The Fir-woods at Disa Head.
I have seen the kingdoms of the world, and am satisfied—a wondrous state of mind and body! I have sat on a ledge of crassula-covered rock and looked down upon Cape Town—Lion's Head far below us, the green slopes scarred by innumerable red roads, the bay clear and calm beneath us, and a gentle south-east breeze with the coolness of water behind us. To the north, line upon line of low hills swimming in blue haze, the farms of Malmesbury showing up like little white beacons in the plains; to our left the Platt Klip Gorge, like a great rent in the grey mountain. My guide, who is a philosopher, started a story—at least, I thought it was a fairy-tale—of a sanatorium on the flat top and a railway. 'Cape Town has got that up its sleeve'—I realized that he really was speaking sense. It will happen, of course, in the natural order of things; and it will bring the believers and the unbelievers—those who see and those 'who pick blackberries to stain their faces'—the cool gorges will echo with their voices, the Disa will be hedged round with regulations stronger than barbed wire, and the swampy ground which now grows shiny white pebbles will grow potatoes and lettuce for the multitude.
In the old journal we have the first record of the climbing of Table Mountain:
'Sunday, September 29, 1652.
'Fine day. Our assistants and two others ascended Table Mountain with the Ottento, who speaks a little English; saw the fires lit by them; ascent difficult; top of mountain flat—as broad and three times as long as the Dam of Amsterdam, with some pools of fresh water.'
The present pool has very little water; but then, it is summer, and we took the rain gauge for the month and poured back on to the earth three large drops of water!
Barrow, in his description of the ascent, which he made in the charming company of the Barnards, talks of the view from the top: 'All the objects on the plain below are, in fact, dwindled away to the eye of the spectator into littleness and insignificance. The flat-roofed houses of Cape Town, disposed into formal clumps, appear like those paper fabrics which children are accustomed to make with cards. The shrubbery on the sandy isthmus looks like dots, and the farms and their enclosures as so many lines, and the more-finished parts of a plan drawn on paper.'
But we crossed the flat top and came to the Wynberg side: saw the country, neatly mapped as Barrow says, bathed in sunshine. My guide has been a sailor, and has travelled round the world, but here he says: 'Here is the best view in the world!' and he went off to examine more rain gauges.
It is a wonderful thing to be utterly alone with the earth and the sun; to become a hill Pantheist, but to realize why, in a hot stone church, one can get up and sing that the Sun, the Moon, the Air, the Mountains, and the Earth may bless and praise the Lord.
CHAPTER IX
ROUND THE LION'S HEAD AND THE VICTORIA ROAD
Sea Point lies, white-roofed and aloe-hedged, under the sanctified Lion's Head Mountain; sanctified, because of a great white cross scarred into the bare rock by a nation to whom crosses and scars were almost inseparable. Da Gama's gigantic cross on the Lion's Head is one of the many to be found round the coast; but here begins and ends every trace of Portuguese possession or atmosphere in the Cape Peninsula.
ON THE VICTORIA ROAD, NEAR OUDE KRAAL
Old Sea Point savours of ancient Dutch régime, but is hedged in on every side, hidden, almost lost, by Cape Town Commerce chez eux. But along the Beach Road, running from the old Downs, or Common, to the Queen's Hotel, are houses with names which are historical: flat-roofed, whitewashed houses, with high stoeps and stucco fountains, syringa-trees, cactus plants, and hedges of flaming red aloes behind their white garden walls; old-fashioned gardens with box and myrtle hedges, lichens and gaudy mesembryanthemums crawling like giant starfish over the walls. Edging the road and hiding the beach from travellers are thick hedges of kei-apple, a prickly red berry, and of a low shrub whose leaves furnished correct food for the imported French snails, whose descendants are purely a pest and have no justification. But the French-lavender hedges and pink Huguenot roses can still say 'Bonjour' to the snails. It is the only French word any of them remember; it is prettier than the 'Dag,' which the prickly-pear, gorgeous with orange and carmine flower, grunts across the road to the hedge of wax berries; it is prettier, too, than the 'Morgen,' which is the large white 'Frau Karl Druschki's' morning greeting; just a little daintier than 'Saka bona,' from the purple jacaranda and scarlet kaffir-boom; but far, far more charming than the chorus of 'Hullo! hullo!' from the cheerful English trees and plants in this white-walled garden. And then there is the sea—not the wind-swept sea of False Bay, but a cosmopolitan sea; a highroad, where ships of many flags sail past the rocks, bound for the world.
