35 chapters
5 hour read
Selected Chapters
35 chapters
Chapter One.
Chapter One.
New York City, November , 18—. My Dear Children: Your Affectionate Mother. P.S. George wants to know what has set you thinking of going to South Africa, where there are only Zulus and missionaries. Of course if the physician orders it for Frank’s health, you know what is best. Well, it had rained, and snowed, and “fogged” for six months during the year we were in London, and we had seen the sun only on ten separate days during that period. The doctor ordered a change of climate for Frank, to a l
5 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter Two.
Chapter Two.
“Stop the cab, I say!” “She must be ill,” we cried. “Stop the cab!” and an unharmonious trio immediately assailed the ears of the driver: “Stop the cab!” The cab stopped. “What’s up anyhow?” inquired the London Jehu. “I have left my diary on the dressing-table!” If any of you have kept a diary you will understand the dread horror that overwhelmed us all at this awful announcement: one gasp, one moment of terrible silence, and then—action. “I must go back for it at once. You go on. I will take a
8 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter Three.
Chapter Three.
During the ramble we entered a large, ancient cathedral, that must have been built ages ago, whose decorations were well worth more than the hasty glance we gave it. We passed on to some shops where we found costly hand-made laces. One lace shawl which we bought could be rolled up in a ball in one hand without any injury to the fabric. As we hurried down to the beach we passed several invalids, lying in hammocks swung on upright poles at head and feet and protected from the sun’s rays by awnings
6 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter Four.
Chapter Four.
The voyage from Madeira to the Cape was simply delightful. A fortnight, during which we had crossed the equator through the heat of the tropics, had elapsed, when we found ourselves one morning at dawn of day approaching the rocky and precipitous shores of the Island of Saint Helena. It had a most rugged appearance, which was heightened by its lonely position, the island rising almost perpendicularly on all sides, in some places of to the height of one thousand to twelve hundred feet. Our steame
7 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter Five.
Chapter Five.
Here is a spot for one whose soul is yearning for untried missionary fields. The interior of the island is said to be beautiful, flowers and foliage growing in great luxuriance. Leaving Saint Helena, we sailed southeast in a straight course for Table Bay; for two days after leaving the island, our table was decorated with fresh tropical flowers and fruits in great variety. We here felt the influence of the heavy ground swell, which the sailors say is a peculiarity of those latitudes, and has giv
10 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter Six.
Chapter Six.
They are situated in the midst of beautiful grounds overrun with tropical vines and flowers. Near by are the charming modern English villas and cottages. But the most beautiful and admired suburban houses are to be found at Rondebosch, Wynberg, and Constantia, on the east side of Table Mountain, connected by railway with Cape Town; they lie at an elevation from the town and are delightfully cool during the summer months. A drive through the groves of grand old pine and oak trees, with a glimpse
11 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter Seven.
Chapter Seven.
The hotel, although as good as any in the colony, would be considered a very ordinary one in America. The smells exhaled on all sides from the blacks who wait on you and from the ditches over which you take your constitutional walk, the sand, filled with fleas that make you occasional visits unless grease and ointment are used freely on the body, these are the chief annoyances offered the health-seeker; but the colonist will tell you they are nothing as an offset to the “great and glorious clima
10 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter Eight.
Chapter Eight.
The horses had started off as if fully determined to make Kimberley before nightfall, but had now settled down into a good swinging trot, jolting us from side to side, one moment banging our heads against the sides of the coach, the next throwing us violently against our neighbours, until attempts to get into a comfortable position were given up as hopeless. The journey up country was a gradual ascent, for the interior of South Africa is a succession of elevated plateaus, rising from the sea in
9 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter Nine.
Chapter Nine.
The effect is weird in the extreme, and it does not require any very great stretch of fancy to imagine these isolated claims to be the battlemented castles of the gnomes who inhabit the underground regions. As we were gazing down the mine, the whistles from the engine-houses began simultaneously to shriek out the signal that it was time for men to cease working and come up from the mine for dinner. The buckets ascended for the last time and stood still; the tiny ants at work below threw down the
7 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter Ten.
