Part 5

As I sit, sad and alone in my empty home, dreading the cries of the newspaper-boys in the streets, my thoughts often fly back to the “Fair Natal” I knew long ago. More than twenty-eight years have passed since I last saw it. Then, as now, it was early summer-time. The wide, well-watered stretches of veldt were brilliantly green and covered with blossom, chiefly lilies and cinerarias; the spruits were running like Scotch burns, and the dreadful red dust of the winter months no longer obscured everything. I have often, between April and November, not known what was within an approaching bank of solid red cloud, until the shouts of the unseen little “Voor-looper” warned me that a huge waggon and its span of perhaps twenty or thirty oxen had to be avoided.

But after November, dust gives place to mud on the roads—mud of a singularly tenacious quality, formed from the fertile red clay soil. I don’t believe it rains anywhere so hard as it does in Natal, and during the summer months it is never safe to part for a single hour from the very best waterproof cloak which you can procure, or from a substantial umbrella. Round Maritzburg a thunderstorm raged nearly every summer afternoon, coming up about three o’clock. But when, by any chance, that thunderstorm passed us by, we regretted it bitterly, for the oppressive, suffocating heat was then ever so much worse. Even the poor fowls used to go about with their beaks open and their wings held well away from their sides, literally gasping for breath. One was prepared for thunderstorms, even on the largest scale, when they came up with the usual accompaniments of massed clouds, rumbling or crashing thunder, and were followed by a deluge of rain; but I could not get used to what I have never seen anywhere else, and which could only be described as a “bolt from the blue.”

A very few days after my arrival at Maritzburg at the end of 1875, I was standing one afternoon in the shade of my little house on a hill, anxiously watching the picturesque arrival of an ox-waggon laden with my boxes. It was in the very early summer, and the exigencies of settling in left me no time to worry about the thunderstorms, of which, of course, I had often heard. A more serene and brilliant afternoon could not be imagined, and it was not even hot—at all events, out of the sun. My two small boys, as usual, trotted after me like dogs, and clamoured to assist at the arrival of the waggon; so I lifted the little one up in my arms and stood there, with an elder boy clinging to my skirts. Suddenly, out of the blue unclouded sky, out of the blaze of golden sunshine, came a flash and a crash which seemed as if it must be the crack of doom. No words at my command can give any idea of the intolerable blinding glare of the light which seemed to wrap us round, or of the rending sound, as if the universe were being torn asunder. I suppose I flung myself on the ground, because I was crouching there, holding the little boys beneath me with some sort of protective instinct, when in a second or two of time it had all passed, for I heard only a slight and distant rumble. I do not believe the sun had ceased shining for an instant, though its light had seemed to be extinguished by that blaze of fire. Never can I forget my amazement, an amazement which even preceded my deep thankfulness at finding we were absolutely unhurt, the fearless little boys only inquiring, “What was that, Mummy?” There had been no time for their rosy cheeks even to pale. I wonder what colour _I_ was. I looked at the little stone house with astonishment to find it still there, for I had expected to see nothing but a heap of ruins. Nay, it seemed miraculous that the hills all round should still be standing.

I only saw one more flash equally bad during my two summers in Natal, and that was whilst a thunderstorm was raging, accompanied by terrific hail. Of course, I was then in a house and trying to distract my thoughts from the weather, which I knew must be annihilating my lovely garden, by dispensing afternoon tea. I am certain _that_ flash came down upon the tea-tray, for when I lifted up my head (I defy any one not to cower before a stream of electricity which seems poured upon you out of a jug), I felt the same surprise at seeing my cups and saucers unshattered. I am sure they had jumped about, for I heard them, but they had recovered their equanimity by the time I had. Almost every day one saw in the newspapers an account of some death by lightning, and I know of one only too true story, in which our Kaffir washerman was the victim. He had left our house one fine Monday morning with a huge bag of clothes on his back, which he intended to wash in the river at the foot of the hill, when he observed one of these thunderstorms coming up unusually early, and so took shelter in the verandah of a small cottage by the roadside. After the worst of the storm had passed he was preparing to step outside, when a violent flash and a deafening thunderclap passed over the little house. The lightning must have been attracted by a nail carelessly sticking up in its shingled roof. The poor Kaffir chanced to be standing exactly beneath this nail and was struck down dead at once. I was told that he was in the act of speaking, promising some one that he would return the same way that very afternoon.

The streets of Maritzburg used, in my day, to be mended or hardened with a sort of ironstone which abounds in the district, and in one of these daily thunderstorms it was not uncommon to see the electricity rising up as it were from the ground to meet the descending fluid. Of course, the rivers soon become impassable, and I have a vivid recollection of four guests, who had ridden out rather earlier than usual one afternoon to have tea with me, being kept in our tiny house all night. More than one attempt was made before dark to find and use the little wooden bridge over the stream, which could hardly be called a river, but its whereabouts could not even be perceived, and the horses steadily refused to go out of their depth. So there was nothing for it except to return, drenched to the skin, and bivouac under our very small roof for the night.

And yet one is glad of these same rains after the long dry winter, when all vegetation seems to disappear off the baked earth and the cattle become so thin that it is a wonder the gaunt skeletons of the poor trek-oxen can support the weight of their enormous spreading horns. The changes of temperature in winter were certainly very trying. The day began fresh and cold and bracing, but the brilliant sunshine soon changed that into what might be called a very hot English summer’s day. About four o’clock, when the sun sloped towards the western hills, it began to grow cold again, and no wrap or greatcoat seemed too warm to put on then. By night one was only too glad of as big a fire on the open hearth as could be provided, for fuel was scarce and very expensive in those days. Doubtless, the railway has improved all those conditions; but Natal, as far as I saw it, is not a well-wooded country, except on the Native Reserves, and the only forest—“bush,” as they call it in Australia—which I saw, cost me a fifty-mile ride to get to it!

Our poor Kaffir servants used to get violent and prostrating colds in winter, in spite of each being supplied with an old greatcoat which had once belonged to a soldier. This the master provides; but if the man himself can raise an aged and dilapidated tunic besides, he is supremely happy. Anything so grotesque as this attire cannot well be imagined, for the red garment (it was almost unrecognisable as ever having been a tunic by that time) is worn with perfectly bare legs, a feather or two stuck jauntily on the head or with a crownless hat, and the true dandy adds a cartridge-case passed through a wide hole in the lobe of his ear and filled with snuff! Nor will any Kaffir stir out of doors without a long stick, on account of the snakes: but only the police used to be allowed to carry the knobkerry, which is a sort of South African shillelagh and a very formidable weapon.

It always seemed strange to me that a climate which was, on the whole, so healthy for human beings should not be favourable to animal life. Dogs do not thrive there at all, and soon become infested with ticks. One heard constantly of the native cattle being decimated by strange and weird diseases, and horses, especially imported horses, certainly require the greatest care. They must never be turned out whilst the dew is on the grass, unless with a sort of muzzling nosebag on, and the snakes are a perpetual danger to them, though the bite is not always fatal, for there are many varieties of snakes which are not venomous. Still, a native horse is always on the look-out for snakes and dreads them exceedingly. One night I was cantering down the main street of Maritzburg on a quiet old pony on my way to the Legislative Council, where I wanted to hear a very interesting debate on the native question (which was the burning one of that day), and my pony suddenly leaped off the ground like an antelope and then shied right across the road. This panic arose from his having stepped on a thin strip of zinc cut from a packing-case which must have been opened, as usual, outside the store or large shop which we were passing. As soon as the pony put his foot on one end of the long curled-up shaving, it must have risen up and struck him sharply, waking unpleasant memories of former encounters with snakes.

Railways were but a dream of the near future in my day. Indeed, the first sod of the first railway—that between Durban and Pietermaritzburg—was only turned on January 1, 1876, amid great enthusiasm. A mail-cart made a tri-weekly trip between the two towns—fifty-two miles apart—and that was horsed, but on anything like a journey either oxen or mules were used.

I have seen an ox-wagon arriving at a ball, with pretty young ladies inside its sheltering hood, who had been seated there all day long, having started in their ball-dresses directly after breakfast! Mules were in great request for draught purposes, and up to a point they answered admirably, jogging along without distress over bad roads which would soon have knocked up even the staunchest horses. But a mule is such an unreliable animal, and his character for obstinacy is thoroughly well deserved. When a mule, or a team of mules, stops on a particularly sticky bit of road, no power on earth will move him, and there is nothing for it but to await his good pleasure. I have, two or three times, journeyed behind a team of sixteen mules, and I always suffered great anxiety lest they should cease to respond to the incessant cries of their “Cape-boy” driver, or the still more persuasive arguments of his assistant, who bore quite a collection of whips of different lengths for emergencies. Happily the roads were then in fairly good order, and beyond a tendency to drop into a slow walk at the slightest hill the mules behaved irreproachably.

