L’ENVOI.
There is little more to add.
That night we were on the ocean steamer Moor. Two days later found us at the Cape.
2nd January.—Table Mountain grows grander and more living every time I see him. His personality grows on one, like that of the Taj Mahal at Agra. I can quite understand certain races worshipping a mountain as their idea of Divinity. Always steadfast and stupendous. You may turn your back on Him and wander away for a while; but whenever you choose to look back, He is there, the same as ever. You have only to go back into His shadow, to find a haven from the chilling wind or withering sun. And you may climb up to Him, to where He sits above the clouds,—which is feasible in proportion to the state of training you are in,—and when you have reached the summit, you can lay you down in peace upon His breast, and contemplate the world below which you have left behind.
6th January.—Cape Town is very busy now, with crowded streets, big shops, electric lighting everywhere, electric trams cavorting through the streets and out to Claremont: such a change from the sleepy, old–world place it used to be. It is much en fête for Rhodes.
To–day we embarked on the Dunvegan Castle (Captain Robinson); splendid new boat. Also on board Cecil Rhodes, Miss Rhodes, and Colonel Frank Rhodes; Lady Grey and Lady Victoria Grey; Sir C. Metcalfe; Olive Schreiner and her husband; Lord C. Bentinck; Hon. J. Ward, M.P.; Rochfort Maguire and his wife; Wilson Tod and Critchley, 4th Hussars; “Bob” Coryndon (also styled Selous the Second), Ronny Moncreiffe, Sir Horace MacMahon, and Eustace Blewitt, etc. etc., and hardly any Jews! A most interesting shipload.
And we left the Cape and its old mountain bathed in the glow of its summer sun—sorry, and yet glad, to go.
A good deck cabin, and the many comforts of Sir Donald Currie’s finest ship, coupled with the varied cheery company on board, made the time fly by. We slipped past Cape de Verd on the 13th, and Madeira at night on the 18th.
27th January.—It is a day to be remembered, is that of a return from foreign parts.