Chapter Ten.
We found several diamonds, and felt like breaking the tenth commandment as they were calmly pocketed by the manager of the “floor,” but were each somewhat consoled by the present of a small diamond as a souvenir of the day’s wash-up. No one would believe from the appearance of a rough diamond, looking like nothing so much as a piece of alum, that it could ever be cut into a beautiful, fiery gem. Of course the expenses of a company owning a block of claims are enormous, and a large number of ston
11 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter Eleven.
Chapter Eleven.
These Kafirs are continually arriving, coming from long distances, walking sometimes as far as 1,500 miles in the interior; but the household servants are different; they are a heterogeneous mixture of Malays from Cape Town and Kafirs and the imported coolies from Natal. It is difficult to say which makes the worst servant; at any rate, we found, no matter from which race we selected our help, it was never safe to leave anything of value, at all portable, within their reach. Ladies are quite a r
13 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter Twelve.
Chapter Twelve.
Many balls are held during the cool winter evenings, a few of which we attended; one, conducted under the auspices of the ubiquitous Freemasons, was held in the Iron Theatre building, and a very brilliant affair it was. There were four hundred and fifty invitations, of course many more gentlemen than ladies being present, but it was interesting to see what an elegant company assembled so many hundreds of miles from the nearest point of civilisation. Many of the ladies were attired in London or P
7 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter Thirteen.
Chapter Thirteen.
We began to hear the most alarming rumours of the disaffection of the Dutch Boers with the Government. Several prominent farmers had called a large meeting, at which it was unanimously voted to pay no taxes to the hated “Englanders.” Such startling stories began to be circulated about the attitude of the country people that we hastened to gather up our skirts and get on to and out of Pretoria before the threatened rising took place. At the end of three most enjoyable weeks in Potchefstrom we aga
8 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter Fourteen.
Chapter Fourteen.
Just calling in on our kind hostess, Mrs Jenkinson, in Potchefstrom, and taking a last look at the beautiful orchard-like village, so soon to become a terrible scene of bloodshed and slaughter, we continued on our way without incident other than the usual discomforts attendant on a South African coach ride. At several points in the roads we passed groups of Kafirs going to the diamond fields, and other groups returning from them, and it was amusing to note the prosperous appearance of the latter
9 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter Fifteen.
Chapter Fifteen.
At dawn of the next day we continued on our journey, passing through the village of Phillopolis, once the principal place of the native tribe of the Griquas. It is a typical Dutch village, ill built, and in every way insignificant and uninviting. Close by the village is a very large Kafir kraal. As we passed it many came out to see the coach go by. A few hours later we crossed one of the bridges which span the Orange River, and were again in the Cape Colony. We passed through Colesberg, a villag
5 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter Sixteen.
Chapter Sixteen.
Next morning we resumed our journey, and after five hours’ trek, made most enjoyable by the mode of travelling and the rugged beauty of the scenery, we arrived at “Grasslands,” the home of our friends. The house was of one-storey, well built and roomy, and being on a rise, commanded a fine view of the wild, uninhabited surrounding country. Our host was a handsome, high-spirited Englishman, with a little English child-wife, a dainty little piece of humanity. As the young wife leaned against the v
6 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter Seventeen.
Chapter Seventeen.
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 sou
5 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter Eighteen.
Chapter Eighteen.
“Society” in Port Elizabeth endeavours to be very select. We attended several social gatherings, and found the citizens, as a rule, large-hearted, hospitable people, always glad to give a hearty and warm reception to the stranger within their gates. One of the most interesting objects in Port E— is the Donkin Memorial, a pyramidal monument erected on the first ledge of the hill by Sir Thomas Donkin to the memory of his wife Elizabeth, who died off this point on ship-board while on her way from I
6 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter Nineteen.
Chapter Nineteen.
