave in, and, instead, was carried off in a big 'carosse,'[2] with a Malay coachman in large reed hat over his turban, pointed and with flowing ribbons at the side, to the Avenue in the Company's Gardens, a modest Vauxhall, and then on to one of the monthly dances given in the Castle by the Governor Van Plettenberg.

TABLE BAY FROM THE KLOOF NEK

Dancing was the great form of exercise. 'The ladies of the Cape are pretty and well dressed,' says the French traveller Le Vaillant, visiting the Cape about this time—1772. He expressed great surprise at the way they dressed: 'With as much attention to the minutiæ of dress as the ladies of France, with neither their manners nor their graces.' How could they have manners and graces? With the adaptability which amounts to genius, which the women of newly-arisen cosmopolitan nations possess as Fate's compensation for depriving them of the birthright of history, tradition, and ancient habitation, they imitated the manners and fashions of the passing passengers resting a few days at the Cape on their way to India. Those belonging to the better class all played on the harpsichord and sang; they had generally a good knowledge of French, and often of English; were experts with the needle, making all kinds of lace, 'knotting' and tambour work; and they usually made up their own dresses.

The men and youths, who never mixed with the English or foreign visitors, were entirely different: phlegmatic and dull, badly dressed and badly mannered. Anne Barnard, writing Cape gossip to London, has many stories to tell of pretty Cape ladies running off with Englishmen or Frenchmen. The thanksgiving sigh of one worthy 'Koopman' is conclusive: 'Grace à Dieu, ma femme est bien laide!'

However, we must return to the house of Le Roux in the Strand Street. It is the day after the fête in the Avenue and the Governor's ball. At an old French bureau, with metal inlays, praising Monsieur Buhl in every beautiful line, this gallant Captain Cook wrote in his Journal while the pretty little 'Foei toch,' with sighs of neglect, sat playing the spinet in a corner of vantage. They changed places presently—he would dictate and she should write. Two minutes passed, and Cook got up and looked over her shoulder. She had written, atrociously, a funny little French verse and signed it:

'Marion pleurt,

Marion rit,

Marion veut, qu'on la marie.

'Marion.'

Cook smiled and bowed. 'Me dear, you have the most adorable foot in the world, but I dare say little for your hand.' Very witty of him, but of course she wrote badly; there were no schools, only ill-paid writing masters. The parsons, all well paid by the Government, would not condescend to such a worthless occupation.

So Cook wrote his Journal himself, in large, scrawling writing, with old-fashioned s's, while his two ships, the Resolution and the Adventure, anchored by stout chains instead of cables in this Bay of Storms, lay waiting for a good wind to sail away round the world. And Marion sang from her corner at the spinet:

'Marions ci,
Marions ça,
Mais jamais, jamais marions là.'

Cook writes:

'The Cape of Good Hope,
'Monday, November 2, 1772.

'The Cape of Good Hope, in Caffraria, or the Country of the Hottentots, is the most southern promontory of Africa.

'It is very mountainous.

'The Table Mountain is of a great height (sic), and the top of it is always covered with a cap of clouds before a storm. There are no harbours, though there is a sea-coast of a thousand miles. When Commodore Byron touched at the Cape he was obliged to work into Table Bay with his top sails close reefed. Indeed, the Cape is scarce ever free from storms a week together; the winds blow hard and on every side from the vast southern ocean, and the waves of the sea rise to a height never seen or experienced in any part of Europe. The Bay of Biscay, turbulent as it is, has no billows that mount like those on this extensive ocean; the stoutest vessels are tossed and almost lifted to the skies. A number of rich ships have perished on this coast; the Dutch have lost whole fleets even at anchor before the Town.

'The climate is very healthy, the country is fine, and it abounds with refreshments of every kind. The Company's garden is the most ravishing spot.'

(He read this to Mademoiselle Marion, who had found Mr. Pickersgill, his Third Lieutenant, a good second when the gallant Captain, with his tongue in his cheek and a wink at Marion, escorted the fat wife of Governor Van Plettenberg round the most ravishing Gardens.) The Captain went on with his diary:

'The garden produces all the most delicious fruits of Asia and Europe. It is guarded from the winds and storms by hedges of bay, very thick and high, affording a most refreshing shade in the hottest season. It abounds with peaches, pomegranates, pineapple, bananas, citrons, lemons, oranges, the pears and apples of Europe, all excellent in their kind, and the crimson apple of Japan, appearing through the green leaves, of all the most beautiful. The Dutch have large plantations of almond-trees, and many sorts of camphor-trees, and there is scarce a cottage without a vineyard to it. Their cabbages and cauliflowers weigh from thirty to forty pounds, their potatoes from six to ten, raised from seed brought from Cyprus and Savoy. Their corn is ripe in December, and our Christmas is the time of their harvest. In January they tread out their corn, and in February the farmers carry it to the Company's magazines.

