February 18th.—I expect to receive the letters by the English mail to-morrow morning, and to go to Worcester on Thursday. On Saturday the young doctor—good-humoured, jolly, big, young Dutchman—drove me, with his pretty little greys, over to two farms; at one I ate half a huge melon, and at the other, uncounted grapes. We poor Europeans don’t know what fruit can be, I must admit. The melon was a foretaste of paradise, and the grapes made one’s fingers as sticky as honey, and had a muscat fragrance quite inconceivable. They looked like amber eggs. The best of it is, too, that in this climate stomach-aches are not. We all eat grapes, peaches, and figs, all day long. Old Klein sends me, for my own daily consumption, about thirty peaches, three pounds of grapes, and apples, pears, and figs besides—‘just a little taste of fruits’; only here they will pick it all unripe.
February 19th.—The post came in late last night, and old Klein kindly sent me my letters at near midnight. The post goes out this evening, and the hot wind is blowing, so I can only write to you, and a line to my mother. I feel really better now. I think the constant eating of grapes has done me much good.
The Dutch cart-owner was so extortionate, that I am going to wait a few days, and write to my dear Malay to come up and drive me back. It is better than having to fight the Dutch monopolist in every village, and getting drunken drivers and bad carts after all. I shall go round all the same. The weather has been beautiful; to-day there is a wind, which comes about two or three times in the year: it is not depressing, but hot, and a bore, because one must shut every window or be stifled with dust.
The people are burning the veld all about, and the lurid smoke by day and flaming hill-sides by night are very striking. The ashes of the Bosh serve as manure for the young grass, which will sprout in the autumn rains. Such nights! Such a moon! I walk out after dark when it is mild and clear, and can read any print by the moonlight, and see the distant landscape as well as by day.
Old Klein has just sent me a haunch of bok, and the skin and hoofs, which are pretty.
LETTER VIII
Caledon, Sunday.
You must have fallen into second childhood to think of printing such rambling hasty scrawls as I write. I never could write a good letter; and unless I gallop as hard as I can, and don’t stop to think, I can say nothing; so all is confused and unconnected: only I fancy you will be amused by some of my ‘impressions’. I have written to my mother an accurate account of my health. I am dressed and out of doors never later than six, now the weather makes it possible. It is surprising how little sleep one wants. I go to bed at ten and often am up at four.
I made friends here the other day with a lively dried-up little old Irishman, who came out at seven years old a pauper-boy. He has made a fortune by ‘going on Togt’ (German, Tausch), as thus; he charters two waggons, twelve oxen each, and two Hottentots to each waggon, leader and driver. The waggons he fills with cotton, hardware, &c., &c.—an ambulatory village ‘shop’,—and goes about fifteen miles a day, on and on, into the far interior, swapping baftas (calico), punjums (loose trowsers), and voerschitz (cotton gownpieces), pronounced ‘foossy’, against oxen and sheep. When all is gone he swaps his waggons against more oxen and a horse, and he and his four ‘totties’ drive home the spoil; and he has doubled or trebled his venture. En route home, each day they kill a sheep, and eat it all. ‘What!’ says I; ‘the whole?’ ‘Every bit. I always take one leg and the liver for myself, and the totties roast the rest, and melt all the fat and entrails down in an iron pot and eat it with a wooden spoon.’ Je n’en revenais pas. ‘What! the whole leg and liver at one meal?’ ‘Every bit; ay, and you’d do the same, ma’am, if you were there.’ No bread, no salt, no nothing—mutton and water. The old fellow was quite poetic and heroic in describing the joys and perils of Togt. I said I should like to go too; and he bewailed having settled a year ago in a store at Swellendam, ‘else he’d ha’ fitted up a waggon all nice and snug for me, and shown me what going on togt was like. Nothing like it for the health, ma’am; and beautiful shooting.’ My friend had 700l. in gold in a carpet bag, without a lock, lying about on the stoep. ‘All right; nobody steals money or such like here. I’m going to pay bills in Capetown.’
Tell my mother that a man would get from 2l. to 4l. a month wages, with board, lodging, &c., all found, and his wife from 1l. 10s. to 2l. a month and everything found, according to abilities and testimonials. Wages are enormous, and servants at famine price; emigrant ships are cleared off in three days, and every ragged Irish girl in place somewhere. Four pounds a month, and food for self, husband, and children, is no uncommon pay for a good cook; and after all her cookery may be poor enough. My landlady at Capetown gave that. The housemaid had only 1l. 5s. a month, but told me herself she had taken 8l. in one week in ‘tips’. She was an excellent servant. Up country here the wages are less, but the comfort greater, and the chances of ‘getting on’ much increased. But I believe Algoa Bay or Grahamstown are by far the best fields for new colonists, and (I am assured) the best climate for lung diseases. The wealthy English merchants of Port Elizabeth (Algoa Bay) pay best. It seems to me, as far as I can learn, that every really working man or woman can thrive here.