“But how do they live?” Then it was explained to me that each resident in the Institution had a plot of ground of his own, and that he lived on its produce, as far as it went, like any other estated gentleman. Then the men would go out for a little sheep-shearing, or the picking of Buchus in the Buchu season. The Buchu is a medicinal leaf which is gathered in these parts and sent to Europe. Such an arrangement cannot be for the welfare either of the Colony or of the people concerned. Nothing but work will bring them into such communion with civilization as to enable them to approach the condition of the white man. The arcadian idea of a coloured man with his wife and piccaninnies living happily under the shade of his own fig tree and picking his own grapes and oranges is very pretty in a book, and may be made interesting in a sermon. But it is ugly enough in that reality in which the fig tree is represented by a ruined mud-hut and the grapes and oranges by stolen mutton. The sole effect of the missionary’s work has too often been that of saving the Native from working for the white man. It was well that he should be saved from slavery;—but to save him from other work is simply to perpetuate his inferiority.
The land at the Caledon Institution is the property of the resident Natives. Each landowner can at present sell his plot with the sanction of the Governor. In ten years’ time he will be enabled to sell it without such sanction. The sooner he sells it and becomes a simple labourer the better for all parties. I was told that the Governor’s sanction is rarely if ever now refused.
Then we went on to the Tradouw, and just at the entrance of the ravine we came upon a party of coloured labourers, with a white man over them, making bricks in the close vicinity of an extensive building. A party of convicts was about to come to the spot for the purpose of mending the road, and the bricks were being made so that a kitchen might be built for the cooking of their food. The big building, I was told, had been erected for the use of the convicts who a few years since had made the road. But it had fallen out of repair, and the new kitchen was considered necessary, though the number of men needed for the repair would not be very large, and they would be wanted only for a few months. I naturally asked what would become of the kitchen afterwards,—which seemed to be a spacious building containing a second apartment, to be used probably as a scullery. The kitchen would again be deserted and would become the property of the owner of the land. I afterwards heard by chance of a contract for supplying mutton to the convicts at 6½d. a pound,—a pound a day for each man;—and I also heard that convict labour was supposed to be costly. The convicts are chiefly coloured people. With such usage as they receive the supply, I should imagine, would be ample. The ordinary Hottentot with his daily pound of mutton, properly cooked in a first-class kitchen and nothing but convict labour to do, would probably find himself very comfortable.
Southey’s Pass,—so called from Mr. Southey who was Colonial Secretary before the days of parliamentary government, and is now one of the stoutest leaders of the opposition against the Ministers of the day,—is seven miles from end to end and is very beautiful throughout. But it is the mile at the end,—furthest from Swellendam,—in which it beats in sublimity all the other South African passes which I saw, including even the Montague Pass which crosses the Outiniqua mountains near George. South Africa is so far off that I cannot hope to be able to excite English readers to visit the Cape Colony for the sake of the scenery,—though for those whose doctors prescribe a change of air and habits and the temporary use of a southern climate I cannot imagine that any trip should be more pleasant and serviceable;—but I do think that the inhabitants of Capetown and the neighbourhood should know more than they do of the beauties of their own country. I have never seen rocks of a finer colour or twisted about into grander forms than those which make the walls of that part of Southey’s Pass which is furthest from Swellendam.
