CHAPTER II
AT ROSEBANK, CAPE COLONY
“STRANGE land; strange birds with startling cries; strange flowers; strange scents! I received a bouquet of welcome on my arrival composed of grass-green flowers with brilliant rose-coloured leaves. Where am I? Where are the points of the compass?
“I was watching the sun travelling to his setting this evening, and, forgetting I was perforce facing North to watch him, he seemed to be sloping down towards the East! And lo! when he was gone, the crescent moon on the wrong side of the sunset and turned the wrong way. And a cold south wind bringing melancholy messages from the Antarctic. ‘There has been a storm in the south,’ some one said, and the words struck drearily on my mind’s ear.
“My Bible, so full of imagery taken from the aspects of Nature, is turned inside out.
Arise (depart), north wind; and come, O south wind; blow through my garden, and let the aromatical spices thereof flow (Canticles iv. 16).
“My Shakespeare is upside down.
At Christmas I no more desire a rose
Than wish a snow in May’s new-fangled mirth.—
Love’s Labour’s Lost.