The orphan had proved herself a patient and intelligent sight-seer, willing to be pleased, thankful for the kind desire of her entertainers that she should be pleased, and discriminating in her admiration. There was still some constraint in her manner, and of herself and her former life she scarcely spoke. Perhaps her loss was too recent for her to be able to talk freely of India, while of the journey to England she said little. ‘There were fellow-passengers who took much care of me,’ she replied once, in answer to a question on Lucy’s part. ‘Indeed, I met kindness on every hand. Perhaps my being alone, and my black frock’—— And then her eyes filled with tears and she turned her head away.
Lord Harrogate, when introduced to the baronet’s ward, experienced one of the oddest sensations that he had ever felt, and akin to that tantalising, nameless thrill with which we all sometimes fancy that we have seen some place which we know ourselves to visit for the first time, or witnessed some scene which never before met our eyes. He had started, when first he saw Miss Willis, and had eyed her in the inquiring fashion in which we scan a face familiar to us. But it was evident that Miss Willis did not know him, as indeed it was impossible that she, Indian born and bred, and now in England for the first time, should know him. And yet, long after he had left Carbery, the perplexing thought occurred to him again and again that he remembered the face, which, as all could aver, he had beheld for the first time on that day.
[LIFE AT NATAL.]
Lady Barker, to whom the public is indebted for the most practically useful works on New Zealand which have been placed within the reach of the intending emigrant, having now completed a year’s residence in our South African colony, gives us, in A Year’s Housekeeping in South Africa (London: Macmillan & Co.), the benefit of her recent experience in a volume equally useful and entertaining. As compared with Christchurch, the capital of the province of Canterbury, in New Zealand, Maritzburg, in ‘fair Natal,’ is a backward and sleepy place. Recent events may have the effect of developing its ambition and accelerating its speed. But here is Lady Barker’s description of its actual condition: ‘Maritzburg consists of a few straight, wide, grass-grown streets, which are only picturesque at a little distance on account of their having trees on each side. On particularly dark nights, a dozen oil-lamps, standing at long intervals apart, are lighted; but when it is even moderate starlight, these aids to finding one’s way about are prudently dispensed with. Only two buildings make the least effect. One is the Government House, standing in a nice garden, and boasting of a rather pretty porch, but otherwise reminding one, except for the sentinel on duty, of a quiet country rectory. The other is a small block comprising the public offices. A certain air of quaint interest and life is given to the otherwise desolate streets by the groups of Kaffirs, and the teams of wagons waiting for their up-country loads. Twenty bullocks drag these ponderous contrivances—bullocks so lean that one wonders how they have strength to carry their wide-spreading horns aloft; bullocks of a stupidity and obstinacy unparalleled in the natural history of horned beasts.’ These teams are called ‘spans;’ and when, on Sundays, the teams and the wagons are ‘outspanned’ on the green slopes around Maritzburg, the aspect of the place, generally dull and lifeless, becomes strikingly picturesque.
The road to Maritzburg from Port Durban, at which travellers to Maritzburg land from the steamer which conveys them to Cape Town, is very tedious to travel by the government mule wagon, which bumps about in ruts, and sticks in mud after a fashion that renders the prospect of the railway now in course of construction very attractive to the expectant colonists; but it is also very beautiful. ‘Curved green hills, dotted with clusters of timber exactly like an English park, and a background of distant ranges rising in softly rounded outlines, with deep violet shadows in the clefts, and pale green lights on the slopes,’ form its principal features. Nestling amid this rich pasture-land are the kraals of a large Kaffir ‘location;’ and it is satisfactory to learn that in our South African colony at least, the native population has not been entirely sacrificed to the white man.
At Durban there is a funny little railway between the town and the ‘Point;’ ‘a railway,’ says Lady Barker, ‘so calm and stately in its method of progression, that it is not at all unusual to see a passenger step deliberately out when it is at its fullest speed of crawl, and wave his hand to his companions as he disappears down the by-path leading to his little home. The passengers are conveyed at a uniform rate of sixpence a head, which sixpence is collected promiscuously by a small boy at odd moments during the journey.’
A great, indeed an inexhaustible, charm of the country is the wonderful profusion and variety of flowers which grow everywhere; precious things only to be seen here in stately glass houses and per favour of scientific head-gardeners, growing in wild abundance, hiding the ugliness of buildings, delighting the eyes and cheering the heart of the colonist. As the drawbacks to a residence in ‘fair Natal’ are numerous and undeniable, it is right to dwell a little upon the exceeding beauty of floral nature there. If flowers could only be eaten, what a prosperous place Natal would be, or if the soil would only grow cereals as it grows flowers! To walk on the grassy downs is to walk among beautiful lilies in scarlet and white clusters, endless varieties of periwinkles, purple and white cinerarias, and golden bushes of the Cape broom, which we all know here as so great a beautifier of landscape. Tall arum lilies fill every water-washed hollow in the spriuts (or brooks), and ferns of all kinds abound.
If the Kaffirs would work with even moderate application, the formation of a luxuriant garden of fruit, flowers, and vegetables would be easily within the reach of any dweller on the soil. The grass is always cleared away for a considerable distance round the house, because snakes are unpleasantly numerous, and grass affords cover for them; in the instances of fine gardens, a broad walk of a deep rich red colour intervening between the house and the gardens, contrasts beautifully with the flower-beds, which are as big as small fields.
The red soil is very destructive to clothing, but it adds to the beauty of the landscape. ‘Green things,’ says the author, describing a Natal garden, ‘which we are accustomed to see in England in small pots, shoot up here to the height of laurel bushes. In shady places grow many varieties of fern and blue hydrangea, and verbena of every shade flourish. But the great feature of this garden is roses, of at least a hundred different sorts, which grow untrained, unpruned, in enormous bushes covered by magnificent blossoms; each bloom of which would win the prize at a rose-show. Red roses, white roses, tea roses, blush roses, moss roses, and the clear old-fashioned cabbage rose, sweetest and most sturdy of all; there they are at every turn—hedges of them, screens of them, and giant bushes of them on either hand.’ Add to this a bright swift brook trickling through the garden, the constant sweet song of the Cape canary, and crowds of large butterflies of ‘all glorious hues,’ which are quite fearless and familiar, perching on the flowers and on the walks, and one gets a delightful notion of a Natal garden.