“CAPE” SKETCHES.

Cape Wants are neither peculiar nor numerous. Captain Smoke, in Jerrold’s comedy of “Bubbles of the Day,” confides to his friend, Lord Skindeep, that he is “terribly in want of a thousand pounds.” The reply is “You may take it as a general rule, Captain Smoke, that every man wants a thousand pounds.” As with men so with Colonies. The sun never sets upon one of the dependencies of Great Britain, young or old, which would not be the better for a thousand pounds. Our Colonies feel, however, another want;—it is for something to which the Smokes of the old country show a very marked aversion; and that is labour. “Capital and labour!” is a cry which reaches us from every quarter of the earth. The demand does not resound so loudly perhaps from the Cape as from other and newer Colonies; but the want of the first necessities of enterprise, civilisation, and progress is not the less felt. Any sort of European labour (except convict labour), any kind of capital, is welcome in our South African dependencies; and in the long run “pays.”

As to Capital; men with from two thousand pounds to ten thousand pounds will find plenty of most profitable employment for their money. The Colony has innumerable resources—amongst them I may mention her fisheries and her mineral treasures. The former produce a large revenue even now, though carried on, from want of enterprise and capital, in the most unsystematic and slovenly manner. Of minerals there is abundance; ore in many places actually lying on the surface. The assegais (or spears) of the Kafirs are all made of iron, smelted and welded by themselves; while recent travellers from the northernmost extremity of the Colony bring accounts of innumerable implements in use among the savage tribes there, formed of iron of their own manufacture. Copper and lead have been discovered within fifteen miles of Algoa Bay.

But such riches remain utterly unproductive without facile means of transport, and a great want in the Colony is good roads. Of course, want of labour is the cause of this deficiency, which is, however, being slowly remedied by the local government. Whether the Cape Colonists were wise in rejecting the convicts, so kindly proffered to them by Lord Grey, I shall not presume to opine, because I have a notion that everybody knows their own business best; but we must not forget that New South Wales owes the blessing of her good roads to what was, it must be admitted, in other respects, a great curse to her—the bands of convicts the Colonial Office were so obliging as to send her.

Before I dilate on the greatest of all colonial wants, I will mention what the Cape of Good Hope does not want; namely, young gentlemen with white hands and empty pockets, of no profession, and with very extensive notions of refinement. She does not require martinet “half-pays,” who know more of pipe-clay than of soils, and more of killing than of breeding and fattening. Fine ladies, who are proficient pianistes, and do not understand poultry, she is much better without. What she does require, are:—In the towns, mechanics and artisans of all kinds; in the country, good farmers and sturdy dames, shepherds and agricultural labourers; in both, domestic servants, male and female. For all these the Cape is open, and it offers them first-rate livelihoods, abundance of food of the best description, and a climate which the returns taken of the mortality among the troops prove to be amongst the healthiest in all Her Majesty’s world-wide dominions. The Colony has also one great advantage over Australia—it is ten thousand miles nearer to England.

Want the third in point of importance is a change in the present system of selecting Colonial Governors. Were we to choose Generals to lead our armies—not from soldiers trained to arms and distinguished in the field—but from decayed statesmen, who had “never set a squadron in the field,” nor even handled a sword; would not our enemies not only beat us, but laugh at us? Yet conversely we commit precisely this absurdity: we “reward” meritorious Generals by appointing them Governors; of whose duties they are, as a rule, as ignorant as a Lord of the Treasury is of fortification. The Governor of a Colony, as the representative of the highest power in the Empire, is required to fulfil the highest civil functions; to conduct the most difficult and delicate negotiations; and we select a brave old General, who hardly knows the geography of his government; is profoundly ignorant of the habits and requirements of its people; who never even pretended to statesmanship, and either commits himself to something so rash that it makes everybody angry, or to something so silly that it makes everybody laugh.

In Education, England might take a lesson from her South African dependency—it is in the education of the people. Government schools are established in every town, and almost every village of the Colony, open to children of all classes and all creeds, and free of all expense. They are presided over by intelligent teachers, chiefly selected from the Scotch Universities, and truly their pupils do these gentlemen infinite credit. I do not hesitate to say, that the rising generation of the Cape Colony will be the best educated men of their class in all the British Empire. It is to Dr. Jones, the former President of the South African College, in Cape Town, that the colony is indebted for this invaluable boon. Even the population in the far interior are better off in this respect than the children of our English peasantry. Thanks to the energy of Campbell, Latrobe, Moffat, and other energetic, common-sense, as well as pious, members of the Missionary Society; the children of the Hottentots, Griquas, and even of some of the Bechuanas, are fast being brought into the pale of civilisation by attendance at the schools established by those gentlemen. Some of the offspring of English parents in the “interior” of England, have no such schools to attend.

