Life in South Africa

by Lady Barker

We grown-up people catch violent colds here; and it is no wonder, considering the changes of weather, far beyond what even you, with your fickle climate, have to bear. Twenty-four hours ago it was so cold that I was glad of my sealskin jacket at six o’clock in the evening, and it was really bitterly cold at night. The next morning there was a hot wind, and it has been like living at the mouth of a furnace ever since. What wonder is it that I hear of bronchitis or croup in almost every house, and that we have all got bad colds in our throats and chests? I heard the climate defined the other day as one in which sick people get well, and well people get sick, and I begin to think it is rather a true way of looking at it. People are always complaining, and the doctors (of whom there are a great many in proportion to the population) seem always very busy. Everybody says, “Wait till the winter,” but I have been here four months now, three of which have certainly been the most trying and disagreeable, as to climate and weather, I have ever experienced; nor have I ever felt more generally unhinged and unwell in my life. This seems a hard thing to say of a climate with so good a reputation as this, but I am obliged to write of things as I find them. I used to hear the climate immensely praised in England, but I don’t hear much said in its favor here. The most encouraging remark one meets with is, “Oh, you’ll get used to it.”

Howick, March 13.

It is difficult to imagine that so cool and charming a spot as this is only a dozen miles from Maritzburg, of which one gets so tired. It must be acknowledged that each mile might fairly count for six English ones if the difficulty of getting over it were reckoned. The journey occupied three hours of a really beautiful afternoon, which had the first crisp freshness of autumn in its balmy breath, and the road climbed a series of hills, with, from the top of each, a wide and charming prospect. We traveled in a sort of double dog-cart of a solidity and strength of construction which filled me with amazement until I saw the nature of the ground it had to go over. Then I was fain to confess it might have been—if such were possible—twice as strong with advantage, for in spite of care and an exceeding slow pace we bent our axles. This road is actually the first stage of the great overland journey to the diamond-fields, and it is difficult to imagine how there can be any transport service at all in the face of such difficulties. I have said so much about bad roads already that I feel more than half ashamed to dilate upon this one; yet roads, next to servants, are the standing grievance of Natal. To see a road-party at work—and you must bear in mind that thousands are spent annually on roads—is to understand in a great measure how so many miles come to be mere quagmires and pitfalls for man and beast. A few tents by the roadside here and there, a little group of lazy, three-parts-naked Kafirs, a white man in command who probably knows as little of the first principles of roadmaking as his dog, and a feeble scratching up of the surrounding mud, transferring it from one hole to the other,—that is roadmaking in Natal, so far as it has presented itself to me. On this particular route the fixed idea of the road-parties—of which we passed three—was to dig a broad, wide ditch a couple of feet below the level of the surrounding country, and to pick up the earth all over it, so that the first shower of rain might turn it into a hopeless, sticky mass of mud. As for any idea of making the middle of the road higher than the sides, that appears to be considered a preposterous one, and is not, at all events, acted upon in any place I have seen. It was useless to think of availing ourselves of the ditch, for the mud looked too serious after last night’s heavy rain; so we kept to an older track, where we bumped in and out of holes in a surprising and bruising fashion. It took four tolerably stout and large horses to get us along at all; and if they had not been steadily and carefully driven, we should have been still more black and blue and stiff and aching than we were. I wonder if you will believe me when I say that I was assured that many of the holes were six feet deep? I don’t think our wheels went into any hole more than three feet below the rough surface. I found, however, that the boulders were worse than the holes. One goes, to a certain extent, quietly in and out of a hole, but the wheel slips very suddenly off the top of a high boulder, and comes to the ground with a cruel jerk. There was plenty of rock in the hillside, so every now and then the holes would be filled up by boulders, and we crawled for some yards over ground which had the effect of an exceedingly rough wall having tumbled down over it. If one could imagine Mr. MacAdam’s idea carried out in Brobdingnag, one would have some faint notion of the gigantic proportions of the hardening material on that road.

