Life in South Africa

by Lady Barker

By the time we had spent half an hour in the kraal the sun had long since gained the shelter of the western hills and sunk behind them, taking with him apparently every vestige of daylight out of the sky. No one who has not felt it could believe the rapidity of the change in the temperature. So long as there was sunlight it was too hot. In half an hour it was bitingly, bitterly cold. We could not go fast down the rocky tracks, but we cantered over every inch of available space—cantered for the sake of warming ourselves as much as to get home. The young moon gave us light enough to keep on the right track, but I don’t think I ever was so cold in my life as when we reached home about half-past six. The wood-fire in the little drawing-room—the only room with a fireplace—seemed indeed delicious, and so did a cup of tea so hot as to be almost scalding. F—— declared that I was of a bright-blue color, and I admit that I came nearer to understanding what being frozen to death meant than I had ever done before. Yet there was not much frost, but one suffered from the reaction after the burning heat of the day and from the impossibility of taking any wraps with one.

July 12.

Don’t think I am going to let you off from my usual monthly grumble about the weather. Not a bit of it! It is worse than ever. At this moment a violent and bitterly cold gale of wind is blowing, and I hear the red tiles flying off the house, which I fully expect will be a regular sieve by the time the rains come. Not one drop of rain have we had these six weeks, and people remark that “the dry season is beginning.” Everything smells and tastes of dust—one’s clothes, the furniture, everything. If I sit down in an arm-chair, I disturb a cloud of dust; my pillow is, I am convinced, stuffed with it; my writing-table is inches deep in it. All the food is flavored with it, and Don Quixote’s enemies could not more persistently “bite the dust” than we do at each meal. Yet when I venture to mention this drawback in answer to the usual question, “Is not this delicious weather?” the answer is always, “Oh, but you can have no dust here: you should see what it is in town!” Between us and the town is an ever-flying scud of dust, through which we can but ill discern the wagons. I wonder there are no accidents, for one often hears a wagon before and behind one when it is impossible to see anything through the choking, suffocating cloud around one. Of a still day, when you carry your own dust quietly along with you, there is nothing for it except to stop at home if you wish to keep your temper. The other day little G—— was about to suffer the extreme penalty of the domestic law for flagrant disobedience, and he remarked dryly to the reluctant executioner, “You had better take care: I am very dusty.” It was quite true, for the slipper elicited such clouds of dust from the little blue serge suit that the chastisement had to be curtailed, much to the culprit’s satisfaction. As for the baby, he was discovered the other day taking a dust-bath exactly like the chickens, and considered it very hard to be stopped in his amusement. Every now and then we have a dust-storm: there have been two this month already, perfect hurricanes of cold wind driving the dust in solid sheets before them. Nearer the coast these storms have been followed by welcome rain, but here we are still dry and parched. The only water-supply we (speaking individually) have is brought in buckets from the river, about half a mile off, and one has to wash in it and drink it with closed eyes. But it cannot be unwholesome, thank Heaven! for most of us take nothing else and are very well. I owe it a grudge, however, on account of its extraordinary hardness. Not only does it spoil the flavor of my beloved tea, but it chaps our skins frightfully; and what with the dust in the pores, and the chronic irritation caused by some strange peculiarity in the climate, we are all like nutmeg-graters, and one can understand the common-sense of a Kafir’s toilette, into which grease enters largely. Yet in spite of dust and dryness—for everything is ludicrously dry, sugar and salt are so many solid cakes, not to be dealt with by means of a spoon at all—one is very thankful for the cold, bracing weather, and unless there is a necessity for fronting the dust, we contrive to enjoy many of the pleasant sunshiny hours in the verandah; and I rejoice to see the roses blooming again in the children’s cheeks. Every evening we have a wood-fire on the open hearth in the drawing-room, and there have been sharp frosts lately. The waving tips of the poor bamboos look sadly yellow, but I have two fine flourishing young camellias out of doors without shelter of any kind, and my supply of roses has never failed from those trees which get regularly watered. The foliage, too, of the geraniums is as luxuriant as ever, though each leaf is white with dust, but the first shower will make them lovely once more.

Quail passed over here a few days ago in dense, solid clouds, leaving many weary stragglers here and there on the veldt to delight the sportsmen. I am told it is a strange and wonderful sight to see these birds sweep—sometimes in the dead silence of a moonlight night, flying low and compactly, beating the air with the monotonous whir of their untiring wings—down one of the wide, empty streets of quiet Maritzburg, so close to the bystander that a stick would knock some over. And to think of the distance they have traveled thus! For hundreds and hundreds of miles, over deserts and lakes at whose existence we can but dimly guess, the little wayfarers have journeyed, from the far interior down to the seaboard of this great continent. Last season a weary pair dropped down among my rose-bushes, but no sportsman knew of their visit, for I found them established there when I came, and jealously guarded their secret for them; but I don’t know yet whether any others have claimed my hospitality and protection, in the same way, poor pretty creatures!