Sheep Farming is, perhaps, the best and most profitable occupation at the Cape. It is far better than agriculture, and better than cattle farming, for the following reasons. The great deficiency of the colony is the want of sufficient water for irrigation. Wherever this want is not felt, all kinds of grain may be raised with profit, and Cape wheat is universally pronounced to be the finest in the world. But the farms, or portions of farms, on which it can be grown are few and far between. Nor is this the only drawback to agriculture; the farmer has two other dire enemies to contend with. The one is the blight or “smut,” which is very common; and frequently destroys whole crops. Two young friends of mine hired a farm in partnership, and, in spite of the warnings of more experienced persons, determined to turn their principal attention to agriculture. They went to great expense in the purchase of agricultural implements, paid the highest wages for labourers, and worked with their own hands as hard as any ploughman in England. They raised a magnificent crop, and began to indulge a sweet reverie on the “Dollars” it was to bring them. Alas, the “smut” came, and the beautiful crop was destroyed, while not one solitary dollar found its way into the young farmers’ pockets. Disappointed, but not disheartened, they set to work again, and next year with precisely the same result. Luckily they were prudent fellows, and had neither been personally extravagant, nor sunk all their money in one enterprise. They, therefore, purchased some sheep, cattle, and horses, and only cultivated a very small portion of their farm; and now they are among the most prosperous farmers in the Colony.

Another enemy of the agriculturist at the Cape, not less destructive than the former, though less frequent in his attacks, is the locust. Till I went to the Cape, I never had a clear conception of the mischief that could be done by this one of the “Plagues of Egypt.” They came always in clouds, and fly with the wind. I am almost afraid to describe their numbers. I have seen the air as full of these creatures as of the flakes of snow in a heavy snow-storm—in fact, literally “raining locusts.” I have been obliged to turn back on a journey from the impossibility of getting my horse to face them when driven against us by the wind. I have seen immense plains one day covered with grass, corn, and gardens; and the next day left, after a visit of locusts, without one solitary blade of verdure on any part of them. I have seen millions of these insects driven by the wind into the sea at Algoa Bay, and washed on shore in such heaps, that their bodies decaying have become so offensive as to oblige the authorities of the town to employ all the Coolies in the place in burying them. Think of all this, grumbling farmers of England. What corn-laws could afford you “protection” against such an importation? Still, I must add that during my five years’ residence at the Cape, I can only recall three visits of these pests; nor must it be supposed that they at any time spread over the whole Colony. When they visit a sheep or cattle farm, the owner has, of course, no other alternative than to move his stock to some place which they have not visited.

Cattle are profitable stock at the Cape; but no Englishman seems to like them so well as sheep. Besides, it occasionally happens that, in a fit of caprice, every Hottentot labourer on your farm will leave you in a day, and you will have to be your own herdsman. This is comparatively nothing with sheep; but if you had a couple of hundred cows that wanted milking you would be rather in a “fix.”

Horses are also a profitable stock, and far more suited to English taste. But the “returns” are necessarily slow; and few men can afford to wait three years for their profits.

Sheep are the best. Here is one example, by no means extraordinary, but forming an average sample of the fruits of sheep-farming:—A gentleman who was reading for the Church, at Cambridge, found that his health would not allow him to continue his studies; he emigrated to Algoa Bay, with a capital of about two thousand five hundred pounds. He wisely listened to good advice in the selection of a farm and the purchase of his stock of sheep. At the end of three years I visited him, and we talked about sheep-farming, which was then in a bad condition. I was expressing my wonder that so many sheep-farmers had lately been “sold up;” and this was his reply, “What else could you expect? Half of them come out here without one farthing of capital. They hire a farm; buy stock on credit (for two or three years), live on the sale of the wool and also on credit—for they live ‘like fighting-cocks’—and then when pay-day comes at last, they, of course, have not a sixpence. But, look at my own case: I have been here three years; my wool fetches double the price that it did the first year; my stock is just doubled in number and vastly improved in quality; I have lived in as much comfort as I require in the meantime; and I don’t owe a sixpence.”

