Yankee Girls in Zulu LandSheldon, Louise Vescelius
History
Yankee Girls in Zulu Land
Sheldon, Louise Vescelius
South Africa -- Description and travel
One evening a musical friend of our host, a gentleman from Port
Elizabeth, and a violinist of no mean order, joined our circle, and we
sat for hours listening to his music. After treating us to some choice
selections, he began to play some of the songs of the farm Kafirs, who
were listening about in numbers. They had learned to sing at their
Sunday-schools in the town such hymns as "Hold the Fort," etc, and took
up the airs and began to sing, after their manner, in a chanting drone.
Soon the sound of their own voices and the strains of the violin wrought
them up to a high pitch of excitement, and they began to walk around us
in a circle, keeping time with their hands, feet and head. Before long
the musician, who had a touch of the grotesque in his humour, placed
himself at the head of the procession. The music grew faster and
faster, and the monotonous tramp of the Kafirs quickened gradually into
a wild war dance. The scene which followed baffles description; there
was the musician scraping away like an infernal Paganini, producing
tones from his fiddle that seemed to excite the Kafirs to a pitch of
frenzy. We joined in the singing, and sang at the top of our voices,
while the black men, dancing, whirling, shouting, and gesticulating,
grew wilder and wilder in their antics. The music suddenly ceasing,
they sank exhausted to the ground. It was a weird scene in the
moonlight, and one we shall long remember.
Our stay at Grasslands came to an end all too soon, and we looked long
and lingeringly at familiar objects as we were driven back to town in
Mr M--'s handsome Cape cart behind a dashing span of horses.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.
Soon after our return to Grahamstown we put the finishing touches to
everything we had left undone toward making the wedding a joyous
occasion. The bride's white satin dress and veil were made by the hands
of a competent dressmaker. There was a dress for Eva, as chief
bridesmaid, which consisted of soft trailing drapery, and one for me,
who was to take a place in the organ loft, and sing on the occasion.
The day arrived, bright and smiling. The wedding bells pealed from the
tower of the cathedral. The "sympathising" and well-wishing friends
were gathered within when the bridal party arrived. The knot was tied,
and as the bells pealed forth the bride passed out on her husband's arm;
an old crone stood in the door and showered blessings on her.
As soon as congratulations were over, the wedding breakfast eaten, and
the usual rice and lucky slipper flung after them, they took the train
for a short vacation in a mountain hotel on the Zuurberg, whilst we bade
good-by to friends around us, and flew away the same night to the sea at
Port Elizabeth, five hours distant by rail.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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