I was seized with a sudden wish the other day to see the market here, and accordingly got my household up very early one of these cold mornings, hurried breakfast over, and drove down to the market-square exactly at nine A. M., when the sales commence. Everything is sold by auction, but sold with a rapidity which seemed magical to me. I saw some fine potatoes a dozen yards away from where the market-master was selling with lightning speed wagon-load after wagon-load of fresh green forage. I certainly heard “Two and a halfpenny, two and three farthings—thank you! gone!” coming rather near, and I had gone so far in my own mind as to determine which of my friends—for heaps of people I knew were there—I should ask to manage it for me. But like a wave the bidding swept over my potatoes—I quite looked upon them as mine—and they were gone. So, as I did not want any firewood, and there were only about a dozen huge wagons piled high up with lopped branches and limbs of trees, and as I had begun to perceive that a dozen wagon-loads were nothing to the rapid utterance of the market-master, I went into the market-hall to look at the fruit and vegetables, eggs and butter, with which the tables were fairly well covered. There was very little poultry, and a pair of ducks toward which I felt somewhat attracted went for six shillings sixpence each, directly the bidding began. So I consoled myself by purchasing, still in a vicarious manner by means of a friend, three turkeys. Such a bargain! the only cheap things I have seen in Natal. Only nine shillings ninepence apiece!—beautiful full-grown turkeys—two hens and a cock, just what I wanted. Of course, everybody clustered round me, and began to damp my joy directly by pouring statistics into my ears of the mortality among turkey-chicks and the certain ill-fortune which would attend my efforts to rear them. But it is too early in the season yet for such anxieties, and I am free for the next two months to admire my turkeys as much as I choose without breaking my heart over the untimely fate of their offspring. Yes, these turkeys were the only cheap things: butter sold easily at three shillings ninepence a pound, eggs at three shillings a dozen, and potatoes and other vegetables at pretty nearly Covent Garden prices. It gave one a good idea of the chronic state of famine even so little a town as this lives in to see the clean sweep made of every single thing, live and dead—always excepting my turkeys—in ten minutes after the market-master entered the building. I am sure treble the quantity would have been snapped up quite as quickly. Such odd miscellaneous things!—bacon, cheese, pumpkins, all jumbled together. Then outside for a few moments, to finish up with a few wheelbarrows of green barley, a basket or two of mealies, and some fagots of firewood brought in by the Kafirs; and lo! in something less than an hour it was all over, and hungry Maritzburg had swallowed up all she could get for the day. The market-master was now at liberty—after explaining to a Kafir or two that it was not, strictly speaking, right to sell your wheelbarrow-load twice over, once privately and once publicly—to show me the market-hall, a very creditable building, large and commodious, well roofed and lighted. Knowing as I did the exceeding slowness of building operations in Maritzburg, it struck me as little less than marvelous to hear that it had actually been run up in twenty-one days. No lesser pressure than Prince Alfred’s visit about fifteen years ago could have induced such Aladdin-like rapidity; but the loyal Maritzburgers wanted to give their sailor-prince a ball, and there was no room in the whole town capable of holding one-quarter of the people who wanted to see the royal midshipman. So Kafirs and whites and men of all colors fell to with a will, and hammered night and day until all was finished, extempore chandeliers of painted hoops dangling in all directions, flowers and flags hiding the rough-and-ready walls, and the “lion and the unicorn fighting for the crown” in orthodox fashion over the doorway, where they remain to this day. The only thing that puzzles me is whether the floor was at all more even then than now, for at present it is nearly as much up and down as the waves of the Indian Ocean.