In one white-roofed house lived a man on whose importance hung the beginning of a nation. The resolution in favour of responsible government had been passed by the Lower House of Parliament. The decision now rested with the Council. To be a member, the qualification meant possessing property to the value of some thousand pounds over and above mortgages. The member whose vote turned the balance was in such bad circumstances, that even if the mortgaged white house at Sea Point was sold he would not be qualified for this momentous voting. His friends, filled with national and patriotic zeal, rushed out to Sea Point: 'Have you, then, nothing of any value?' they cried. 'Yes; I will show you something which might be of some value. I was once in Turkey and of service to the Sultan.' He produced from a deep-shelved Dutch cupboard with brass fittings, then of little account, a small gold case, filigree-worked, and inside a snuff-box sparkling with diamonds, rubies and emeralds. 'Given by the Sultan,' said he of the important vote. Nothing more, just this soupçon of adventure. Responsible government was carried on a snuff-box.
Sea Point possesses the two best private libraries in the Peninsula. One of them belonged to a great little man, Saul Solomon, of Clarensville, who died some years ago. Public men never live long enough at the Cape to die in the fulness of attainment; ambition and principle go but slowly hand in hand if you would have them travel along the same road, but Saul Solomon's name is high in the annals of politics and principles. The rocks below Clarensville, or probably those larger granite masses beyond the Queen's Hotel, were celebrated fishing-places in the days of the early Commanders; but one short entry thrills one and dissipates the ideal dulness of the gentle art. During the Van Riebeek reign a corporal went fishing for 'klip' fish amongst the brown seaweed which lies like a barren reef round the south-west coast, when a lion wandered down to the beach, and left so little of the angler that nought of him was found but his trousers and his shoes: which we imagine he had discarded, and was not discrimination on the part of the lion.
CAMPS BAY, ON THE VICTORIA ROAD
Marinus and I climbed into a green tram which ran along a high mountain road overlooking the lower Victoria Road. We reached Clifton, a little kraal of houses and bungalows, and left the tram and walked down to the lower road through an old farm-garden. The steep slopes of the cliff down to the sea were covered with brilliant green shrub and purple flowers. Strolling along, we came upon Camps Bay, which we fancy was Caapmans Bay; for here the Caapmans, or Hottentots, pastured their flocks during their 'merry-go-round' journeying from the Fort, over the Kloof Nek, along the Casteelbergen, or Twelve Apostles Range, to Hout Bay; then often over the Constantia Nek to worry the outposts on the Bosheuvel, and back to the Fort; or from Hout Bay to Chapmans Bay and Noord Hoek, and on to Cape Point. Their last stronghold was in the Hottentot's Holland Mountains; but in the year 1714 nearly all the tribe were exterminated by the smallpox. Four chiefs remained—'Scipio Africanus,' 'Hannibal,' 'Hercules,' and 'Konja'—who received, says the old chronicle, 'the usual stick with the brass knob,' the insignia of office. Camps Bay gave the old map-makers and Commanders some trouble; but they all found the great line of breakers prevented the bay from being used either for themselves or for the landing of hostile forces.
On the slope of the Lion's Head, above the bay, is a little round white house, the Round House, where Sir Charles Somerset spent his week-ends. Sir Charles, whose reign here was during the end of the eighteenth century, used several of the old homesteads as shooting-boxes.
Marinus, with enormous satisfaction, found a stray taxi, and soon we had passed the 'Oude Kraal' of the watermen on our way to Hout Bay. The turreted tops of the Casteelbergen, or Twelve Apostles Mountains, were 'canopied in blue,' their slopes covered with a bright mauve Michaelmas daisy. The narrow road curves and curls round their sides, and below stretch acres and acres of sea, horizonless, heaving and sinking, blue and green and gold, lapping against the edges of the land in crescent-shaped little bays, or dashing against walls of rock. The cliffs, grass-grown down to the water, are covered with flowers, big clumps of prickly-pear, and blue aloe, every freshly-turned corner more lovely than the last. There is one other road in the world to compare with it, and that road runs along the South of France into Italy; but the waters of the Mediterranean are fade, lifeless waters to the ocean that fringes the Casteelbergen in Africa.
