South Africa -- Description and travel; South Africa -- History -- 1836-1909; South Africa -- History -- To 1836
Sapena is a well built man, six feet high, broad in the shoulders, and
with the gait of a European. He was dressed like a European, with a
watch and chain at his waistcoat, a round flat topped hat, and cord
trowsers, and was quite clean. Looking at him as he walks no one would
believe him to be other than a white man. He looks to be about thirty,
though he must be much older. He was accompanied by three or four young
men who were all of the blood royal, and who were by no means like to
him either in dress or manner. He was very quiet, answering our
questions in few words, but was extremely courteous. He took us first
into a large hut belonging to one of the family, which was so
scrupulously clean as to make me think for a moment that it was kept as
a show hat; but those which we afterwards visited, though not perhaps
equal to the first in neatness, were too nearly so to have made much
precaution necessary. The hut was round as are all the huts, but had a
door which required no stooping. A great portion of the centre,--though
not quite the centre,--was occupied by a large immoveable round bin in
which the corn for the use of the family is stored. There was a chair,
and a bed, and two or three settees. If I remember right, too, there was
a gun standing against the wall. The place certainly looked as though
nobody was living in it. Sapena afterwards took us to his own hut which
was also very spacious, and here we were seated on chairs and had Kafir
beer brought to us in large slop-bowls. The Kafir beer is made of Kafir
corn, and is light and sour. The Natives when they sit down to drink
swallow enormous quantities of it. A very little sufficed with me, as
its sourness seemed to be its most remarkable quality. There were many
Natives with us but none of them drank when we did. We sat for ten
minutes in Sapena’s house, and then were taken on to that of the King. I
should say however that in the middle of Sapena’s hut there stood a
large iron double bedstead with mattras which I was sure had come from
Mr. Heal’s establishment in Tottenham Court Road.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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