Now, too, that there were no more domestic purchases to be made, I could look about and see how quaint and picturesque it all was. In summer the effect must really be charming with the double bordering of acacia trees fresh and green instead of leafless and dusty; the queer little Dutch church, with its hugely disproportionate weathercock shining large and bright in the streaming sunlight; the teams of patient bullocks moving slowly off again through the dust with wagons of forage or firewood to be dragged to their various destinations; and the fast-melting, heterogeneous crowd of Kafirs and coolies, Dutch and English—some with baskets, some with dangling poultry or carefully-carried tins of eggs, but none with turkeys. The market-hall and its immediate vicinity became quite deserted, but the crowd seemed reassembling a little lower down, where a weekly auction was being held in a primitive fashion out in the open air beneath the acacia trees. A stalwart Kafir wandered about listlessly ringing a large bell, and the auctioneer, mounted on a table, was effecting what he called a clearance sale, apparently of all the old rubbish in the place. Condemned military stores, such as tents and greatcoats, pianos from which the very ghost of tone had fled years ago, cracked china, broken chairs, crinolines, fiddles, kettles, faded pictures under flyblown glasses, empty bottles, old baskets,—all were “going, going, gone” whilst we stood there, drifting away to other homes all over the place. I pass every day an ingenious though lowly family mansion made solely and entirely of the sheets of zinc out of boxes, fastened together in some strange fashion: roof, walls, flooring, all are of it. There is neither door nor window facing the road, so I don’t know how they are put in, but I can imagine how that hovel must creak in a high wind. What mysterious law of gravitation keeps it down to the ground I have failed to discover, nor do I know how the walls are supported even in their leaning position. Well, I saw the owner of this cot, a Dutchman, buying furniture, and he was very near purchasing the piano under the impression it was a folding-up bedstead. I have always taken such an interest in the zinc dwelling that it was with difficulty I could refrain from giving my opinion about its furniture.

But the sun is getting high, and it is ten o’clock and past—quite time for all housewives to be at home and the men at their business; so the clearance sale ends like a transformation-scene. Kafirs hoist ponderous burdens on their heads and walk off unconcernedly with them, and the odds and ends of what were once household goods disappear round the corner. My early rising makes me feel as dissipated as one does after going to a wedding, and I can’t help a reluctance to go back to the daily routine of G—— ’s lessons and baby’s pinafores, it seems so delightful to idle about in the sunshine in spite of the dust. What is there to do or to see? What excuse can any one find at a moment’s notice to prevent my going home just yet? It is an anxious thought, for there is nothing to do, and nothing to see beyond wagons and oxen, in the length and breadth of Maritzburg. Some one fortunately recollects the mill—there is only one in the whole place—and avers that wool-scouring is going on there at the present time. At all events, it is a charming drive, and in five minutes we are trotting along, raising a fine cloud of dust on the road which leads to the park. When the river-side has been reached— poor, shrunken Umsindusi! it is a mere rivulet now, and thoroughly shrunken and depressed—we turn off and follow the windings of the banks for a few hundred yards till we come to where the mill-wheel catches and makes use of a tiny streamlet just as it is entering the river. It is a very picturesque spot, although the immediate country around is flat and uninteresting; but there is such a profusion of willow trees, such beautiful tufts of tall willow-ferns, such clumps of grasses, that the old brick buildings are hidden and shaded by all manner of waving branches. Then in front is the inevitable wagon, the long, straggling span of meagre oxen with their tiny black forelooper and attendant Kafirs. This is indeed beginning at the end of the story, for into the wagon big neat bales all ready for shipment—bales which have been “dumped” and branded—are being lowered by a crane out of a large upper story. Very different do these bales look as they now depart from those in which the wool arrives. With the characteristic untidiness and makeshift fashion of the whole country, the wool is loosely and carelessly stuffed into inferior bales, which become ragged and filthy by the time they reach this, and are a discredit to the place as they pass along the streets. That is the state in which it is brought here and delivered over to the care of the wool-scourers. The first step is to sort it all, sift the coarsest dirt out of it, and then away it goes, first into a bath of soda and water, and afterward into many succeeding tubs of cooler water, until at last it emerges, dripping indeed, but cleansed from burrs and seeds, and white as the driven show, to be next laid out on a terrace sheltered from dust and wind and dried rapidly under the burning South African sun. Then there is the steam-press, which squeezes it tightly into these neat, trim bales, and a hydraulic machine which gives it that one turn more of the screw which is supposed to constitute the difference between neuralgia and gout, but which here marks the difference between “dumped” and “undumped” bales. The iron bands are riveted with a resounding clang or two, the letters are rapidly brushed in over their iron plate, and the bale is pronounced finished. A very creditable piece of work it is, too—neat and tidy outside and fair and honest inside. I heard none of the usual excuses for dirt and untidiness—no “Oh, one cannot get the Kafirs to do anything.” There was a sufficiency of Kafirs at work under the eyes of the masters, but there was no ill-temper or rough language. All was methodical and business-like, every detail seen to and carried thoroughly out from first to last, and the result something to be proud of. The machinery combed and raked and dipped with monotonous patience, and many an ingenious connecting-rod or band saved time and labor. I declare it was the most encouraging and satisfactory thing I have seen since I came, apart from the real pleasure of looking at a bale of wool turned out as it used to be from every wool-shed in New Zealand, instead of the untidy bundles one sees slowly traveling down to Durham, not even well packed in the wagons. Apart from this, it is inspiriting to see the resources of the place made the best of, and everything kept up to the mark of a high standard of excellence. There were no incomplete or makeshift contrivances, and the two bright, active young masters going about and seeing to everything themselves, as colonists ought to do, were each a contrast to the ordinary loafing, pale-faced, unkempt overseer of half a dozen creeping Kafirs that represent the labor-market here.

