It is not, however, hard to find on the Bosheuvel Hill, though it is always being destroyed in the bush fires so frequent on the hill, when in a few minutes hundreds of trees have given one sharp crackle of agony, and are charred heaps of silvery ashes. We traced it, this old warrior of a hedge which was once the only shade for the horsemen and soldiers stationed at the Redoubt. It crosses the middle of the hill. It once looked on one side on the farm of the Commander, and on the other side on the huts and kraals of the Hottentots, whose erring cattle poked their uncivilized horns through its thick greenness; and now its aged branches lap over a barbed-wire fence which runs along the farms Oosterzee and Glen Dirk, of Mr. Philip Cloete and his brother; while, on the other side, the firs and oaks hide the white walls of Bishopscourt. The silver-tree and the bitter-almond hedge are the Ancient Inhabitants, and Marinus and I felt we were friends and in league with the barbed-wire fence, and we hated the position.
So we rode down the hill into the Wynberg Park, and leaving the camp on the left we crossed the glen at the bottom of Glen Dirk, and, behold, we were in a sea of vineyards, the purple bunches almost resting their ripe weight on the burning pink earth.
Some old naturalist thinks that it is to the laziness of the old vine-growers that we owe the slow evolution of our wine. No tall trellised vines or standards of France and Spain and the Rhine, no rows of mulberry-trees supporting the hanging tendrils as in Italy, but low, stubby-looking little vine-sticks; and, says my authority of a hundred years ago, 'as is well known, the exhalations from the earth are so much imbibed by the leaves of the tobacco plant which grow nearest to it, that those leaves are always rejected as unfit for use, so it is natural to suppose that the fruit of the vine hanging very near to, or even resting upon, the ground, will also receive the prevailing flavour exhaling from the soil.' This was the theory of a theorist. I have the authority of a wine-maker who says that it is not only the heavy spring winds that have necessitated low vines, but that the Cape wine was, and is, essentially a sweet wine, and to procure the right amount of sugar it is important to grow the vines as near the ground as possible, that the radiation of the sun off the ground may ripen them. Later came the demand for a lighter wine, and creeping vines were introduced grown on wire, but as close to the ground as possible, otherwise the wine does not maintain itself, and becomes acid. The old Pontac vine, which is a creeper by nature, was treated in the old days, and is still treated as a creeper, by tying a long cane across the centre of the tree, so that it lies horizontally across, close to the ground; no wire is used, or the days of sweet Pontac would be over.
My first authority, the theorist, deplores, in excellent English, the slackness that existed in the making of wine and brandy. I remember with horror seeing in Constantia cellars the old process in full swing. Huge vats—the hugeness of a fairy-tale ogre's bath—raised high up in the gloom of the cellar, the sickening smell of fermentation, the squash, squash, bubble, bubble, of the juice oozing through the vat holes, and the sweating blacks, in tunics that reached to the knee and were once white, treading and squashing the grapes, their black faces bobbing up and down in the great vats, sometimes singing, or spitting out the chewed tobacco, the Nirvana of the workers. My whole body and soul revolted against this physical strength and stench—to me it was the greatest weapon in the total abstainer crusade; the nauseous odour of malt and beer is nothing to it.
Oh! it's a fascinating subject, this culture of the Vine, as old as the hills, and with the greatest sympathy do the Jew and the Gentile view it; and its cosmopolicy is almost perfect. It makes brothers of strangers, swine of brothers; it is an everlasting monument to Adam—he went out of Paradise to till the ground, and wherefore till unless to grow the vine which alone can make him forget Paradise—and in its long pageant come passing by, old Noah and his sons, who peopled the earth; Dionysius and his followers—his troupe of Bacchantes revelling in leopard skins, purple grapes and flowing hair, and in turn their ghastly following of fauns and satyrs, the chorus for their appalling rites and festivals; then comes the solemn Persian, whose women carried the purple wine while he sang the praises of both, in the guise of the philosophy of the most ancient Abyssinian Universities; in great disorder crowd along the poisoners of early Rome and the Renaissance, carrying their fatal goblets; the decadent revellers of Lemnos in artistic drunkenness—roses and pearls and wine and the heated dancers of inspiration, which made luxury to be desired. In the crowd, jostling with all, pass Popes and Cardinals with more wine—strange vicissitude! The Host of the Lord followed by the faithful—it is now become the religion of the world. Then come the painters, the great 'primitives,' and the makers of the new religion, creators of sublime pictures—a 'Last Supper'; the wine in the cup, pure red, as red as the wine Bacchus is flinging over his drunken followers, as red as the wine of Omar, of Cleopatra's love-philtres dissolving pearls. Great Fellowship of the Vine; it rules the world! Continue looking: there is more procession; picturesque, besatined men who have fought picturesque duels, and gambled and drunk wine in the coffee-houses (what a paradox!), men who have made poems and books, and run States and Empires, and have laid with unflagging regularity under their tables in the respectability which rank and custom made possible; and looming in the gloom behind the pageant are the shadows of the invading army. They, too, have kept their pattern in this kaleidoscope; the men who have made a Hell for the drunkards—the Ironsides, Calvinists, Protestants, a dull crowd to follow such gorgeousness. The Banners of Temperance are Grey and Green: and grey is an enduring colour, and clashes with nothing; and green is the colour of the World! the Earth! and the woods! leaves and pure water! the singing of birds! time to sleep, time to eat, time to listen! This may be behind the grey banners; but the Eyes of the Pageant are near-sighted and tired with overmuch colour and vibration, and the Ears of the Pageant are tuned too high to hear the song of birds.
We have been round the Mulberry Bush, round and round....
'This is the way we have brushed our hair;
This is the way we have washed our faces;
This is the way we have eaten our food;
This is the way we go to bed;