HOUT BAY AND HANGBERG
Far out into the sea stretches a reef of sharp rocks where many ships have found a terrible end: the steep, slippery slopes beyond the little Lion's Head isolate the coast from all assistance.
In front of us a dull green car was swinging round the curves. 'We'll pass her,' said Marinus, who was driving. The road is not wide—just room enough for two cars to pass abreast. The green car saw us coming, and decided we should not pass her. Marinus jerked his head forward, and vowed we should. For ten minutes I sat rigid; my eyes never left a small spot of mud on Marinus' coat. Between us and the mountain was the green motor; to our right was the sea. We dashed round corner after corner, a great juggernaut or machinery with not a spare yard of road. It was a glorious gamble, with almost a thousand to one that round the next corner we should meet something—a car or a cart. The cars ran silently.... Suddenly someone's nerve failed; we had passed the green car, and Marinus turned round to me and grinned. 'All right?' he said. My jaw seemed set in plaster of Paris, so I grinned too. The chauffeur was cursing softly and rapidly. Over the brow of the Hout Bay Nek was a big white car, full of people and wild flowers, coming towards us. I bent forward close to Marinus, so that the chauffeur should not hear. 'You brute!' I whispered; 'but it was simply great.' And Marinus winked.
We rushed down the hill, lined with pink protea, into the village of Hout Bay, or the Wood Bay, where the Company's yachts and sloops would come to carry away wood from the thick forests. No sign of forest now—only some low, wind-stunted trees along the beach. The Dutch fortified the bay, and the ruins of their fort still stand.
Chapman's Peak hides the curve of the coast and the Noord Hoek and Kommetje Valleys. Near the village is the old home of the Van Oudtshoorn family, whitewash and teak, high-stoeped, with stucco designs, and the date over the door. The Hout Bay Valley has a distinctive charm of its own; its river-bed is overgrown with palmiet, and its thatched farmhouses have Huguenot names: for in this valley grants of land were made to the Huguenot refugees, the road is hedged with little pink Huguenot roses growing over the ground which pastured the Hottentots' cattle. The farm, Orange Grove, lies low in an oak wood. We climbed the long Constantia Nek, and once more saw the widespread Isthmus, Constantia, Wynberg, and False Bay; little farms, little woods, the smoke from an engine—we had been round our world in a few hours.
CHAPMAN'S PEAK AND SLANG KOP POINT FROM HOUT BAY
CHAPTER X
FALSE BAY
The old road from Wynberg to Muizenberg is no longer traceable. I imagine it started from Waterloo Green, as all old Wynberg was centred round the hill. A convent stands back from the green, but, like the poem in the story of 'Through the Looking-Glass,' if you look again you will see it isn't a convent at all, but the old Wynberg homestead, one of the early grants of land to a freeman, the home of Mynheer Cloete.
Wynberg hides its archives in overgrown gardens of oleander, wild-olive, blue plumbago hedges, cool white gardenias and red hibiscus flowers, cypress-trees and date-palms, brought from the East by retired soldiers from India, with large livers and small pensions, making their curries and their chutneys in the little thatched bungalows of old Wynberg. To one of these, still standing and acting as a stable to a big white house in the oak avenue which we fancy is part of the old road, came Wellington on his way to India, and gave his name to the avenue. On our way along the main road to Muizenberg we passed a renovated homestead, probably one of the old rest-houses, now used as a convalescent home, but its gardens are full of old-world memories, willows, and myrtle-hedge, and arbours of strange trees, bent and twisted into fantastic coolnesses.