I feel, however, as if I were rather “loafing” myself, and am certainly very idle, for it is past midday before G—— has half enough examined the establishment and tumbled often enough in and out of the wool-press; so we leave the cool shade of the willows and the mesmeric throb of the mill-wheel, and drive home through the dust once more to our own little house on the hill.

Ever since I began this letter I have been wanting to tell you of an absurd visitor I had the other day, and my poor little story has very nearly been crowded out by other things. A couple of mornings ago I was very busy making a new cotton skirt for “Malia”—for I am her sole dressmaker, and she keeps me at work always, what with growing into a stout grenadier of a girl, and what with rending these skirts upon all occasions. Well, I was getting over the seams at a fine rate on the sewing-machine, which I had moved out into the verandah for light and warmth, when I became aware of a shadow between me and the sun. It was a very little shadow, and the substance of it was the tiniest old Dutchman you ever saw in your life. I assure you my first idea was that I must be looking at a little goblin, he was so precisely like the pictures one sees in the illustrations of a fairy-tale. His long waistcoat of a gay-flowered chintz, his odd, square-tailed coat and square shoes, his wide, short breeches and pointed hat were all in keeping with the goblin theory. But his face! I was too startled to laugh, but it ought to have been sketched on the spot. No apple ever was more rosy, no snake-skin ever more wrinkled. Eyes, blue and keen as steel, gleamed out at me from beneath enormous shaggy brows, and his nose and chin were precisely like Punch’s. I wonder what he thought of me? My eyes were as round as marbles, and I do believe my mouth was wide open. He gave a sort of nod, and in a strange dialect said something to which I in my bewilderment answered “Ja,” being the one single word of Dutch I know. This misleading reply encouraged my weird visitor to sit down on the steps before me, to take off his hat, mop his thin, long gray locks, and to launch forth with much pantomime into a long story of which I did not understand one word, for the simple reason that it was all literally in High Dutch. Here was a pretty predicament!—alone with a goblin to whom I had just told a flat falsehood, for evidently his first inquiry, of which I only caught the word “Hollands,” and which I imagined to refer to gin, must have been a demand as to whether I understood his language! And I had said “Ja!” It was dreadful. In my dismay I remembered having heard somebody say “Nic,” and I even followed it up with a faltering “Stehts nic” (“I don’t understand”), which also came to me in my extremity. This contradictory answer puzzled my old gentleman, and he looked at me frowningly; but I had always heard that courage is everything with goblins, so I smiled and said inquiringly “Ja?” again. He shook his head reprovingly, and then by the aid of ticking off each word on his fingers, and stopping at it until he thought I understood, he contrived, by means of German and English and Kafir, only breaking out into Dutch at the very interesting parts, to tell me that he was in search of a little black ox. I must clearly understand that it was “schwartz,” and also that the “pfennigs” it had cost were many. The ox seems to have been a regular demon if his story was anything like true. No rest had he had (here a regular pantomime of going to sleep); from over Berg had he come; he had bought this wayward beast from one Herr Schmidt, an inkosi. A great deal of shaking of the head here, which must have meant that this Herr Inkosi had cheated him. Yet I longed to ask how one could get the better of a goblin. I didn’t know it was to be done. From the moment the “klein schwartz” ox changed masters my small friend’s troubles began. “Früh in de morgen” did that ox get away every day: in vain was it put in kraals at night, in vain did Kafirs search for it (great acting here of following up a spoor): it was over the berg and far away. He was drie tags mit nodings to eat av mealies. It was a long story, but the refrain was always, “Vere hat dat leetel ox, dat schwartzen ox, got to?” If I am to say the exact truth, he once demanded, “Vere das teufels dat leetel ox hat be?” but I looked so shocked that he took off his steeple-crowned hat deprecatingly. “Sprechen Sie Kafir?” I asked in despair, but it was no better. His countenance brightened, and he went through it all again in Kafir, and the “inkomo” was quite as prominent as the ox had been. Of course I meant that he should speak to some of my Kafirs about it if he knew their language. I believe we should have been there to this day talking gibberish to each other if little G—— had not appeared suddenly round the corner and taken the matter into his own hands.

“Why, what a queer old man that is, mumsey! Wherever did you find him, and what does he want?” G—— demanded with true colonial brevity.