It was—as is often the case where an almost tropical sun draws up the moisture from the earth—a misty evening, and the distant view was too vague and vaporous to leave any distinct picture on my memory. Round Howick itself are several little plantations in the clefts of the nearest downs, and each plantation shelters a little farm or homestead. We can only just discern in more distant hollows deep blue-black shadows made by patches of real native forest, the first I have seen; but close at hand the park-like country is absolutely bare of timber save for these sheltering groups of gum trees, beneath whose protection other trees can take root and flourish. Gum trees seem the nurses of all vegetation in a colony: they drain a marshy soil and make it fit for a human dwelling-place wherever they grow. There you see also willows with their delicate tender leaves, and sentinel poplars whose lightly-poised foliage keeps up a cool rustle always. But now the road is getting a trifle better, and we are beginning to drop down hill. Hitherto it has been all stiff collar-work, and we have climbed a thousand feet or more above Maritzburg. It is closing in quite a cold evening, welcome to our sun-baked energies, as we drive across quite an imposing bridge (as well it may be, for it cost a good many thousand pounds) which spans the Umgeni River, and so round a sharp turn and up a steepish hill to where the hotel stands amid sheltering trees and a beautiful undergrowth of ferns and arum lilies. Howick appears to be all hotel, for two have already been built, and a third is in progress. A small store and a pretty wee church are all the other component parts of the place. Our hotel is delightful, with an enchanting view of the Umgeni widening out as it approaches the broad cliff from which it leaps a few hundred yards farther on.

Now, ever since I arrived in Natal I have been pining to see a real mountain and a real river—not a big hill or a capricious spruit, sometimes a ditch and sometimes a lake, but a respectable river, too deep to be muddy. Here it is before me at last, the splendid Umgeni, curving among the hills, wide and tranquil, yet with a rushing sound suggestive of its immense volume. We can’t waste a moment in-doors: not even the really nice fresh butter—and what a treat that is you must taste Maritzburg butter to understand—nor the warm tea can detain us for long. We snatch up our shawls and run out in the gloaming to follow the river’s sound and find out the spot where it leaps down. It is not difficult, once we are in the open air, to decide in which direction we must go, and for once we brave ticks, and even snakes, and go straight across country through the long grass. There it is. Quite suddenly we have come upon it, so beautiful in its simplicity and grandeur, no ripple or break to confuse the eye and take away the sense of unity and consolidation. The river widens, and yet hurries, gathering up strength and volume until it reaches that great cliff of iron-stone. You could drop a plumb-line over it, so absolutely straight is it for three hundred and fifty feet. I have seen other waterfalls in other parts of the world, but I never saw anything much more imposing than this great perpendicular sheet of water broken into a cloud of spray and foam so soon as it touches the deep, silent basin below. The water is discolored where it flings itself over the cliff, and there are tinges and stains of murky yellow on it there, but the spray which rises up from below is purer and whiter than driven snow, and keeps a great bank of lycopodium moss at the foot of the cliff, over which it is driven by every breath of air, fresh and young and vividly green. Many rare ferns and fantastic bushes droop on either side of the great fall—droop as if they too were giddy with the noise of the water rushing past them, and were going to fling themselves into the dark pools below. But kindly Nature holds them back, for she needs the contrast of branch and stem to give effect to the purity of the falling water. Just one last gleam of reflected sunlight gilded the water’s edge where it dashed over the cliff, and a pale crescent moon hung low over it in a soft “daffodil sky.” It was all ineffably beautiful and poetic, and the roar of the falling river seemed only to bring out with greater intensity the absolute silence of the desolate spot and the starlight hour.

March 15.

If the fall was beautiful in the mysterious gloaming, it looks a thousand times more fair in its morning splendor of sunshine. The air here is pleasant—almost cold, and yet deliciously balmy. It is certainly an enchanting change from Pieter-Maritzburg, were it not for the road which lies between. It is not, however, a road at all. What is the antithesis of a road, I wonder—the opposite of a road? That is what the intervening space should be called. After the river takes its leap it moves quietly away among hills and valleys, a wide sheet of placid water, as though there was nothing more needed in the way of exertion. I hear there are some other falls, quite as characteristic in their way, a few miles farther in the interior, but as the difficulty of getting to them is very great they must wait until we can spare a longer time here. To-day we drove across frightful places until we got on a hill just opposite the fall. I am not generally nervous, but I confess to a very bad five minutes as we approached the edge of the cliff. The brake of the dog-cart was hard down, but the horses had their ears pricked well forward and were leaning back almost on their haunches as we moved slowly down the grassy incline. Every step seemed as if it would take us right over the edge, and the roar and rush of the falling water opposite appeared to attract and draw us toward itself in a frightful and mysterious manner. I was never more thankful in my life than when the horses stood stark still, planted their fore feet firmly forward, and refused, trembling all over, to move an inch nearer. We were not really so very close to the edge, but the incline was steep and the long grass concealed that there was any ground beyond. After all, I liked better returning to a cliff a good deal nearer to the falls, where a rude seat of stones had been arranged on a projecting point from whence there was an excellent view. I asked, as one always does, whether there had ever been any accidents, and among other narratives of peril and disaster I heard this one.