There is a dull stretch of wattled road running through Plumstead, Diep River, and Retreat. At Diep River the flooded lands grow potatoes, at Plumstead they grow vegetables, all in amongst the wildness of the big plain covered with vleis and protea-bush and purple and crimson heath. The Retreat is historical. It lies on the Cape Town side of the Muizenberg Mountains, which seem to spring up in granite and green from the sea. A narrow strip of land at their base spoils the illusion—'The Thermopylæ of the Cape,' says an old enthusiast some hundred years ago. Through the narrow pass between the sea and mountains retreated the famous Burgher Cavalry, abandoning their position at Muizenberg before the guns of the America. But history, I fancy, regards the Battle of Muizenberg more as a diplomatic coup than as a serious fight. Even the cannon-balls, which are dotted along the road from Kalk Bay to Muizenberg, are ending their uneventful days in seaside peace, and their resting-places in soft sand speak of further diplomacy.
Near Lakeside are several old farms with lost identity. Over the hill, leaving the lovely vleis behind us, we came upon Muizenberg, from an architectural point of view the saddest sight in the world; here are two old landmarks, the one so renovated that it is almost unrecognizable, the other a ruin. The first was a low, whitewashed, thatched homestead—an old inn, or rest-house, as the Dutch called it—and it was named 'Farmer Pecks.' The oldest inhabitant cannot tell why, but I remember the original building with its celebrated signboard. The story of the signboard is as follows: 'Two middies, many, many years ago, returning to Simonstown from Cape Town, where they had been on a jaunt, arrived one dark night at Muizenberg. It was a twenty-mile walk—twenty miles along a difficult track, across a dangerous beach of quicksands (Fish Hoek), and they were travelling on foot, because very few people could afford a cart. It was too late and too dark to continue their journey, so they had to put up at Farmer Pecks'. When it came to paying for the night's board and lodging there was no money—all left in Cape Town. "We'll paint you a signboard," they said—a Utopian mode of finance to solve the difficulty and pay their debt. They must have come from Salisbury Plain, or Farmer Peck had, for the signboard portrayed a mild-looking shepherd of a Noah's Ark type, gazing over a hill at some fat wooden sheep, grazing in emerald grass, and in the background a very English-looking little farmhouse with rows of stiff Noah's Ark trees. Quite a premature attempt at modern conventional design, inspired by the ideals of "Two Years Old" playing at Creation and landscape-gardening in the nursery. Here the momentous questions are: whether Mr. and Mrs. Noah, in red and blue æsthetic garments of a wondrous purity of line, shall stand under perfectly symmetrical trees which are on dear little rounds of wood, or whether they shall be dotted over the farm together with Shem, Ham, and Japheth, in pure yellow, pink, and green, in close proximity to two pink cows, two red geese, two black pigs, and two purple horses.'
AT LAKESIDE, LOOKING TOWARDS CONSTANTIA
AT LAKESIDE, LOOKING SOUTH-EAST
A domesticated sequel to the story of the Flood.
Everyone has played 'Noah,' so everyone will understand the design of the poster.
The following verses were painted under the board, springing from the same talented and amusing brains, a quaint mixture of English, Dutch, and Latin:
'Multum in parvo, pro bono publico,
Entertainment for man and beast all of a row.
Lekker kost as much as you please,
Excellent beds without any fleas.
'Nos patriam fugimus now we are here,
Vivamus, let us live by selling beer.
On donne à boire et à manger ici,
Come in and try, whosoever you be.'
In a balloon issuing from the mouth of the gentle shepherd was this motto, carrying a deeper philosophy: 'Life's but a journey; let us live well on the road, says the gentle shepherd of Salisbury Plain.'
On the opposite side of the road are the ruins of the barracks, a low, stone, thatched house in a green field, surrounded by a stone wall.
Anne Barnard drove down at the peril of her life, she thought, to Simonstown, or False Bay as it was called, and, passing Muizenberg on her way, found the garrison living in huts, and was regaled on boiled beef and Constantia wine served by the late steward of the Duke of Orleans. 'Un mauvais sujet,' says Lady Anne.
The main road runs at the foot of the mountains, with a railway-line and a few yards of beach and rock between it and the sea. The most wonderful sea in the world! emerald green, with mauve reefs of rock showing through its clearness; sapphire blue towards Simonstown, the colour of forget-me-nots sweeping the white crescent of Muizenberg sands.
