Let me see what we have been doing since I last wrote. I have had a Kafir princess to tea with me, and we have killed a snake in the baby’s nursery. That is to say, Jack killed the snake. Jack does everything in the house, and is at once the most amiable and the cleverest servant I ever had. Not Zulu Jack. He is so deaf, poor boy! he is not of much use except to clean saucepans and wash up pots and pans. He seems to have no sense of smell either, because I have to keep a strict watch over him that he does not introduce a flavor of kerosene oil into everything by his partiality for wiping cups and plates with dirty lamp-cloths instead of his own nice clean dusters. But he is very civil and quiet, leisurely in all he does, and a strict conservative in his notions of work, resenting the least change of employment. No: the other Jack is a tiny little man, also a Zulu, but he speaks English well, and it is his pride and delight to dress as an English “boy”—that is what he calls it—even to the wearing of agonizingly tight boots on his big feet. Jack learns all I can teach him of cooking with perfect ease, and gives us capital meals. He is the bravest of the establishment, and is always to the fore in a scrimmage, generally dealing the coup de grace in all combats with snakes. In this instance my first thought was to call Jack. I had tried to open the nursery-door one sunny midday to see if the baby was still asleep, and could not imagine what it was pressing so hard against the door and preventing my opening it. I determined to see, and lo! round the edge darted the head of a large snake, held well up in air, with the forked tongue out. He must have been trying to get out of the room, but I shut the door in his face and called for Jack, arming myself with my riding-whip. Jack came running up instantly, but declined all offers of walking-sticks from the hall, having no confidence in English sticks, and preferring to trust only to his own light strong staff. Cautiously we opened the door again, but the snake was drawn up in battle-array, coiled in a corner difficult to get at, and with outstretched neck and darting head. Jack advanced boldly, and fenced a little with the creature, pretending to strike it, but when he saw a good moment he dealt one shrewd blow which proved sufficient. Then I suddenly became very courageous (after Jack had cried with a grin of modest pride, “Him dead now, inkosa-casa”) and hit him several cuts with my whip, just to show my indignation at his having dared to invade the nursery and to drink up a cup of milk left for the baby. Baby woke up, and was delighted with the scrimmage, being extremely anxious to examine the dead snake, now dangling across Jack’s stick. We all went about with fear and suspicion after that for some days, as the rooms all open on to the verandah, and the snakes are very fond of finding a warm, quiet corner to hibernate in. There is now a strict search instituted into all recesses—into cupboards, behind curtains, and especially into F—— ’s tall riding-boots—but although several snakes have been seen and killed quite close to the house, I am bound to say this is the only one which has come in-doors. Frogs hop in whenever they can, and frighten us out of our lives by jumping out upon us in the dark, as we always think it is a snake and not a frog which startles us. It requires a certain amount of persuasion and remonstrance now to induce any of us to go into a room first in the dark, and there have been many false alarms and needless shrieks caused by the lash of one of G—— ’s many whips, or even a boot-lace, getting trodden upon in the dark.
My Kafir princess listened courteously to a highly dramatic narrative of this snake adventure as conveyed to her through the medium of Maria. But then she listened courteously to everything, and was altogether as perfect a specimen of a well-bred young lady as you would wish to see anywhere. Dignified and self-possessed, without the slightest self-assumption or consciousness, with the walk of an empress and the smile of a child, such was Mazikali, a young widow about twenty years of age, whose husband (I can neither spell nor pronounce his name) had been chief of the Putili tribe, whose location is far away to the north-west of us, by Bushman’s River, right under the shadow of the great range of the Drakensberg. This tribe came to grief in the late disturbances apropos of Langalibalele, and lost all their cattle, and what Mr. Wemmick would call their “portable property,” in some unexplained way. We evidently consider that it was what the Scotch call “our blame,” for every year there is a grant of money from our colonial exchequer to purchase this tribe ploughs and hoes, blankets and mealies, and so forth, but whilst the crops are growing it is rather hard times for them, and their pretty chieftainess occasionally comes down to Maritzburg to represent some particular case of suffering or hardship to their kind friend the minister for native affairs, who is always the man they fly to for help in all their troubles. Poor girl! she is going through an anxious time keeping the clanship open for her only son, a boy five years old, whom she proudly speaks of as “Captain Lucas,” but whose real name is Luke.