After remaining in Port Elizabeth seven months, we held a family conclave and came to the conclusion that we did not wish to leave the country until we had tried the climate of the Orange Free State, which we had heard lauded to the skies. So we bade adieu to Port Elizabeth, thinking it a very pleasant place to visit, and taking a parting look at the sea, we were whirled away to Grahamstown. From here we left by railroad for Cradock, a town some sixty miles east. Like Grahamstown, Cradock is the
8 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter Twenty.
Chapter Twenty.
During the several hot months we were there we had an opportunity of studying the characteristics of the Dutch Boer, who is met with in this part of the country in his primitive state. The Africander Boer is usually a tall, lanky, narrow-chested individual, with black hair, straggling beard and whiskers, cautious, suspicious, and undemonstrative, his countenance expressing little imagination and his body great physical endurance. He is never quarrelsome if it can be avoided; he is as shrewd at a
6 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter Twenty One.
Chapter Twenty One.
Their ancestors must have been splendid fellows, for their deeds proclaim it. But long years of inactivity and the habits of intermarriage have weakened the race sadly. The descendants of the men who were foremost in every land are now content to sit on the same farm from generation to generation, caring for nothing, and having no ambition beyond raising a larger family than their neighbour. The “vrouws,” or wives, are either very thin and bony, or tall and “massive.” They dress in black, full s
8 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter Twenty Two.
Chapter Twenty Two.
“No unfair means were taken by the Boers yesterday. We attempted to take the hill, and in our endeavours to reach the summit they repulsed us. This is the whole thing in a nutshell; men who were in the engagement stated that the Boers had entrenched themselves, and this is more than probable when it is considered that natural trenches must abound in the positions they occupied. It was also represented that they had numbers of Kafir allies to assist them. This may or may not be true. I was posted
9 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter Twenty Three.
Chapter Twenty Three.
Still brisk as it was the pace was only a walk. We thought we should never make the two or three hundred miles to Queenstown, at that pace, by the route we should take. We learned, however, that though slow it was sure. A team of oxen intelligently driven, and rested at proper intervals, will make thirty miles a day, week after week, over any sort of country, a rate of travelling that horses cannot exceed when the distance is long. At the end of three hours the oxen were outspanned to graze and
7 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter Twenty Four.
Chapter Twenty Four.
During several successive days, while travelling in the Orange Free State, we passed hundreds of huge ant-hills. One might say there are villages of these; they are formed together in thousands, they disappear for a space, and are again met with. Some of them measure ten feet and more in circumference, and are between three and four feet high, and are filled with black and yellow ants. The clay becomes hard from the sun’s rays. An ox-wagon driver hews out an ant-hill forming an oven, in which he
5 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter Twenty Five.
Chapter Twenty Five.
We soon settled down to the routine of our ox-wagon life, and very pleasant we found it. When the boys would outspan and get things in readiness for meals, our hunger from the open-air life would be so great that we could scarcely wait while they made the fire for coffee. Like all South African travellers, we consumed a prodigious quantity of coffee. Besides drinking it at every meal, it would be prepared several times during the day, as we wanted it. The Dutch people drink it morning, noon, and
6 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter Twenty Six.
Chapter Twenty Six.
Our boys would often hold wayside receptions for natives in twos and threes, coming from goodness knows where, and others, appearing from the shadows beyond, would surround them, talking rapidly in vowels and strange sounds, and looking on hungrily at the meals being prepared. As we outspanned near by a farm during the journey, a farm Kafir, with a look and bearing of a prince of the soil, dressed to the knees in a coffee sack, with holes made for arms and head, approached. He stood talking to t
8 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter Twenty Seven.
Chapter Twenty Seven.
Our wagoner told us an experience of a cold night in the Free State. He said: “In the middle of June, two years ago, my partner Jim and myself started from Bloemfontein for Pretoria. As the shooting was good on that road and walking cheap, we decided to go on foot, taking with us a couple of boys to carry our traps, which were not very extensive, consisting, in fact, of a change of linen, or rather flannels, a pair of blankets each, the cooking utensils, and a spare gun. We had for our companion
6 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter Twenty Eight.