We passed St. James and Kalk Bay, where the steam-trawler was coming in like a big brown hen to roost surrounded by all the fishing-boats, some still on the horizon, like straggling chickens, flying along with their white wings sparkling and fluttering in the sun and south-east breeze.
ON FISHHOEK BEACH, NORDHOEK MOUNTAINS IN DISTANCE
At Fish Hoek, the dangerous beach of quicksands, the setting sun poured through the Kommetje and Noord Hoek Valley, tinting the sandhills until they glowed like gigantic opals; the lights swept pink over the blue streams running across the beach into the sea, and the long line of wave, which rolled in to meet them, made a bank of transparent aquamarine before it curled itself on to the shore—thin blueness with foam-scalloped edges.
We rounded another mountain corner and came upon Glen Cairn with its beach-streams and quarries. Clusters of stone huts, like prehistoric dwellings on the mountain slopes, are the homes of the quarrymen. Simonstown had begun to consider its nightcap when we rode slowly round the last corner. The dark grey cruisers were hardly discernible in the dusk; across the bay, on the Hottentot's Holland, a fire crawled like a red snake up the mountains; the light on the Roman Rock Lighthouse was lit. The gardens of Admiralty House are terraced above the sea by a long, low white wall; to the right is an enormous white plaster figure of Penelope, the old figure-head from the ship of that name, and the unseeing eyes of the watchful Penelope are turned towards the decrepit hulk lying a few hundred yards away. Great magenta masses of bougainvillæa hid the low house, and soon the darkness hid all.
The strains of 'God save the King' from the flagship woke me to the day, and an hour later we were riding along the gum-tree avenue into the town. The quaint little town was named after Governor Simon Van der Stel; before that it was called False Bay, or the Bay of Falso. Here for five months, beginning with March, the ships from Table Bay would anchor, while for five months Table Bay was given over to intolerable gales.
A traveller of the eighteenth century describes the town:
'Close to the shore of the Bay there are a number of warehouses, in which the provisions are deposited for the use of the East India Company's ships. A very beautiful hospital has been erected here for the crews, and a commodious house for the Governor, who usually comes hither and spends a few days while the ships are lying in the Bay. Commerce draws hither also a great number of individuals from the Cape, who furnish the officers with lodgings. While the latter are here the Bay is exceedingly lively, but as soon as the season permits them to heave up their anchors, it becomes a desert; everyone decamps, and the only inhabitants are a company of the garrison, who are relieved every two months. The vessels which arrive then and have need of provisions are in a dismal situation, for it often happens that the warehouse has been so much drained that it is necessary to bring from Cape Town in carts whatever these new-comers are in want of, and the carriage usually costs an exorbitant price. The hire of a paltry cart is from twenty to thirty dollars a day; I have known of fifty paid for one, and it is to be observed that they can only make one journey in the twenty-four hours.'
SIMONSTOWN MOUNTAINS, WITH CAPE POINT AND ROMAN ROCK LIGHTHOUSES
We can nowadays, for the exorbitant price of something more than a dollar, run up to Cape Town in less than an hour; but I have heard from not too ancient inhabitants wonderful stories of not too long ago of how, packed like sardines, parties would drive from Town to Simonstown to dance on a gunboat and home again in the dawn, with some danger of the wrong tide over the Fish Hoek beach, or of the bad road to Wynberg.
In an old book of travels I find the raison d'être for the name given to the 'Roman' Rock:
'The finest fish are caught here, and particularly the Rooman (or Rooiman), that gives its name to the Roman Rock, in the neighbourhood of which it is found in great abundance.'
The Commander of old Simonstown died a millionaire, and his illegal dealings seem to have been well known and discussed, as all the writers of this time and later speak of it. He had the rank of 'under merchant,' and carried on a trade with the foreign vessels, reselling necessaries at enormous profit.... 'Mr. Trail (a great rogue),' writes Anne Barnard to Melville.