I was drinking my afternoon tea as usual in the verandah one cold Sunday afternoon lately when Mazikali paid me this visit, so I had a good view of her as she walked up the drive attended by her maid of honor (one of whose duties is to remove stones and other obstructions from her lady’s path), and closely followed by about a dozen elderly, grave “ringed” men, who never leave her, and are, as it were, her body-guard. There was something very pretty and pathetic, to any one knowing how a Kafir woman is despised by her lords and masters, in the devotion and anxious care and respect which these tall warriors and councilors paid to this gentle-eyed, grave-faced girl. Their pride and delight in my reception of her were the most touching things in the world. I went to meet her as she walked at the head of her followers with her graceful carriage and queenly gait. She gave me her hand, smiling charmingly, and I led her up the verandah steps and placed her in a large arm-chair, and two or three gentlemen who chanced to be there raised their hats to her. The delight of her people at all this knew no bounds: their keen dusky faces glowed with pride, and they raised their right hands in salutation before sitting down on the edge of the verandah, all facing their mistress, and hardly taking their eyes off her for a moment. Maria came to interpret for us, which she did very prettily, smiling sweetly; but the great success of the affair came from the baby, who toddled round the corner, and seeing this brightly-draped figure in a big chair, threw up his little hand and cried “Bayete!” It was quite a happy thought, and was rapturously received by the indunas with loud shouts of “Inkosi! inkosi!” whilst even the princess looked pleased in her composed manner. I offered her some tea, which she took without milk, managing her cup and saucer, and even spoon, as if she had been used to it all her life, though I confess to a slight feeling of nervousness, remembering the brittle nature of china as compared to calabashes or to Kafir wooden bowls. F—— gave each of her retinue a cigar, which they immediately crumbled up and took in the form of snuff with many grateful grunts of satisfaction.
Now, there is nothing in the world which palls so soon as compliments, and our conversation, being chiefly of this nature, began to languish dreadfully. Maria had conveyed to the princess several times my pleasure in receiving her, and my hope that she and her people would get over this difficult time and prosper everlastingly. To this the princess had answered that her heart rejoiced at having had its own way, and directed her up the hill which led to my house, and that even after she had descended the path again, it would eternally remember the white lady. This was indeed a figure of speech, for by dint of living in the verandah, rushing out after the children, and my generally gypsy habits, Mazikali is not very much darker than I am. All this time the little maid of honor had sat shivering close by, munching a large slice of cake and staring with her big eyes at my English nurse. She now broke silence by a fearfully distinct inquiry as to whether that other white woman was not a secondary or subsidiary wife. This question set Maria off into such fits of laughter, and covered poor little Nanna with so much confusion, that as a diversion I brought forward my gifts to the princess, consisting of a large crystal cross and a pair of ear-rings. The reason I gave her these ornaments was because I heard she had parted with everything of that sort she possessed in the world to relieve the distresses of her people. The cross hung upon a bright ribbon which I tied round her throat. All her followers sprang to their feet, waved their sticks and cried, “Hail to the chieftainess!” But, alas! there was a professional beggar attached to the party, who evidently considered the opportunity as too good to be lost, and drew Maria aside, suggesting that as the white lady was evidently enormously rich and very foolish, it would be as well to mention that the princess had only skins of wild beasts to wear (she had on a petticoat or kilt of lynx-skins, and her shoulders were wrapped in a gay striped blanket, which fell in graceful folds nearly to her feet), and suffered horribly from cold. He added that there never was such a tiresome girl, for she never would ask for anything; and how was she to get it without? Besides which, if she had such a dislike to asking for herself, she surely might speak about things for them: an old coat, now, or a hat, would be highly acceptable to himself, and so would a little money. But Mazikali turned quite fiercely on him, ordering him to hold his tongue, and demanding if that was the way to receive kindness, by asking for more?
The beggar’s remark, however, had the effect of drawing my attention to the princess’s scanty garb. I have said it was a bitterly cold evening, and so the maid of honor pronounced it, shivering; so Nurse and I went to our boxes and had a good hunt, returning with a warm knitted petticoat, a shawl and two sets of flannel bathing-dresses. One was perfectly new, of crimson flannel trimmed with a profusion of white braid. Of course this was for the princess, and she and her maiden retired to Maria’s room and equipped themselves, finding much difficulty, however, in getting into the bathing-suits, and marveling much at the perplexing fashion in which white women made their clothes. The maid of honor was careful to hang her solitary decorations, two small round bits of looking-glass, outside her skeleton suit of blue serge, and we found her an old woolen table-cover which she arranged into graceful shawl-folds with one clever twist of her skinny little arm. Just as they turned to leave the room, Maria told me, this damsel said, “Now, ma’am, if we only had a little red earth to color our foreheads, and a few brass rings, we should look very nice;” but the princess rejoined, “Whatever you do, don’t ask for anything;” which, I must say, I thought very nice. So I led her back again to her watchful followers, who hailed her improved appearance with loud shouts of delight. She then took her leave with many simple and graceful protestations of gratitude, but I confess it gave me a pang when she said with a sigh, “Ah, if all white inkosa-casas were like you, and kind to us Kafir-women!” I could not help thinking how little I had really done, and how much more we might all do.
