In every family a slave was kept whose sole duty was the gathering of wood. It was strictly forbidden to gather any fuel, scrub, or bush on the Downs or Flats, so the slave would go out every morning up the mountains, and would return at night with two or three small bundles of faggots--the produce of six or eight hours' hard labour--swinging at the two ends of a bamboo carried across his shoulder. In some families more than one slave was kept for this purpose, and this gives a very good idea of the scarcity of wood at the Cape as late as 1798. From the diaries of that time one gathers that, though wood was only used for cooking purposes--as only the kitchen possessed a fireplace--yet the cost of fuel for a small household amounted to forty or fifty pounds a year. FOOTNOTE: [2] Barouche. CHAPTER III IN THE BLUE SHADOW OF TABLE MOUNTAIN The blue shadow of Table Mountain falls straight across the 'Flats,' or the sandy isthmus of the Cape Peninsula--a long, intensely blue line stretching from one ocean to the other. In 1653 this shadow meant something more than a beautiful shade; it was a boundary-line; it meant safety and shade within its depth, war and barbarians beyond. Along its borders were dotted small forts and watch-houses; there were even the beginnings of a canal running parallel with the definite shade, to intensify its significance. The Dutch East India Company's long-suffering and harassed Commander, Van Riebeek, with infinite undertaking of dangers and difficulties, wild beasts, Hottentots, and quicksands, rode across it, and fixed its boundaries as proper limits to the Settlements, which its most honourable directors were pleased to call 'Goode Hoop.' The blue shadow begins on the other side of the Wind Mountain or Devil's Peak, and we will go where it leads. In 1663 there was a narrow road running close up to the mountain rather higher up than the present dusty main road. It ran as far as Rondebosch, or 'Rond die Bostje,' whose round-wood traditions are untraceable, Van Riebeek having given orders that only the outer bushes should be preserved as a convenient kraal for cattle. Along this narrow road a small ox-cart rumbled every day from the fort in Cape Town, dragging home logs of wood from the almost unknown land beyond; its driver running momentary risk of meeting in the narrow way the lions, tigers, or rhino, that roamed the mountain slopes. One end of the shadow falls into the sea at Maitland or Paarden Island, and covers some stretches of beach, small houses, and railway workshops. There the rivers meet--the Diep River from Milnerton, the Liesbeek and the Black Rivers from across the Flats. They join and form the Salt River, a wide, overflowing stream that is constantly flooding the green lands between the sea and the old Trek road to the north.