We rode up the Red Hill—a steep roadway up the mountain—and saw a precarious-looking aerial car swaying up the mountain-side to the Sanatorium and Range. We ultimately passed quite close to the Range on the flat top in thick purple heath. We looked north, over the False Bay and Noord Hoek Mountains, the Steenbergen, or Tokai Ranges, and saw Table Mountain in a coronet of cloud. Across these flat-topped ranges, over three hundred years ago, had fled the Hottentots, before finding their asylum on the opposite shore—the Hottentot's Holland Mountains. The two Passes—the Kloof and the road from the Castle to the Flats—were carefully guarded. The Caapmans, Hottentots, and Watermen, cattle-thieves, tobacco-thieves, garden-thieves, wreck-salvagers, hurried along with their cattle from Hout Bay, Chapmans Bay, and Noord Hoek, to Cape Point. The Commander sent several parties to hunt them out, and the majority made off over the Flats, led by their rascally chief 'Herry.' The lowest of them, the Watermen, remained behind, hiding in caves and underwood. One fine day Corporal Elias Giero, who, with a considerable force, had wandered for days round Hout Bay and the Berghvalleyen, reported that eighteen hours' walk from this neighbourhood, almost at the southern end of the Cape, he had come upon their camp. It sounds pathetic, this great expedition for such a small enemy. They found three reed huts, with thirteen men and as many women and children. They were making assegais, when their dogs barked, and they fled into the rushes, crying out that they were Watermen, and not cattle-stealers. But some were recognized by 'men who had felt their assegais,' and the chief was captured. The former were killed. The chief and a ci-devant kitchen-boy refused to walk to the fort, 'and, as it was too difficult to carry them, our men brought with them to the fort their upper lips.' Many of them were recognized as wood and water carriers to the garrison at the fort, and their names and aliases are carefully recorded—for example: 'Carbinza,' or 'Plat neus'; 'Egutha,' or 'Hoogh en Laagh'; 'Mosscha,' or 'Kleine Lubbert'; 'Kaikana Makonkoa'; 'Louchoeve'; 'Orenbare'; 'Diknavel'; and so on. Translated into English—those that are translatable—they run: 'Flat-nose,' 'High and Low,' 'Quick,' 'Bring,' 'Unweary,' 'Hold him fast,' 'He nearly,' etc.
This is a small bit of history which belongs to Cape Point.
CHAPTER XI
THE BLUE SHADOW ACROSS THE FLATS
Our ponies met us at Muizenberg, and we crossed the railway-line on to the long white beach.
It was Easter Monday, and trainloads of inhabitants swarmed like gaudy bees round the bathing-huts. At no other time can one see to better advantage the wonderful fusion of races which has gone to the making of the population of the Cape Peninsula.
In the shade of one of the small, stationary wooden bathing-houses I saw the gardener's family, their colour scheme running through the gamut of shades from white to chocolate. The gardener had once had a Cockney wife, and his life was ''ell,' so he married Marlie, the slightly coloured girl brought up on a German mission-station, who made excellent stews, washed his shirts well, and sang Lutheran hymns to the children when they howled. There were ancestors, black and white, on both sides—and everyone hasn't ancestors.
TABLE MOUNTAIN FROM RETREAT FLATS
We passed a wagon-load of Malays in gala dress of silks and spangles—our washerwomen—possessing the wondrous Oriental gift of elusive speech, which will turn away good Christian wrath. One old Malay told us he remembered the days when all the Malays made their pilgrimage yearly to the grave of Sheik Joseph. A political prisoner of the East India Company, of great wealth and position in the East, he was exiled to the Cape, and lived at the mouth of the Eerste River, near the farm of the Governor's witty brother, Franz Van der Stel. There is a sepulchre which is called the 'Kramat,' or resting-place of a holy man. The wanderers of the Flats in those early days would often come upon the Sheik and his forty followers galloping across the sand-hills. This generation of followers wore suits of neat blue serge, and, over the fez, a wide reed hat with a low, pointed crown.
Marinus and I thought it would require a Shakespeare to describe the heterogeneous mass we passed through. Pathetic sometimes—a knock-kneed clerk from Cape Town, shivering in a new, dark-blue bathing suit, vainly trying to acclimatize his pasty-faced offspring to the waves. Complexions are hard to keep in South Africa; the sun is our master, all-absorbing and requiring all—colour, brain, energy—your puny effort of concentration useless against this fierce, concentrated mass, this alluring South African sun—Lorelei of the South.