'They sow every kind of grain but oats. Lions, tigers, leopards, elephants, and the rhinoceros are to be found here; the elephants are very large; their teeth (sic) weigh from sixty to one hundred and twenty pounds. The Dutch keep up a body of regular forces, and have a strong garrison at the Cape; they have also a militia, a corps of men in all nations formidable in themselves, most dreadful to an enemy, and, when called out for service, spreading destruction all around them in the heights of their ungovernable fury. They are of so robust a disposition, and so naturally inclined for war, that, like the Devonshire and Northamptonshire champions in England, they are ever ready to solicit employment, even against the principles of their own institution.'

Next day the Governor, the English Consul, the Fiscal, Marion and her father, together with a large party, boarded the Resolution, to see them make fresh water out of salt water; and when they left, and before the Resolution, firing fifteen guns, and the Adventure nine, sailed away round the world, Mr. Pickersgill and Marion had found time to fall in love. Marion at her spinet that evening shed very salt little Dutch tears when she came to the lines, 'Mais jamais, jamais marions là.'

There is a charming poem by Ian Colvin which Marinus thinks might be inspired by Marion and her Lieutenant.

In the Museum at the top of the old Company's gardens lies a little English shoe of surprising smallness—surprising, for not only Anne Barnard remarked on the size of the Cape ladies' feet: there is that nice story of the enterprising merchant who chartered a large shipload of out-sizes in ladies' shoes, and the ladies sent their slaves in the dark to buy them!

The poem goes:

'There's a tiny English shoe

Of morocco, cream and blue,

Made with all a cobbler's skill

By Sam Miller in Cornhill.

'Many a story, quaint and sweet,

Of the lady fair, whose feet

Twinkled with a charm divine

Beneath her ample crinoline,

Making her tortured lovers dream

That heaven itself was blue and cream.'

The story tells of how this dainty creature walked down the 'Heerengracht,' followed by the tortured lovers:

'Van der Merwe, Jacques Theron,

The Captain of the garrison,

Petrus de Witt, or Van Breda,

Or Cloete of Constantia.

And then the Fiscal—fat and old—

What matters? he had power and gold,

Coffers of dollars, and doubloons,

Gold mohurs, pagodas, ducatoons,

And in his cupboards stored away

The priceless treasures of Cathay.'

Then it tells of how she loved this English sailor, how he left to sail to many strange lands, and asked her what she wished to have.

'And she, although her cheeks were wet,

Was in a moment all coquette:

"Your English fashions would, I fear,

But ill become my homely sphere;

Besides, you know not how to choose—

Bring me instead a pair of shoes."'

So the English lover sailed away, and the Fiscal became a menace to the poor little cream and blue 'Jonge Vrouw,' and the wedding-day arrived:

'From Signal Hill to Witteboom,

From Kirstenbosch to Roodebloem,

With cannon, bugle, bell and horn,

They ushered in the wedding morn.'

But the English lover and the shoes arrived just in time; the bride was missing; the wedding-party and the storming Fiscal rushed down to the sea-shore—'a ship in a cloud of sail was riding out of the Bay in a favouring gale.'

'They heard above the ocean's swell

Ring faint and clear a wedding bell;

And where the boat put off, they found

A tiny shoe upon the ground.'

'Marions ci,

Marions ça,

Et jamais, jamais marions là.'

A charming idyll to amuse us as we climbed up the hill to Riebeek Square, where the flat-roofed houses and the old Slave-Market with a few wind-twisted pines have so much of the 'old order' in their keeping.

Behind the square were the old brickfields, where poor Lieutenant Schut's duties lay. The Slave-House stands in the middle of the square.

This energetic young man disappears from the pages of the Journals and presumably from society.

'August 1, 1668.

'Lieutenant Schut is expelled from the Council, because he has passed a deed of reclamation to the widow of the late Reverend Wachtendorp for libellous words uttered by him behind her back, and to her injury.

'The Council should keep itself free from obloquy, and unpolluted.'

Praiseworthy sentiments, but they must have suffered for them. I find no mention of another paragon who was able to accept the responsibilities imposed upon Schut.

Indiscriminate gossip or libel was most severely punished at the Cape, the desire to be free from obloquy not being confined to the Council.

In 1663 Teuntje Bartholomeus, wife of the burgher, Bartholomeus Born, is banished for six weeks to Dassen Island for having libelled a certain honest woman. A perfect rest-cure! Six weeks on Dassen Island! alone with Nature, wind, sea, rock-rabbits, and seals!

There is no official mention of her return from exile.