I must mention that, by way of amusing Mazikali, I had shown her some large photographs of the queen and the royal family, explaining to her very carefully who they all were. She looked very attentively at Her Majesty’s portrait, and then held it up to her followers, who rose of their own accord and saluted it with the royal greeting of “Bayete!” and as Mazikali laid it down again she remarked pensively, “I am very glad the great white chieftainess has such a kind face. I should not be at all afraid of going to tell her any of my troubles: I am sure she is a kind and good lady.” Mazikali herself admired the princess of Wales’ portrait immensely, and gazed at it for a long time, but I am sorry to say her followers persisted in declaring it was only a very pretty girl, and reserved all their grunts and shouts of respectful admiration for a portrait of the duke of Cambridge in full uniform. “Oh! the great fighting inkosi! Look at his sword and the feathers in that beautiful hat! How the hearts of his foes must melt away before his terrible and splendid face!” But indeed on each portrait they had some shrewd remark to make, tracing family likenesses with great quickness, and asking minute questions about relationship, succession, etc. They took a special interest in hearing about the prince of Wales going to India, and immediately wished His Royal Highness would come here and shoot buffalo and harte-beeste.
June 15.
We had such a nice Cockney family picnic ten days ago, on Whit-Monday! F—— had been bewailing himself about this holiday beforehand, declaring he should not know what to do with himself, and regretting that holidays had ever been invented, and so on, until I felt that it was absolutely necessary to provide him with some out-door occupation for the day. There was no anxiety about the weather, for it is only too “set fair” all round, and the water shrinks away and the dust increases upon us day by day. But there was an anxiety about where to go and how to get to any place. “Such a bad road!” was the objection raised to every place I proposed, or else it was voted too far. At last all difficulties were met by a suggestion of spending a “happy day” at the falls of the lower Umgeni, only a dozen miles away, and the use of the mule-wagon. Everything was propitious, even to the materials for a cold dinner being handy, and we bundled in ever so many boys, Nurse and myself, and Maria in her brightest cotton frock and literally beaming with smiles, which every now and then broke out into a joyous, childish laugh of pure delight at nothing at all. She came to carry the baby, who loves her better than any one, and who understands Kafir better than English. The great thing was, that everybody had the companions they liked: as I have said, Baby had his Maria, F—— had secured a pleasant friend to ride with him, so as to be independent of the wagon, G—— had his two favorite little schoolfellows, and I—well, I had the luncheon-basket, and that was quite enough for me to think of. I kept remembering spasmodically divers omissions made in the hurry of packing it up; for, like all pleasant parties, it was quite à l’imprévu, and that made me rather anxious. It was really a delicious morning, sunny and yet cool, with everything around looking bright and glowing under the beautiful light. The near hills seemed to fold the little quiet town in soft round curves melting and blending into each other, whilst the ever-rising and more distant outlines showed exquisite indigo shadows and bold relief of purple and brown. The greenery of spring and summer is all parched and dried away now, but the red African soil takes in the distance warm hues and tints which make up for the delicate coloring of young grass. Here and there, as it glows beneath the sun and a slow-sailing cloud casts a shadow, it changes from its own rich indescribable color to the purple of a heather-covered Scotch moor, but while one looks the cloud has passed away, the violet tints die out, and it is again a bare red hillside which lies before you. A steep hillside, too, for the poor mules, but they breast it bravely at a jog trot, with their jangling bells and patient bowed heads, and we are soon at the top, looking down on the clouds of our own dust. The wind—or rather the soft air, for it is hardly a wind—blows straight in our faces as we trot on toward the south-west, and it drives the mass of finely-powdered dust raised by the heels of the six mules far behind us, to our great contentment and comfort. The two gentlemen on horseback are fain to keep clear of us and our dust, and to take a short cut whenever they can get off the highroad, which in this case and at this time of year is really a very good one. Inside the wagon, under the high hood, it is deliciously cool, but the boys are in such tearing spirits that I don’t know what to do with them. Every now and then, when we are going up hill, they jump out of the wagon and search the hillside for a yellow flower, a sort of everlasting, out of the petals of which they extemporize shrill whistles; and when their invention in this line falls short, Maria steps in with a fresh suggestion. They make fearful pipes of reeds, they chirp like the grasshoppers, they all chatter and laugh together like so many magpies. When I am quite at my wits’ end I produce buns, and these keep them quiet for full five minutes, but not longer.