The very people here are an example—not one concentrated type. Marinus and I soliloquized quietly until we reached the shallow river which feeds the Lakeside Vleis (lakes). We avoided the beach and kept close up to the sand-dunes, the white sand protected from the tearing gales of the 'south-easters' by a network of creeping 'Hottentot fig,' a fleshy plant with wonderful bright flowers of every hue, and bearing an acquired taste in fruit—a small, dried-up-looking fig.
Tall flowering reeds grow in 'klompjes,'[7] and dotted about are small green bushes covered with red berries—'dinna bessies,' the coloured folk call them. 'Not much cover for the hippo,' laughed Marinus.
My mind went back with a jerk to the old days of Muizenberg, the Mountain of Mice, its cannon buried in the sand, its battle, its fort and barracks, the Caapmans, who wandered with their herds over the flats and killed sea-cows, or hippo, on the very spot where the enterprising boatman of Lakeside had built his café.
'And elephants roamed,' I quoted; 'and always the reflection of Table Mountain—always the same blue lotus lilies, and the sand-hills, and the blue river flowing across the beach.'
We made for Strandfontein, regaining the beach as the tide was going out and we could avoid the quicksands. Strandfontein, a little desolate bay boasting one reed-covered house and a celebrated beach—celebrated for its shells, huge blue mussels, pale pink mussels, daintily carved nautili, and rows and rows of coral and mauve fan shells.
SAND DUNES
Again we talked of the old 'Company days,' and the wonderful plan of Commander Van Riebeek to drain the Liesbeek and the Salt Rivers into one big canal which would cut off the peninsula from the mainland, and, like the great Wall of Hadrian, would keep the barbarians out, away from the Company's freemen growing flax, wheat, and disaffection on the swampy flats.
Van Riebeek bewails the impracticability in his journal, which, bound in ancient brown leather, and written in heavy Dutch lettering, is carefully preserved in Cape Town.
'February 4, 1656.
'Dry, calm weather. Riebeeck proceeds to False Bay (roads being favourable), accompanied by a guard of soldiers, to see whether the Canal, proposed by Van Goens, could be made across the Isthmus. Took the river course to see whether it at all approached False Bay. Found that the Sweet River, now Liesbeek, which with the Salt River runs into Table Bay, runs snake-like three or four leagues crosswise over the Isthmus, and at some places appears to be stagnant, forming small lakes, between which low and sandy lands lie, until within a league of certain high sand-hills of False Bay, where it again turns into small streams, which gradually become broader, and form a river of fresh water running further on into a large lake, almost as broad as the Meuse and about two hours on foot in circumference, with deep and brackish water full of sea-cows and sea-horses, and supplied from the downs of False Cape. There was apparently no opening, but the water percolated through the sands. The Lake is still about one and a half hours on foot from the seashore, which is about half an hour's walk broad. The Downs about a league, and so high, that they are almost mountains, twenty or twenty-four behind each other, it would therefore be impossible to cut them through. Besides, there would be lakelets on the Flats, some a quarter, some half a league broad to be cut through. This would also be difficult, because of the rocky ground, as we found the next day, after having spent the night in the veldt. The matter is therefore impossible, and would be useless and most injurious to the Company, as the Canal could not be made so wide and deep as to prevent the natives swimming across with their cattle. In case it is supposed that on this side the passage would be closed to them, it must be borne in mind that a large sheet of water on the south side of False Cape about three hours' walk in circumference, becomes a large dry and salt flat in summer, so that no proper Canal could be pierced through it—as the sand is soft and the downs are high—which latter would continually fill up the channel; thousands of men would be required to keep it open; so that the Company cannot for a moment think of it, as the expense would be enormous in comparison with the advantages derived. Millions of gold would be required! and if finally the work be finished and communication with the natives cut off, it would be absurd to suppose that they could be confined on this side—for the artificial island would have such dimensions that, in order to control it, a large number of men would be required, scattered in the veldt, not a few, but a good many, soldiers.