Chapter Twenty Eight.
We had got fond of this careless, lazy life we had been leading so many weeks; the very oxen we had come to know by their names of “Blesbok,” “Witful,” “Kafir,” etc. As we neared Queenstown we found ourselves getting anxious about their welfare, trekking slowly, and making frequent and long outspans. When at last we found ourselves on a common, close to Queenstown, it was with regret we said good-by to our six weeks’ life in an ox-wagon. We went to the Central Hotel. On the second day after our
5 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter Twenty Nine.
Chapter Twenty Nine.
Down the slope, through the shallow stream running across the road in the hollow, up the rise on the further side, and away along a level flat on the crest of the hill, till many of the young fellows in uniform were shouting from sheer exuberance of spirits. We found ourselves borne along at a gait that sent the blood flying through our veins. The day was fine, a fresh breeze, which swept across the veldt, agreeably tempering the rays of the sun, which at that hour is decidedly hot. Small partic
6 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter Thirty.
Chapter Thirty.
Perhaps one of the reasons of the failure of many of the missionaries in their work among this peculiar people is, that it takes a many-sided man to comprehend a race whose traits are entirely different from his own. As a rule, the men sent out to Africa as missionaries are not many-sided, nor do they possess that to them most necessary of all gifts, a practical knowledge of human nature. After remaining a few weeks in King Williamstown we had a longing to see the ocean, and accordingly, one eve
6 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter Thirty One.
Chapter Thirty One.
A huge basket was slung down, suspended from the immense derrick on the ship’s deck, and into this we were unceremoniously packed, two at a time. Then we were quickly hauled up, our dignity suffering in the way we were “dumped” down on the deck like jugs of molasses, or Falstaff going to the wash. We smoothed our ruffled plumage with the consolation that we were “doing” South Africa, though it seemed to us at the time that the reverse was the case. It was too dark when we left East London to see
10 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter Thirty Two.
Chapter Thirty Two.
Almost anything seems to grow in this genial land, and many of the colonists, apparently more enterprising than their brethren in the older colony, have extensively laid out and cultivated farms. We spent a week at Malvern, twelve miles from Durban, where a Yorkshire gentleman, who had considerable practical experience in scientific gardening in England, and had travelled extensively in America, had turned his little farm into a perfect paradise. There is hardly anything edible in the way of fru
12 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter Thirty Three.
Chapter Thirty Three.
On our return journey we met two native witch doctors, with their peculiar musical instruments in the shape of a mandolin, and made by their own hands. Mr Watson, editor of the Natal Witness , was of our party, and requested them, in their own language, to dance for us, which they did, playing on their instruments and keeping perfect time with head and feet, and certain undulations of the body. The faces of the dancers grew more and more serious as the dance proceeded. Walking along the street o
9 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter Thirty Four.
Chapter Thirty Four.
Just as he disappeared in the opposite bush, ten or twelve Zulus, brandishing assegais and knob-kerries, with a pack of howling and yelping dogs at their heels, sprang out from the underwood in hot pursuit. In the rear came our sporting friends, looking almost as savage as their Kafir allies, crashing through the thorn bushes, seemingly as oblivious of the scratches they were receiving as they evidently were of our presence. As they came opposite us, one of them dropped on his knee, and, taking
8 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter Thirty Five.
Chapter Thirty Five.
All animate and inanimate nature seemed to smile on us and bid us God speed, and as we climbed up the ladder that led up the side of the good ship Asiatic , and emerged on her deck, we registered a vow to return some day to the land of sand and sunshine. Soon after our arrival on board the bell sounded for strangers to leave the ship, and the time came to say good-by to the good friends who had accompanied us on board. Leave-taking had become a familiar occupation with us, but yet we never seeme
3 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter