South Africa -- Description and travel; South Africa -- History -- 1836-1909; South Africa -- History -- To 1836
King Williamstown is a thoroughly commercial little city with a
pleasant club, with a railway to East London, and with smiling German
cultivation all around it. But it has no trees. There is indeed a public
garden in which the military band plays with great éclat, and in which
horses can be ridden, and carriages with ladies be driven about,--so as
to look almost like Hyde Park in June. I stayed three or four days at
the place and was made very comfortable; but what struck me most was the
excellence of the Kafir servant who waited upon me. A gentleman had
kindly let me have the use of his house, and with his house the services
of this treasure. The man was so gentle, so punctual, and so mindful of
all things that I could not but think what an acquisition he would be to
any fretful old gentleman in London.
When I was at King Williamstown I was invited to hold a conference with
two or three Kafir Chiefs, especially with Sandilli, whose son I had
seen at school, and who was the heir to Gaika, one of the great kings of
the Kafirs, being the son of Gaika’s “great wife,” and brother to Makomo
the Kafir who in the last war had done more than Kafir had ever done
before to break the British power in South Africa. It was Makomo who had
been Sir Harry Smith’s too powerful enemy,--and Sandilli, who is still
living in the neighbourhood of King Williamstown, was Makomo’s younger
but more royal brother. I expressed, of course, great satisfaction at
the promised interview, but was warned that Sandilli might not
improbably be too drunk to come.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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