Life in South Africa

PART II.

Algoa Bay, October 23, 1875.

Two days ago we steamed out of Table Bay on just such a gray, drizzling afternoon as that on which we entered it. But the weather cleared directly we got out to sea, and since then it has carried us along as though we had been on a pleasant summer cruise. All yesterday we were coasting along the low downs which edge the dangerous sea-board for miles upon miles. From the deck of the Edinburgh Castle the effect is monotonous enough, although just now everything is brightly green; and, with their long ribbon fringe of white breaker-foam glinting in the spring sunshine, the stretches of undulating hillocks looked their best. This part of the coast is well lighted, and it was always a matter of felicitation at night when, every eighty miles or so, the guiding rays of a lighthouse shone out in the soft gloom of the starlight night. One of these lonely towers stands more than eight hundred feet above the sea-level, and warns ships off the terrible Agulhas Bank.

We have dropped our anchor this fresh bright morning a mile or so from the shore on which Port Elizabeth stands. Algoa Bay is not much of a shelter, and it is always a chance whether a sudden south-easter may not come tearing down upon the shipping, necessitating a sudden tripping of anchors and running out to sea to avoid the fate which is staring us warningly in the face in the shape of the gaunt ribs or rusty cylinders of sundry cast-away vessels. To-day the weather is on its good behavior; the south-easter rests on its

and sun and sea are doing their best to show off the queer little straggling town creeping up the low sandy hills that lie before us. I am assured that Port Elizabeth is a flourishing mercantile place. From the deck of our ship I can't at all perceive that it is flourishing, or doing anything except basking in the pleasant sunshine. But when I go on shore an hour or two later I am shown a store which takes away my breath, and before whose miscellaneous contents the stoutest-hearted female shopper must needs baisser son pavilion. Everything in this vast emporium looked as neat and orderly as possible, and, though the building was twice as big as the largest co-operative store in London, there was no hurry or confusion. Thimbles and ploughs, eau-de-cologne and mangles, American stoves, cotton dresses of astounding patterns to suit the taste of Dutch ladies, harmoniums and flat-irons,-all stood peaceably side by side together. But these were all "unconsidered trifles" next the more serious business of the establishment, which was wool-wool in every shape and stage and bale. In this department, however, although for the sake of the dear old New Zealand days my heart warms at the sight of the huge packages, I was not supposed to take any interest; so we pass quickly out into the street again, get into a large open carriage driven by a black coachman, and make the best of our way up to a villa on the slope of the sandy hill. Once I am away from the majestic influence of that store the original feeling of Port Elizabeth being rather a dreary place comes back upon me; but we drive all about-to the Park, which may be said to be in its swaddling-clothes as a park, and to the Botanic Gardens, where the culture of foreign and colonial flowers and shrubs is carried on under the chronic difficulties of too much sun and wind and too little water. Everywhere there is building going on-very modest building, it is true, with rough-and-ready masonry or timber, and roofs of zinc painted in strips of light colors, but everywhere there are signs of progress and growth. People look bored, but healthy, and it does not surprise me in the least to hear that though there are a good many inhabitants, there is not much society. A pretty little luncheon and a pleasant hour's chat in a cool, shady drawing-room, with plenty of new books and music and flowers, gave me an agreeable impression to carry back on board the ship; which, by the way, seemed strangely silent and deserted when we returned, for most of our fellow-passengers had disembarked here on their way to different parts of the interior.

As I saunter up and down the clean, smart-looking deck of what has been our pleasant floating home during these past four weeks, I suddenly perceive a short, squat pyramid on the shore, standing out oddly enough among the low-roofed houses. If it had only been red instead of gray, it might have passed for the model of the label on Bass's beer-bottles; but, even as it is, I feel convinced that there is a story connected with it: and so it proves, for this ugly, most unsentimental-looking bit of masonry was built long ago by a former governor as a record of the virtues and perfections of his dead wife, whom, among other lavish epithets of praise, he declares to have been "the most perfect of women." Anyhow, there it stands, on what was once a lonely strip of sand and sea, a memorial-if one can only believe the stone story, now nearly a hundred years old-of a great love and a great sorrow; and one can envy the one and pity the other just as much when looking at this queer, unsightly monument as when one stands on the pure marble threshold of the exquisite Taj Mahal at Agra, and reads that it too, in all its grace and beauty, was reared "in memory of an undying love."