When we were in the ravine two small bucks called Klip-springers,—springers that is among the stones,—were disturbed by us and passing down from the road among the rocks, made their way to the bottom of the ravine. Two dogs had followed the Hottentot who was driving us, a terrier and a large mongrel hound, and at once got upon the scent of the bucks. I shall never forget the energy of the Hottentot as he rushed down from the road to a huge prominent rock which stood over the gorge, so as to see the hunt as near as possible, or my own excitement as I followed him somewhat more slowly. The ravine was so narrow that the clamour of the two dogs sounded like the music of a pack of hounds. The Hottentot as he leant forward over his perch was almost beside himself with anxiety. Immediately beneath us, perhaps twenty feet down, were two jutting stones separated from each other by about the same distance, between which was a wall of rock with a slant almost perpendicular and perfectly smooth, so that there could be no support to the foot of any animal. Up to the first of these stones one of the Klip-springers was hunted with the big hound close at his heels. From it the easiest escape was by a leap to the other rock which the buck made without a moment’s hesitation. But the dog could not follow. He knew the distance to be too great for his spring, and stood on his rock gazing at his prey. Nor could the buck go further. The stone it occupied just beneath ourselves was altogether isolated, and it stood there looking up at us with its soft imploring eyes, while the Hottentot in his excitement cheered on the dog to make the leap which the poor hound knew to be too much for him. I cannot say which interested me most, the man beside me, the little buck just below my feet, or the anxious eager palpitating hound with his short sharp barks. There was no gun with us, but the Hottentot got fragments of stone to throw at the quarry. Then the buck knew that he must shift his ground if he meant to save himself, and, marking his moment, he jumped back at the dog, and was then up among the almost perpendicular rocks over our heads before the brute could seize it. I have always been anxious for a kill when hunting, but I was thoroughly rejoiced when that animal saved himself. The Hottentot who was fond of venison did not at all share my feelings.
This occurred about 22 miles from Swellendam, and delayed us a little. My host, who had accompanied me, had asked a house full of friends to dine with him at seven, and it was five when the buck escaped. South African travelling is generally slow; but under the pressure of the dinner party our horses were made to do the distance in an hour and fifty minutes.
From Swellendam we went on to Caledon another exquisitely clean little Dutch town. The distance from Swellendam to Caledon is nearly eighty miles, through the whole of which the road runs under the Zondereinde mountains through a picturesque country which produces some of the best wool of the Colony. Caledon is another village of oak trees and pleasant detached Dutch-looking houses, each standing in its own garden and never mounting to a story above the ground. In winter no doubt the feeling inspired by these village-towns would be different; but when they are seen as I saw them, with the full foliage and the acorns on the oaks, and the little gardens over-filled with their luxuriance of flowers, with the streets as clean and shaded as the pet road through a gentleman’s park, the visitor is tempted to repine because Fate did not make him a wine-growing, orange-planting, ostrich-feeding Dutch farmer. From Caledon we returned through East Somerset, a smaller village and less attractive but still of the same nature, to Capetown, getting on to the railway about twenty miles from the town at the Eerste River Station. In making this last journey we had gone through or over two other Passes, called How Hoek and Sir Lowry’s Pass. They are, both of them, interesting enough for a visit from Capetown, but not sufficiently so to be spoken of at much length after the other roads through the mountains which I had seen. The route down from Sir Lowry’s Pass leads to the coast of False Bay,—of which Simon’s Bay is an inlet. Between False Bay to the South and Table Bay to the North is the flat isthmus which forms the peninsula, on which stands Capetown and the Table Mountains, the Southern point of which is the Cape of Good Hope.
In this journey among the Dutch towns which lie around the capital I missed Stellenbosch, which is, I am told, the most Dutch of them all. As good Americans when dead go to Paris, so do good Dutchmen while still alive go to Stellenbosch,—and more especially good Dutchwomen, for it is a place much affected by widows. The whole of this country is so completely Dutch that an Englishman finds himself to be altogether a foreigner. The coloured people of all shades talk Dutch as their native language. It is hard at first to get over the feeling that a man or woman must be very ignorant who in an English Colony cannot speak English, but the truth is that many of the people are much less ignorant than they are at home with us, as they speak in some fashion both English and Dutch. In the Eastern Province of the Colony, as in the other Colonies and divisions of South Africa, the native speaks some native language,—the Kafir, Zulu, or Bechuana language as the case may be; but in the part of the Western Province of which I am speaking,—that part which the Dutch have long inhabited,—there is no native language left among the coloured people. Dutch has become their language. The South African language from the mouths of Kafirs and Zulus does not strike a stranger as being odd;—but Dutch volubility from Hottentot lips does do so.
I must not finish this short record of my journeys in the Western Province of the Cape Colony without repeating the expression of my opinion as to the beauty of the scenery and the special charms of the small towns which I had visited.