Cape of Good Hope (South Africa) -- Description and travel
The use of the words _anständig_ and _fein_ by a woman who
spoke very good German were characteristic. She could recognise an
‘_Anständigkeit_’ _not_ of Berlin. I need not say that the Germans are
generally liked by the coloured people. Choslullah was astonished and
Pleased at my talking German; he evidently had a preference for Germans,
and put up, wherever he could, at German inns and ‘publics’.
I went on to bid Mrs. Wodehouse good-bye. We talked of our dear old
Cornish friends. The Governor and Mrs. Wodehouse have been very kind to
me. I dined there twice; last time, with all the dear good Walkers. I
missed seeing the opening of the colonial parliament by a mistake about a
ticket, which I am sorry for.
If I could have dreamed of waiting here so long, I would have run up to
Algoa Bay or East London by sea, and had a glimpse of Caffreland.
Capetown makes me very languid—there is something depressing in the
air—but my cough is much better. I can’t walk here without feeling
knocked-up; and cab-hire is so dear; and somehow, nothing is worth while,
when one is waiting from day to day. So I have spent more money than
when I was most amused, in being bored.
Mr. J— drove me to the Capetown races, at Green Point, on Friday. As
races, they were _nichts_, but a queer-looking little Cape farmer’s
horse, ridden by a Hottentot, beat the English crack racer, ridden by a
first-rate English jockey, in an unaccountable way, twice over. The
Malays are passionately fond of horse-racing, and the crowd was fully
half Malay: there were dozens of carts crowded with the bright-eyed
women, in petticoats of every most brilliant colour, white muslin
jackets, and gold daggers in their great coils of shining black hair.
All most ‘anständig’, as they always are. Their pleasure is driving
about _en famille_; the men have no separate amusements. Every spare
corner in the cart is filled by the little soft round faces of the
intelligent-looking quiet children, who seem amused and happy, and never
make a noise or have the fidgets. I cannot make out why they are so well
behaved. It favours A—’s theory of the expediency of utter spoiling, for
one never hears any educational process going on. Tiny Mohammed never
spoke but when he was spoken to, and was always happy and alert. I
observed that his uncle spoke to him like a grown man, and never ordered
him about, or rebuked him in the least. I like to go up the hill and
meet the black women coming home in troops from the washing place, most
of them with a fat black baby hanging to their backs asleep, and a few
rather older trotting alongside, and if small, holding on by the mother’s
gown. She, poor soul, carries a bundle on her head, which few men could
lift. If I admire the babies, the poor women are enchanted;—_du reste_,
if you look at blacks of any age or sex, they _must_ grin and nod, as a
good-natured dog must wag his tail; they can’t help it. The blacks here
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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