Although the day has been warm and balmy, the evening air strikes chill and raw, and our last evening on board the dear old ship has to be spent under shelter, for it is too cold to sit on deck. With the first hours of daylight next morning we have to be up and packing, for by ten o'clock we must be on board the Florence, a small, yacht-like coasting-steamer which can go much closer into the sand-blocked harbors scooped by the action of the rivers all along the coast. It is with a very heavy heart that I, for one, say good-bye to the Edinburgh Castle, where I have passed so many happy hours and made some pleasant acquaintances. A ship is a very forcing-house of friendship, and no one who has not taken a voyage can realize how rapidly an acquaintance grows and ripens into a friend under the lonely influences of sea and sky. We have all been so happy together, everything has been so comfortable, everybody so kind, that one would indeed be cold-hearted if, when the last moment of our halcyon voyage arrived, it could bring with it anything short of a regret.

With the same chivalrous goodness and courtesy which has taken thought for the comfort of our every movement since we left Dartmouth, our captain insists on seeing us safely on board the Florence (what a toy-boat she looks after our stately ship!) and satisfying himself that we can be comfortably settled once more in our doll's house of a new cabin. Then there comes a reluctant "Good-bye" to him and all our kind care-takers of the Edinburgh Castle; and the last glimpse we catch of her-for the Florence darts out of the bay like a swallow in a hurry-is her dipping her ensign in courteous farewell to us.

In less than twenty-four hours we had reached another little port, some hundred and fifty miles or so up the coast, called East London. Here the harbor is again only an open roadstead, and hardly any vessel drawing more than three or four feet of water can get in at all near the shore, for between us and it is a bar of shifting sand, washed down, day by day, by the strong current of the river Buffalo. All the cargo has to be transferred to lighters, and a little tug steamer bustles backward and forward with messages of entreaty to those said lighters to come out and take away their loads. We had dropped our anchor by daylight, yet at ten o'clock scarcely a boat had made its appearance alongside, and every one was fuming and fretting at the delay and consequent waste of fine weather and daylight. That is to say, it was a fine bright day overhead, with sunshine and sparkle all round, but the heavy roll of the sea never ceased for a moment. From one side to the other, until her ports touched the water, backward and forward, with slow, monotonous heaving, our little vessel swayed with the swaying rollers until everybody on board felt sick and sorry. "This is comparatively a calm day," I was told: "you can't possibly imagine from this what rolling really is." But I can imagine quite easily, and do not at all desire a closer acquaintance with this restless Indian Ocean. Breakfast is a moment of penance: little G-- is absolutely fainting from agonies of sea-sickness, though he has borne all our South-Atlantic tossings with perfect equanimity; and it is with real joy, that I hear the lifeboat is alongside, and that the kind-hearted captain of the Florence (how kind sailors are!) offers to take babies, nurse and me on shore, so as to escape a long day of this agonizing rolling. In happy unconsciousness of what landing at East London, even in a lifeboat, meant when a bar had to be crossed, we were all tumbled and bundled, more or less unceremoniously, into the great, roomy boat, and were immediately taken in hand by the busy little tug. For half a mile or more we made good progress in her wake, being in a position to set at naught the threatening water-mountains which came tumbling in furious haste from seaward. It was not until we seemed close to the shore and all our troubles over that the tug was obliged to cast us off, owing to the rapidly shoaling water, and we prepared to make the best of our own way in. Bad was that best, indeed, though the peril came and went so quickly that it is but a confused impression I retain of what seemed to me a really terrible moment. One instant I hear...