At last, after two hours’ steady up-hill pulling on the part of the mules, we have reached the great plateau from which the Umgeni takes its second leap, the first being at Howick. There, the sight of the great river rolling wide and swift between its high banks keeps the boys quiet with surprise and delight for a short space, and before they have found their tongues again the wagon has noisily crossed a resounding wooden bridge and drawn up at the door of an inn. Here the mules find rest and shelter, as well as their Hottentot drivers, whilst we are only beginning our day’s work. As for the boys, their whole souls are absorbed in their fishing-rods: they grudge the idea of wasting time in eating dinner, and stipulate earnestly that they may be allowed to “eat fast.” We find and charter a couple of tall Kafirs to carry the provision-baskets; F—— and his companion take careful and tender charge each of a bottle of beer; Maria shoulders the baby; I cling to my little teapot; Nurse seizes a bottle of milk, and away we all go down the dusty road again, over the bridge (the boys don’t want to go a yard farther, for they see some Kafirs fishing below), across a burnt-up meadow, through scrub of terrible thorniness, and so on, guided by the rush and roar of the falling water, to our dining-room among the great boulders beneath the shade of the chief cascade. Unlike the one grand, concentrated leap of the river we saw at Howick, here it tumbles in a dozen places over a wide semicircular ledge of basalt. It is no joke to any one except the boys—who seem to enjoy tumbling about and grazing their elbows and chins—getting over the wet, slippery rocks which have to be crossed to get to the place we want. I tremble for the milk and the beer, and the teapot and I slip down repeatedly, but I am under no apprehension about Maria and the baby, for she plants her broad, big, bare feet firmly on the rocks, and steps over their wet, slippery surface with the ease and grace of a stout gazelle. Once, and once only, is she in danger, but it is because she is laughing so immoderately at the baby’s suggestion, made in lisping Kafir when he first caught sight of the waterfall, that we should all have a bath there and then.
The falls are not in their fullest splendor to-day, for this is the dry season, and even the great Umgeni acknowledges the drain of burning sunshine day after day, and is rather more economical in her display of tumbling water and iridescent spray. Still, all is very beautiful, and in spite of our hunger—for we are all wellnigh ravenous—we climb various rocks of vantage to see the fine semicircle of cascades gleaming white among tufts of green scrub and massive boulders. In the wet season, of course, much that we see now of rock and tree is hidden by the greater volume of water, but they add greatly to the sylvan beauty of the fair scene. It is quite cold in the shade, but we have no choice, for where the sun shines invitingly there is not a foot of level rock and not an inch of soft white sand like the floor of our dining-room. Such an indignant twitter as the birds raise, hardly to be pacified by crumbs and scraps of the rapidly-vanishing bread and meat, salad and pudding! But the days are so short now that we cannot spare ourselves half the time we want either to eat or rest, or to linger and listen to the great monotonous roar of falling water, so agitating at first, so soothing after a little while. The boys have bolted their dinner, plunged their heads and hands under a tiny tricklet close by, and are off to the shallows beneath the bridge, where the river runs wide and low, where geese are cackling on the boulders, fish leaping in the pools, and Kafir lads laughing and splashing on the brink. We leave Baby and his nurse in charge of the birds’ dinner until the men return for the lightened baskets, and we three “grown-ups” start for a sharp scramble up the face of the cliff, over the bed of a dry watercourse, to look at the wonderful expanse of the great river coming down from the purple hills on the horizon, sweeping across the vast, almost level, plain in a magnificent tranquil curve, wide as an inland lake, until it falls abruptly over the precipice before it. Scarcely a ripple on the calm surface, scarcely a quickening of its steady, tranquil flow, and yet it has gone, dropped clean out of sight, and that monotonous roar is the noise of its fall. I should like to see it in summer, when its stately progress is quickened and its limpid waters stained by the overflow of countless lesser streams into its broad bosom, and when its banks are fringed with tufts of tall white arum lilies—now only green folded leaves, shrunken as close to the water’s edge as they can get—and when the carpet of violets beneath our feet is a sheet of blossom flecked with gayer flowers all over this great spreading veldt. To-day the wish of my heart, of all our hearts, is for a canoe apiece. Oh for the days of fairy thievery, to