South Africa -- Description and travel; South Africa -- History -- 1836-1909; South Africa -- History -- To 1836
About thirty years ago Dr. Gray was appointed the first bishop of
Capetown and remained there as bishop till he died,--serving in his
Episcopacy over a quarter of a century. He has been succeeded by Bishop
Jones, who is now Metropolitan of South Africa to the entire
satisfaction of all the members of the Church. Bishop Gray inaugurated
the building of a Cathedral, which is a large and serviceable church,
containing a proper ecclesiastical throne for the Bishop and a stall for
the Dean; but it is not otherwise an imposing building and certainly is
anything but beautiful. That erected for the use of the Roman Catholics
has been built with better taste. Near to the Cathedral,--behind it, and
to be reached by a shady walk which is one of the greatest charms of
Capetown, is the Museum, a handsome building standing on your right as
you go up from the Cathedral. This is under the care of Mr. Trimen who
is well known to the zoologically scientific world as a man specially
competent for such work and whose services and society are in high
esteem at Capetown. But I did not think much of his African wild beasts.
There was a lion and there were two lionesses,--stuffed of course. The
stuffing no doubt was all there; but the hair had disappeared, and with
the hair all that look of martial ardour which makes such animals
agreeable to us. There was, too, a hippopotamus who seemed to be
moulting,--if a hippopotamus can moult,--very sad to look at, and a long
since deceased elephant, with a ricketty giraffe whose neck was sadly
out of joint. I must however do Mr. Trimen the justice to say that when
I remarked that his animals seemed to have needed Macassar oil, he
acknowledged that they were a “poor lot,” and that it was not by their
merits that the Capetown Museum could hope to be remembered. His South
African birds and South African butterflies, with a snake or two here
and there, were his strong points. I am but a bad sightseer in a museum,
being able to detect the deficiencies of a mangy lion, but unable from
want of sight and want of education to recognise the wonders of a
humming bird. But I saw a hideous vulture, and an eagle, and some
buzzards, with a grand albatross or two, all of which were as glossy and
natural as glass eyes and well brushed feathers could make them. A
skeleton of a boa-constrictor with another skeleton of a little animal
just going to be swallowed interested me perhaps more than anything
else.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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