Locomotion was the great difficulty in those days, and we island-dwellers cannot easily realise the vast and trackless spaces which lie between the specks of townships on a huge continent. Natal is magnificently watered and grassed in the summer, but the big rivers are not only a hindrance to journeying, but from a sanitary point of view they are as undrinkable as the Nile, and probably for the same reasons. Still, they are there, and future generations will doubtless use them for irrigation and canals and all the needs of advancing civilisation.

In my day the Boer was quite an unconsidered factor, and we felt we were performing a Quixotically generous action when, at his own earnest entreaty, we took him and his debts and his native troubles on our own shoulders in 1876. He was always extremely dirty, and about a thousand years behind the rest of the civilised world in his ideas. His religion was a superstition worthy of the Middle Ages, and his notions of morality went a good deal further back than even those primitive times.

I confess the only Boer I ever was personally brought into contact with seemed to me a delightful person! This is how it happened. Soon after my arrival in Maritzburg, a bazaar was held in aid of some local literary undertaking. Bazaars were happily of very rare occurrence in those parts, and this one created quite an excitement and realised an astonishingly large sum of money. The race-week had been chosen for the purpose of catching customers among the numerous visitors to Pietermaritzburg in that gay time, and the wiles employed seemed very successful. I never heard how or why he got there, but I only know that a stout, comfortable, well-to-do Dutch farmer suddenly appeared at the door of the bazaar. He was, of course, at once assailed by pretty flower-girls and lucky-bag bearers, and cigars and kittens were promptly pressed on him. But the old gentleman had a plan and a method of his own, on which he proceeded to act. He had not one single syllable of English, so it was a case of deeds not words. He began at the very first stall and worked his way all round. At each stall he pointed to the biggest thing on it, and held out a handful of coins in payment. He then shouldered his purchase as far as the next stall, where he deposited it as a gift to the lady selling, bought her biggest object, and went on round the hall on the same principle. When it came to my turn he held out to me the largest wax-doll I ever beheld, and carried off a huge and unwieldy doll’s house which entirely eclipsed even his burly figure. My next door (or rather stall) neighbour had a table full of glass and china, and she consequently viewed the approach of this article of bazaar commerce with natural misgiving, but as our ideal customer relieved her of a very large ugly breakfast set, she managed to make room for the miniature house until she could arrange a raffle and so get rid of it. The last I saw of that Boer, who must have contributed largely to our receipts, was his leading a very small donkey, which he had just bought at the last stall, away by a blue ribbon halter. I believe it was the only “object” in the whole bazaar which could have possibly been of the slightest practical use to him, but the contrast between the weak-kneed and frivolously attired donkey and its sturdy purchaser was irresistibly comic. No one seemed to know in the least who he was, but we supposed he must have come down for the races and backed the winners very successfully.

Our little house stood on a hill about a mile from Maritzburg, and, remembering the formation of the surrounding country, one realises how badly the towns in Natal, and probably all over South Africa, are placed for purposes of defence. Every town, or even little hamlet or township, which I ever saw, stood in the middle of a wide plain with low hills all round it, so it is easy for me to realise how soon cannon planted on those hills would wreck buildings. There was a great and agreeable difference in the temperature, however, up on that little hill, but towards the close of the dry winter season the water-supply became an anxiety. In spite of the extremely cold nights up there, any plant for which I could spare a daily pail of water blossomed beautifully all through the winter. I was advised to select my favourite rose-bushes before the summer rains had ceased, and to have the baths of the family emptied over them every day, which I did with perfect success, and was even able to include some azaleas and camellias in the list of the favoured shrubs.

I was much struck with the rapid growth of trees in Natal, and it was astonishing to see the height and solidity of trees planted only ten years before, especially the eucalyptus. But grass walks or lawns are much discouraged in a garden on account of the facility they afford as cover for snakes, and red paths and open spaces are to be seen everywhere instead. Even the lawn-tennis of that day was played on smooth courts of firmly stamped and rolled red clay. I wonder how the golf-players manage, for play they do I am certain, as nothing ever induces either a golfer or a cricketer to forego his game.