'The idea that such a canal would enable the householders to live more securely is hardly worth considering, as those who may choose to live here and there may build stone dwellings sufficiently strong to protect them from the natives. Should such free householders cost the Company so much that soldiers are to be kept for their defence, instead of their assisting the Company?...'
ON THE SANDHILLS NEAR MUIZENBERG
We cantered over some small sand-hills, and came down to the plains, covered with 'quick' grass, dotted with small yellow protea-bush, tiny pink flowers, and scarlet heath called 'erica,' intersected by blue pools of water, their surfaces almost covered by a sweet-smelling, white waterweed. The Malays gather the flower, 'water-eintje,' and curry it or stew it into a thick soup. A narrow, white, sandy pathway ran between the pools, and far away, in a blue haze, we saw Table Mountain and the Devil's Peak.
Quoting again from the Diary:
'June 29, 1656.
'Proceeded to the Flats where Van Goens wished to have canal dug. Find the whole country so inundated with rapid streams that the whole cutting, with redoubts and all, would, if made, be swept away at once. The Flats had become a combination of lakes; the work would therefore at present be left in abeyance.'
The ponies slopped through the wet sand, and ahead lay the big lake called Zeekoe Vlei (i.e., Sea-Cow Lake), separated from a smaller lake, Ronde Vlei, by a narrow isthmus.
Skirting a huge, precipitous mountain of sand, we rode round the vlei, disturbing great flocks of heron, gulls, and wild-duck.
Straight up out of a yellow protea-bush flew a brown bird with a dull orange-red breast—a wip-poor-will, or, as the coloured people say, the 'Christmas bird,' or 'Piet, mij vrouw.' Its call is more surely 'Piet, mij vrouw' than anything else.
'Do you know Le Vaillant's story?' said Marinus. I did. But Marinus loves to tell a story, and he has to listen to many; so I said: 'His story of what?' Then Marinus, being a dear, told me the tale:
'Le Vaillant and the faithful Hottentot chief, or Piet, as his master called him, were out shooting. Le Vaillant shot and killed a female bird. Piet brought up the bird. "Go back, you adorable Hottentot," said the traveller, "to the spot where you found this bird, for surely there you will find Monsieur le Mari." The "adorable Piet" began to weep; that Baas would excuse him, but this he could not do—never could he fire at the male bird. "Go—I insist!" said Le Vaillant. "No, no, Baas!" And the astonished Baas listened to the reason: that no sooner had Piet shot the female, when the male, to quote the old story, "began to pursue him with great fury, continually repeating, 'Piet, mij vrouw! Piet, mij vrouw!' This, in English, is, 'Piet, my wife! Piet, my wife!' Small wonder that Le Vaillant wrote of the misjudged, Dutch-ridden Hottentot as being "full of sensibility"!'
The sun had begun to set when we reached the other side of the vlei, and a coloured woman, carrying a mass of blue lotus lilies up to Town for sale, told us 'we had v-e-ry far way still to go.'
Marinus agreed that it was quite worth a hurried ride home, seeing this wonderful kaleidoscope of colouring reflected in the vleis.
The sand-hills around were pink, and over the tops of some appeared the purple of the Muizenberg Mountains. In the north were the Stellenbosch Mountains, with the Helderberg, in a blaze of red, underlined by long patches of shining white sand-hills.
But all the while the great blue shadow of Table Mountain crept over the Flats, over the vleis, until we watched it reach the north barriers. Slowly the blue mounted, absorbing the flush of sunset, reached the summits, and drove the pink into the fleecy, detached clouds above; these, like blazing balloons, floated over the bay.
I sat up—to reality.
'I have been lost on these Flats, Marinus, and still remember with horror the growing darkness and the interminable miles of sandy road and dense wattle plantations. Let us get on.'
So we rode and rode, through the brown rushes, splashing through water, over mealie patches, dozens of little German children from the tiny farms hidden in low wattle rushing out to see us pass.
On we flew into the darkening blue shadow; behind us, whirlwinds of sand rising like white wraiths of pursuing Erlkings; and before, the smoke from the Kaffir location near the mouth of the Salt River curling into the mist.
BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD
AT THE HEAD OF FALSE BAY