Some years ago—nothing would induce the person who told me the story to commit himself to any fixed period or any nearer date than this—a wagon drawn by a long team of oxen was attempting to cross the “drift,” or ford, which used to exist a very short way above the falls. I saw the spot afterward, and it really looked little short of madness to have attempted to establish a ford so near the place where the river falls over this great cliff. They tried to build a bridge, even, at the same spot, but it was swept away over and over again, and some of the buttresses remain standing to this day. One of them rests on a small islet between the river and the cliff, only a few yards away from the brink of the precipice. It is a sort of rudimentary island, formed by great blocks of stone and some wind-blown earth in which a few rank tufts of grass have taken root, binding it all together. But this island does not divide the volume of water as it tumbles headlong over the cliff, for the river is only parted by it for a brief moment. It sweeps rapidly round on either side of the frail obstacle, and then unites itself again into a broad sheet just before its leap. The old boers used to imagine that this island broke the force of the current, and would protect them from being carried over the falls by it. In winter, when the water is low and scarce, this may be so, but in summer it is madness to trust to it. Anyway, the Dutchman got his team halfway across, a Kafir sitting in the wagon and driving, another lad acting as “forelooper” and guiding the “span” (as a team is called here). The boer prudently rode, and had no sooner reached the midstream than he perceived the current to be of unusual depth and swiftness. He managed, however, to struggle across to the opposite bank, and from thence he beheld his wagon overturn, his goods wash out of it and sweep like straws over the precipice: as for the poor little forelooper, nobody knows what became of him. The overturned wagon, with the struggling oxen still yoked to it and the Kafir driver clinging on, swept to the edge of the falls. There a lucky promontory of this miniature island caught and held it fast, drowning some of the poor bullocks indeed, but saving the wagon. Doubtless, the Kafir might easily have saved himself, for he had hold of the wagon when it was checked in its rapid rush. But instead of grasping at bush or rock, at a wheel or the horn of a bullock, he stood straight up, holding his whip erect in his right hand, and with one loud defiant whoop of exultation jumped straight over the fearful ledge. His master said the fright must have driven him mad, for he rode furiously along the bank shouting words of help and encouragement, which probably the poor Kafir never heard, for he believed his last hour had come and sprang to meet the death before him with that dauntless bravery which savages so often show in the face of the inevitable. As one sat in safety and looked at the rushing, irresistible water, one could easily picture to one’s self the struggling pile of wagon and oxen in the water just caught back at the edge, the frantic horseman by the river-side gesticulating wildly, and the ebony figure erect and fearless, with the long streaming whip held out, taking that desperate leap as though of his own free will.