One morning, very early, I was taken to the market, and it certainly was an extraordinary sight. The market-place is always one of the most salient features of a South African town, and is the centre of local gossip, just as is the “bazaar” of the East. It was an immense open space thronged with buyers and sellers; whites, Kaffirs, coolies, emigrants from St. Helena, and many onlookers like myself. It was all under Government control and seemed very well managed. There were official inspectors of the meat offered for sale, and duly authorised weights and scales, round which surged a vociferous crowd. I was specially invited to view the butter sent down from the Boer farms up country, and I cannot say it was an appetising sight. A huge hide, very indifferently tanned, was unrolled for my edification, and it certainly contained a substance distantly resembling butter, packed into it, but apparently at widely differing intervals of time. The condiment was of various colours, and—how shall I put it?—strengths; milk-sieves appeared also to have been unknown at that farm, for cows’ hair formed a noticeable component part of that mass of butter. However, I was assured that it found ready and willing purchasers, even at four shillings a pound, and that it was quite possible to remake it, as it were, and subject it to a purifying process. I confess I felt thankful that the butter my small family consumed was made under my own eyes.

Waggons laden with firewood were very conspicuous, and their loads disappeared rapidly, as did also piles of lucerne and other green forage. There was but little poultry for sale, and very few vegetables. I remember noticing in all the little excursions I made, within some twenty miles of Maritzburg, how different the Natal colonist, at least of those days, was from the Australian or New Zealand pioneer. At various farmhouses where there was plenty of evidence of a kind of rough and ready prosperity, and much open-handed hospitality and friendliness, there would be only preserved milk and tinned butter available. Now these two items must have indeed been costly by the time they reached the farms I speak of. Yet there were herds of cattle grazing around. Nor would there be poultry of any sort forthcoming, nor a sign of a garden. Of course, it was not my place to criticise; but if I ventured on a question, I was always told, “Oh, labour is so difficult to get. You know, the Kaffirs won’t work.” I longed to suggest that the young people I saw lounging about might very well turn to and lend a hand, at all events to start a poultry yard, or dairy, or vegetable garden.

Now, at Fort Napier—the only fortified hill near Maritzburg—every little hollow and ravine was utilised by the soldiers stationed there as a garden. The men, of course, work in these little plots themselves and grow beautiful vegetables. Potatoes and pumpkins, cabbages and onions, only need to be planted to grow luxuriantly. Why cannot this be done in the little farms around? I am afraid I took a selfish interest in the question, as it was so difficult, and often impossible, to procure even potatoes. Such things grow much more easily, I was told, at Durban, so probably those difficulties have disappeared with the opening of the railway—that very railway of which I saw the first sod turned. My own attempt at a vegetable garden suffered from its being perched on the top of a hill, where water was difficult to get; but I was very successful with some poultry, in spite of having to wage constant war against hawks and snakes.

How fortunate it is that one remembers the laughs of one’s past life better than its tears! That morning visit to the Pietermaritzburg market stands out distinctly in my memory chiefly on account of an absurd incident I witnessed. I had been much interested and amused looking round, not only at the strange and characteristic crowd, but at my many acquaintances marketing for themselves. I had listened to the shouts of the various auctioneers who were selling all manner of heterogeneous wares, when I noticed some stalwart Kaffirs bearing on their heads large open baskets filled entirely with coffee-pots of every size and kind. Roughly speaking, there must have been something like a hundred coffee-pots in those baskets. They were just leaving an improvised auction-stand, and following them closely, with an air of proud possession on his genial countenance, was a specially beloved friend of my own, who I may mention, was also the beloved friend of all who knew him. “Are _all_ those coffee-pots yours?” I inquired. “Yes, indeed; I have just bought them,” he answered. “You must know I am a collector of coffee-pots and have a great many already; but how lucky I have been to pick up some one else’s collection as well, and so cheap too!”

The Kaffirs were grinning, and there seemed a general air of amusement about, which I could not at all understand until it was explained to me later that my friend had just bought his own collection of coffee-pots. His wife thought that the space they occupied in her store-room could be better employed, and, believing that their owner would not attend the market that day, had sent the whole lot down to be sold. She told me afterwards that her dismay was indeed great when her Kaffirs brought them back in triumph, announcing that the “Inkose” (chieftain) had just bought them, so the poor lady had to pay the auctioneer’s fees, and replace the coffee-pots on their shelves with what resignation she could command.