Wynberg hides its archives in overgrown gardens of oleander, wild-olive, blue plumbago hedges, cool white gardenias and red hibiscus flowers, cypress-trees and date-palms, brought from the East by retired soldiers from India, with large livers and small pensions, making their curries and their chutneys in the little thatched bungalows of old Wynberg. To one of these, still standing and acting as a stable to a big white house in the oak avenue which we fancy is part of the old road, came Wellington on his way to India, and gave his name to the avenue. On our way along the main road to Muizenberg we passed a renovated homestead, probably one of the old rest-houses, now used as a convalescent home, but its gardens are full of old-world memories, willows, and myrtle-hedge, and arbours of strange trees, bent and twisted into fantastic coolnesses.
There is a dull stretch of wattled road running through Plumstead, Diep River, and Retreat. At Diep River the flooded lands grow potatoes, at Plumstead they grow vegetables, all in amongst the wildness of the big plain covered with vleis and protea-bush and purple and crimson heath. The Retreat is historical. It lies on the Cape Town side of the Muizenberg Mountains, which seem to spring up in granite and green from the sea. A narrow strip of land at their base spoils the illusion—'The Thermopylæ of the Cape,' says an old enthusiast some hundred years ago. Through the narrow pass between the sea and mountains retreated the famous Burgher Cavalry, abandoning their position at Muizenberg before the guns of the America. But history, I fancy, regards the Battle of Muizenberg more as a diplomatic coup than as a serious fight. Even the cannon-balls, which are dotted along the road from Kalk Bay to Muizenberg, are ending their uneventful days in seaside peace, and their resting-places in soft sand speak of further diplomacy.
Near Lakeside are several old farms with lost identity. Over the hill, leaving the lovely vleis behind us, we came upon Muizenberg, from an architectural point of view the saddest sight in the world; here are two old landmarks, the one so renovated that it is almost unrecognizable, the other a ruin. The first was a low, whitewashed, thatched homestead—an old inn, or rest-house, as the Dutch called it—and it was named 'Farmer Pecks.' The oldest inhabitant cannot tell why, but I remember the original building with its celebrated signboard. The story of the signboard is as follows: 'Two middies, many, many years ago, returning to Simonstown from Cape Town, where they had been on a jaunt, arrived one dark night at Muizenberg. It was a twenty-mile walk—twenty miles along a difficult track, across a dangerous beach of quicksands (Fish Hoek), and they were travelling on foot, because very few people could afford a cart. It was too late and too dark to continue their journey, so they had to put up at Farmer Pecks'. When it came to paying for the night's board and lodging there was no money—all left in Cape Town. "We'll paint you a signboard," they said—a Utopian mode of finance to solve the difficulty and pay their debt. They must have come from Salisbury Plain, or Farmer Peck had, for the signboard portrayed a mild-looking shepherd of a Noah's Ark type, gazing over a hill at some fat wooden sheep, grazing in emerald grass, and in the background a very English-looking little farmhouse with rows of stiff Noah's Ark trees. Quite a premature attempt at modern conventional design, inspired by the ideals of "Two Years Old" playing at Creation and landscape-gardening in the nursery. Here the momentous questions are: whether Mr. and Mrs. Noah, in red and blue æsthetic garments of a wondrous purity of line, shall stand under perfectly symmetrical trees which are on dear little rounds of wood, or whether they shall be dotted over the farm together with Shem, Ham, and Japheth, in pure yellow, pink, and green, in close proximity to two pink cows, two red geese, two black pigs, and two purple horses.'
AT LAKESIDE, LOOKING TOWARDS CONSTANTIA
AT LAKESIDE, LOOKING SOUTH-EAST
A domesticated sequel to the story of the Flood.