I think we spent the greater part of the day at the fall, looking at it under every effect of passing cloud-shadow or sunny sky, beneath the midday brilliancy of an almost tropical sun and in the soft pearly-gray tints of the short twilight. The young moon set almost as soon as she rose, and gave no light to speak of: it was therefore no use stumbling in the dark to the edge of so dangerous a cleft when we could see nothing except the ghostly shimmer of spray down below, and only hear the ceaseless roar of the water. So how do you think we amused ourselves after our late dinner? We went to a traveling circus advertised to play at Howick “for one night only.” That is to say, it was not there at all, because the wagons had all stuck fast in some of the holes in that fearful road. But the performing dogs and ponies had not stuck, nor the “boneless boy”. “He could not stick anywhere,” as G—— remarked, and they held a little performance of their own in a room at the other hotel. Thither we stumbled through pitchy darkness at nine o’clock, G—— insisting on being taken out of bed and dressed again to come with us. There was a good deal of difference between the behavior and demeanor of the black and white spectators of that small performance. The Kafirs sat silent, dignified and attentive, gazing with wide-open eyes at the “boneless boy,” who turned himself upside down and inside out in the most perplexing fashion. “What do you think of it?” I asked a Kafir who spoke English. “Him master take all him bone out ’fore him begin, inkosa-casa: when him finish, put ’em all back again inside him;” and indeed that was what our pliable friend looked like. We two ladies—for I had the rare treat of a charming companion of my own “sect” on this occasion—could not remain long, however, on account of our white neighbors. Many were drunk, all were uproarious. They lighted their cigars with delightful colonial courtesy and independence, and called freely for more liquor; so we were obliged to leave the boneless one in the precise attitude of one of those porcelain grotesque monsters one sees, his feet held tightly in his hands on either side of his little grinning Japanese face, and his body disposed comfortably in an arch over his head. Even G—— had to give up and come away, for he was stifled by smoke and frightened by the noise. The second rank of colonists here do not seem to me to be drawn from so respectable and self-respecting a class as those I came across in New Zealand and Australia. Perhaps it is demoralizing to them to find themselves, as it were, over the black population whom they affect to despise and yet cannot do without. They do not seem to desire contact with the larger world outside, nor to receive or welcome the idea of progress which is the life-blood of a young colony. Natal resembles an overgrown child with very bad manners and a magnificent ignorance of its own shortcomings.

At daylight next morning we were up betimes and made an early start, so as to avoid the heat of the morning sun. A dense mist lay close to the earth as far as the eye could reach, and out of its soft white billows only the highest of the hilltops peeped like islands in a lake of fleecy clouds. We bumped along in our usual style, here a hole, there a boulder, slipping now on a steep cutting—for this damp mist makes the hillsides very “greasy,” as our driver remarked—climbing painfully over ridge after ridge, until we came to the highest point of the road between us and Maritzburg. Here we paused for a few moments to breathe our panting team and to enjoy the magnificent view. I have at last seen a river worthy of the name, and now I see mountains—not the incessant rising hills which have opened out before me in each fresh ascent, but a splendid chain of lofty mountains—not peaks, for they are nearly all cut quite straight against the sky, but level lines far up beyond the clouds, which are just flushing red with the sunrise. The mountains are among and behind the clouds, and have not yet caught any of the light and color of the new day. They loom dimly among the growing cloud-splendors, cold and ashen and sombre, as befits their majestic outlines. These are the Drakenfels, snow-covered except in the hottest weather. I miss the serrated peaks of the Southern Alps and the grand confusion of the Himalayan range. These mountains are lofty, indeed rise far into cloudland, but except for a mighty crag or a huge notch here and there they represent a series of straight lines against the sky. This is evidently the peculiarity of the mountain-formation of South Africa. I noticed it first in Table Mountain at Cape Town: it is repeated in every little hill between D’Urban and Maritzburg, and now it is before me, carried out on a gigantic scale in this splendid range. My eye is not used to it, I suppose, for I hear better judges of outline and proportion than I am declare it is characteristic and soothing, with all sorts of complimentary adjectives to which I listen in respectful silence, but with which I cannot agree in my secret heart. I like mountains to have peaks for summits, and not horizontal lines, no matter how lofty these lines may be. It was a beautiful scene, for from the Drakenfels down to where we stood there rolled a very ocean of green, billowy hills, softly folded over each other, with delicious purple shadows in their hollows and shining pale-green lights on their sunny slopes. We had left the Umgeni so far behind that it only showed like a broad silver ribbon here and there, while the many red roads stretching away into the background certainly derived enchantment from distance. The foreground was made lively by an encampment of wagons which were just going to “in-span” and start. The women fussed about the gypsy-like fires getting breakfast, the Kafirs shouted to the bullocks prudently grazing until the last moment, and last, not least, to the intense delight of G——, four perfectly tame ostriches were walking leisurely among the wagons eating food out of the children’s hands and looking about for “digesters” among the grass. I felt inclined to point out the boulders with which the road was strewn to their favorable notice. They had come from far in the interior, from the distant borders of the Transvaal, a weary way off. These ostriches were the family pets, and were going to be sold and sent to England. The travelers—“trekkers” is the correct word—expected to get at least thirty-five pounds each for these splendid male birds in full plumage, and they were probably worth much more. We made a fresh start from this, and the best of our way into Maritzburg before the sun became too overpowering.