be able to swoop down upon Mr. Searle’s yard and snatch up three perfect little canoes, paddles, sails, waterproof aprons and all, and put them down over there by that clump of lilies and crimson bushes! What a race we could have for clear eight miles up that shining reach, between banks which are never nearer than sixty or seventy feet to each other, and where the river is as smooth as glass, and free from let or hindrance to a canoe for all that distance! But, alas! there are neither roguish fairies nor stolen canoes to be seen—nothing except one’s rough-and-ready fishing-rod and the everlasting mealie-meal worked into a paste for bait. We are too impatient to give it a fair trial, although the fish are leaping all around, for already the sun is traveling fast toward those high western hills, and when once he gets behind the tallest of the peaks darkness will be upon us in five minutes. We should be much more careful of our minutes even, did there not chance to be an early moon, already a silver disk in yonder bright blue sky. The homeward path is longer and easier, and leads us more circuitously back to the bridge, beneath which I am horrified to find G—— and his friends, their fishing-rods and one small fish on the bank, disporting themselves in the water, with nothing on save their hats. G—— is not at all dismayed at my shrill reproaches to him from the high bridge above, but suggests that I should throw him down my pocket handkerchief for a towel, and promises to dress and come up to the house directly. So I, with the thoughts of my tea in my mind—for we have not been able to have a fire at the falls—hurry up to the inn, and have time for a look round before the boys are ready. It is all so odd—such a strange jumble, such a thorough example of the queer upside-down fashion of colonizing which reigns here—that I cannot help describing it. A fairly good, straggling house with sufficiently good furniture, and plenty of it, and an apparent abundance of good glass and crockery. A sort of bar also, with substantial array of bottles and tins of biscuits and preserved meats and pickles of all sorts and kinds. But what I want you to bear in mind is, that all this came from England, and has finally been brought up here, nearly seventy miles from the coast, at an enormous trouble and expense. There are several young white people about the place, but a person of that class in Natal is too fine to work, and in five minutes I hear fifty complaints of want of labor and of the idleness of the Kafirs. There is no garden, no poultry-yard, no dairy. Here, with the means of irrigation at their very doors, with the possibility of food for cattle all the year round at the cost of a little personal trouble, there is neither a drop of milk nor an ounce of butter to be had. Nor an egg: “The fowls don’t do so very well.” I should think not, with such accommodation as they have in the way of water and food. For more than twenty years that house has stood there, a generation has grown up around it and in it, and yet it might as well have been built last year for all the signs of a homestead about it. There is somewhere a mealie-patch, and perhaps a few acres of green forage, and that is all. Now, in Australia or New Zealand, in a more rigorous climate, under far greater disadvantages, the dwellers in that house would have had farmyard and grain-fields, garden and poultry-yard, about them in five years, and all the necessary labor would have been performed by the master and mistress and their sons and daughters. Here they all sit in-doors, listless and discontented, grumbling because the Kafirs won’t come and work for them. I can’t make it out, and I confess I long to give all this sort of colonists a good shaking, and take away every single Kafir from them. I am sure they would get on a thousand times better. The only thing is, it is too late to shake energy and thrift into elderly or already grown-up people. They get on very well as it is, they say, and make money, which is all they care for, having no pride in neatness or order, and setting no value on the good opinion of others. They can sell their beer and pickles and tins of meat and milk at double and treble what they cost; and that is less fatiguing than digging and fencing and churning. So the tea has no milk and the bread no butter where twenty years ago cows were somewhere about five shillings apiece, and we get on as well as we can without them; but I long, up to the very last, to shake them all round, especially the fat, pallid young people. Fortunately for Her Majesty’s peace, I refrain from this expression of my opinion, and get myself and all my boys into the mule-wagon, and so off again, jogging homeward before the sun has dipped behind that great blue hill. Long ere we have gone halfway the daylight has all died away, and the boys find fresh cause for shouts of delight at the fantastic shadows the moon casts as she glides in and out of her cloud-palaces.