With this trophy I returned home, resolved never more to go hunting at night.
Letter 11.
Algoa Bay—Kafirs on the Coast—Difficulties Regarding Servants.
Standing on the shores of Algoa Bay, with the “Liverpool of South Africa”—Port Elizabeth—at my back, I attempted to realise what must have been the scene, in the memorable “1820,” when the flourishing city was yet unborn, when the whole land was a veritable wilderness, and the sands on which the port now stands were covered with the tents of the “settlers.”
Some of the surroundings, thought I, are pretty much as they were in those days. The shipping at anchor in the offing must resemble the shipping that conveyed the emigrants across the sea—except, of course, these two giant steamers of the “Donald Currie” and the “Union” lines. The bright blue sky, too, and the fiery sun are the same, and so are those magnificent “rollers,” which, rising, one scarce can tell when or where, out of a dead-calm sea, stand up for a few seconds like liquid walls, and then rush up the beach with a magnificent roar.
As I gazed, the scene was rendered still more real by the approach from seaward of a great surf-boat, similar to the surf-boats that brought the settlers from their respective ships to the shore. Such boats are still used at the port to land goods—and also passengers, when the breakers are too high to admit of their being landed in small boats at the wooden pier. The surf-boats are bulky, broad, and flat, strongly built to stand severe hammering on the sand, and comparatively shallow at the stern, to admit of their being backed towards the beach, or hauled off to sea through the surf by means of a rope over the bow.
As the surf-boat neared the shore, I heard voices behind me, and, turning round, beheld a sight which sent me completely back into the 1820 days. It was a band of gentlemen in black—black from the crowns of their heads to the soles of their feet, with the exception of their lips and teeth and eyes. Here was the Simon Pure in very truth. They were so-called Red Kafirs, because of their habit of painting their bodies and blankets with red ochre. At this time the paint had been washed off, and the blankets laid aside. They were quite naked, fresh from the lands of their nativity, and apparently fit for anything.
Shade of Othello!—to say nothing of Apollo—what magnificent forms the fellows had, and what indescribably hideous faces! They were tall, muscular, broad-shouldered, small waisted and ankled, round-muscled, black-polished—in a word, elegantly powerful. Many of them might have stood as models for Hercules. Like superfine cloth, they were of various shades; some were brown-black, some almost blue-black, and many coal-black.