The Commander of old Simonstown died a millionaire, and his illegal dealings seem to have been well known and discussed, as all the writers of this time and later speak of it. He had the rank of 'under merchant,' and carried on a trade with the foreign vessels, reselling necessaries at enormous profit.... 'Mr. Trail (a great rogue),' writes Anne Barnard to Melville.
We rode up the Red Hill—a steep roadway up the mountain—and saw a precarious-looking aerial car swaying up the mountain-side to the Sanatorium and Range. We ultimately passed quite close to the Range on the flat top in thick purple heath. We looked north, over the False Bay and Noord Hoek Mountains, the Steenbergen, or Tokai Ranges, and saw Table Mountain in a coronet of cloud. Across these flat-topped ranges, over three hundred years ago, had fled the Hottentots, before finding their asylum on the opposite shore—the Hottentot's Holland Mountains. The two Passes—the Kloof and the road from the Castle to the Flats—were carefully guarded. The Caapmans, Hottentots, and Watermen, cattle-thieves, tobacco-thieves, garden-thieves, wreck-salvagers, hurried along with their cattle from Hout Bay, Chapmans Bay, and Noord Hoek, to Cape Point. The Commander sent several parties to hunt them out, and the majority made off over the Flats, led by their rascally chief 'Herry.' The lowest of them, the Watermen, remained behind, hiding in caves and underwood. One fine day Corporal Elias Giero, who, with a considerable force, had wandered for days round Hout Bay and the Berghvalleyen, reported that eighteen hours' walk from this neighbourhood, almost at the southern end of the Cape, he had come upon their camp. It sounds pathetic, this great expedition for such a small enemy. They found three reed huts, with thirteen men and as many women and children. They were making assegais, when their dogs barked, and they fled into the rushes, crying out that they were Watermen, and not cattle-stealers. But some were recognized by 'men who had felt their assegais,' and the chief was captured. The former were killed. The chief and a ci-devant kitchen-boy refused to walk to the fort, 'and, as it was too difficult to carry them, our men brought with them to the fort their upper lips.' Many of them were recognized as wood and water carriers to the garrison at the fort, and their names and aliases are carefully recorded—for example: 'Carbinza,' or 'Plat neus'; 'Egutha,' or 'Hoogh en Laagh'; 'Mosscha,' or 'Kleine Lubbert'; 'Kaikana Makonkoa'; 'Louchoeve'; 'Orenbare'; 'Diknavel'; and so on. Translated into English—those that are translatable—they run: 'Flat-nose,' 'High and Low,' 'Quick,' 'Bring,' 'Unweary,' 'Hold him fast,' 'He nearly,' etc.
This is a small bit of history which belongs to Cape Point.
CHAPTER XI
THE BLUE SHADOW ACROSS THE FLATS
Our ponies met us at Muizenberg, and we crossed the railway-line on to the long white beach.
It was Easter Monday, and trainloads of inhabitants swarmed like gaudy bees round the bathing-huts. At no other time can one see to better advantage the wonderful fusion of races which has gone to the making of the population of the Cape Peninsula.
In the shade of one of the small, stationary wooden bathing-houses I saw the gardener's family, their colour scheme running through the gamut of shades from white to chocolate. The gardener had once had a Cockney wife, and his life was ''ell,' so he married Marlie, the slightly coloured girl brought up on a German mission-station, who made excellent stews, washed his shirts well, and sang Lutheran hymns to the children when they howled. There were ancestors, black and white, on both sides—and everyone hasn't ancestors.
TABLE MOUNTAIN FROM RETREAT FLATS