MONUMENT
ERECTED TO THE MEMORY OF THE FALLEN (BRITISH) AT SCHUIN’S HOOGHTE. MAJUBA IN
THE DISTANCE.
Galloping down from Schuin’s Hooghte, a few miles more brought us to Newcastle, and as the mail for Maritzburg did not start till next day, I got a good rest. Everything in Newcastle had gone back. No signs of the lavish spending of Imperial money! No military camp with its reckless expenditure now. The fine hotel, which on my former visit was crowded with officers, contractors, sutlers and army hangers-on, had been burnt down, and was in ruins. “The place thereof shall know it no more for ever.” My old friend, Greenlees, invited me to dinner, but I noticed that he looked upon me with kindly pity, as one with whom cruel fortune had made merry, and not as
“A man that fortune’s buffets and rewards
Had ta’en with equal thanks.”
I left Newcastle early next morning, travelling over the same ground as I did years before, stayed at Ladysmith an hour or two, and tried to eat a most infamously served lunch in, I think, the “inn’s worst room,” and started again for Colenso, where I rested the night. At early dawn we were on the move. On we went, calling at Pinchin’s hotel at Estcourt, kept by a fellow passenger who came with me to Natal “two decades” before in the “Tugela” then away again past Howick and the beautiful falls of the Umgeni, to Maritzburg.
The railway embankment in course of construction showed me the rapid strides civilization was making, and was a proof that the iron horse would soon neigh at a distance of 100 miles from the seaboard. In former days I always went to the “Plough Hotel;” and, with a feeling I have of never forsaking old friends or places, I went there again, but the hotel had evidently been decorated (?) by contract for external show. The backyard was covered in with glass, the floor paved with tawdry tiles, and a few stunted plants sprouted in despair from green painted pots. Everything for mere meretricious effect. The bugs, mosquitoes, dirt and disorder of my bedroom were sufficient to drive me away to D’Urban next day. Before I went, however, I found opportunity to see a few friends whom I had known years before. Among them Mr. Henrique Shepstone, who in my Natal days was Coolie Immigration Agent, afterwards Judge Philip’s private secretary during the memorable trials in the Barbadoes, then Secretary of Native Affairs in the Transvaal during the Lanyon régime, and subsequently Imperial Government agent in charge of Cetywayo during his visit to London, but now the Hon. H. Shepstone, Secretary of Native Affairs, having lately been promoted by Sir H. Bulwer to this post, which was formerly held by his father, Sir Theophilus Shepstone. Mr. Polkinghoene, the Treasurer General, whose beautiful coffee estate on the banks of the Umhloti River I had often visited, was looking after the finances of his adopted country, while my old partner in planting when I was on the coast had forsaken the cure of coffee, and taken to the cure of souls!
Reclining in a luxurious railway carriage, I was able to look back on post-cart travelling and its miseries, thinking of Virgil’s “Forsitan hæc olim meminisse juvabit,” the present comfort making up for the disagreeables of the past. Every comfort or pain in this world is by comparison, and a first-class railway carriage seemed a very haven of rest after my 700 mile post-cart trip through Griqualand West, the Transvaal, and Natal. “Comparisons are odious,” but after the “Plough” at Maritzburg, the “Royal” at D’Urban, where I stayed, seemed a perfect paradise. I can scarcely tell how thoroughly I enjoyed my few days rest before the steamer “Asiatic” bore me to Capetown!
The Indian waiters robed in spotless white, the recherché bills of fare, the noble dining-room with punkahs in constant play, the beds supplied with mosquito curtains, the obliging landlord, the tout ensemble in fact, forced me, after an experience of nearly every large hotel in South Africa, to one conclusion, which was that the “Royal” at D’Urban was beyond any comparison the hotel of the country.
After a few days pleasant coasting, calling at East London, Port Elizabeth and Mossel Bay, meeting friends at every place, we anchored at last in Table Bay, but as the wind had suddenly commenced to blow great guns from the southeast, the Captain would not risk docking his steamer.
Expecting to meet my wife, who had cabled she was coming out, after hearing of my accident, I risked going ashore in a small boat, getting drenched through for my pains. “All’s well that ends well,” however, and on landing I found that she had arrived safely the day before in the “Athenian” and was awaiting me.