The life of a Cape farmer is necessarily solitary. His nearest neighbour is probably seven miles off, and his only daily companions are his stock and his labourers. A visitor (especially if he come from one of the Towns) is a veritable Godsend; and is safe to be welcome as long as he chooses to remain. He may ride his host’s horses and shoot or hunt his game, smoke his pipes, and drink his “Cape Smoke,”[A] as long as he pleases. But he must be contented with very rough fare. Mutton and goats’ flesh, meal-cakes (very similar, I fancy, to those which King Alfred burnt), Indian corn, and badly-made coffee, will form the staple articles of his food. He will sleep on a home-made sofa with goatskins for blankets, in a room with a mud floor, and very probably no ceiling but the thatch roof. The house will most likely be built of lath and plaster, and look far more like the stable of a third-rate country inn than a gentleman’s residence. Yet the host is often a highly educated and sensible man, fighting his way to competence, living a comparatively easy life, and, if unblessed with luxuries, at least unharassed by cares, save when an occasional wolf (or rather hyæna) makes a night assault on his homestead.

Of the Cape Trade, the most peculiar and profitable branch is that with the native tribes. At present it is carried on in the most primitive style. A trader will load a couple of waggons with such goods as are likely to sell among savages. Coarse cloth, smart Manchester printed calicoes, blankets, beads, brass curtain-rings (worn by the natives as ornaments on their arms), soldiers’ jackets, wide-awake hats, &c. With this load he will proceed across the colonial boundary, and penetrate as far as he pleases into the interior, calling where experience has shown him he is likely to find customers, and selling his goods like a hawker, or “Cheap Jack,” in England. But he seldom obtains money for his goods,—nor does he wish for it. He gets ivory, ostrich feathers, wild-beast skins, horns, and, in fact, all the rarest trophies of the chase. With these he reloads his waggons for his return home, and reaches the Colony after, perhaps, six or eight months’ absence, with a load which fetches him at once, seven or eight hundred—sometimes a thousand—pounds in exchange for his outlay of one hundred and fifty pounds.

It seems clear that the establishment of trading stations in the interior of Southern Africa would be most profitable to the projectors, and most advantageous to the native tribes, by accustoming them to the sights and habits of a civilised life.

The shopkeepers are rather jealous of the merchants at the Cape. The latter are very often so undignified as to sell a dozen pair of stockings or a single hat, to the exceeding disgust of retailers.

A Cape shop is a curiosity. It strikes a man as odd, to buy his boots and his cheese, or his hat and his sugar, at the same shop,—still more odd to purchase his wife a Chinese shawl and his child a peg-top in the same establishment.

The Wild Sports of South Africa have been celebrated by many a writer, from Major Cornwallis Harris down to Mr. Gordon Cumming. For large game the country is perhaps the finest sporting ground in the world. People come even from India to hunt the lion and the buffalo, the rhinoceros and the hippopotamus, the elephant, the giraffe, and the innumerable varieties of wild deer, from the delicate and graceful springbok to the heavy and powerful gnu. Some of the most dreaded amongst them are not nearly so terrible as travellers’ tales would persuade “the gentlemen of England who sit at home at ease.”

On one occasion I was riding through a wood, with a single companion; we were on a journey, and quite unarmed. At a little open space in the woods we dismounted and knee-haltered our horses to let them feed, while we lazily stretched ourselves under a tree, and “took a pull” at our pocket-pistols, loaded with Cognac. A slight rustling sound was heard above our heads, and down came something to the ground in front of us. It was a fine, full-grown, handsome leopard, who coolly turned round and stared us in the face. I very much doubt whether two respectable young gentlemen ever felt in a greater fright than my friend and myself at that moment. The unwelcome visitor, however, merely wagged his tail, and having apparently satisfied his curiosity as to our personal appearance, trotted quietly off into the woods. Without uttering a word we each drew a long breath, took another pull at the eau-de-vie, caught our horses, and put as many miles as we could in a few minutes between ourselves and that same wood.

The lion can even be companionable. Major Nicholson occupies a farm near the north-east boundary of the Colony. He is a great sportsman, and goes out alone to look after a lion with as much unconcern as a Regent Street lounger seeks out a Skye-terrier as a present for his lady-love. In one of his afternoon rambles the Major fell in with a lion; they were both going the same way and jogged along for some distance silent, though excellent friends. At length the lion stopped, turned round, faced the Major, and sat on his haunches like a great tom-cat. The Major, not knowing how soon his majesty’s tacit treaty of peace might be broken with him, levelled his piece, taking aim between the eyes. He was just about to fire, when a sound caused him to turn round; he then at once understood that, the lion having been out for a walk, his lady had come, like a dutiful wife, to meet him. The Major drew back and calculated the odds—two to one in favour of the quadrupeds—and reserved his fire; deciding that it would be little satisfaction to kill the husband and be eaten by the wife, or vice versâ. The respectable couple then continued their walk alone, treating the Major with the most sovereign contempt, and allowing him, like Young Norval, to “mark the course they took,” and to follow them to their abode. This he next day visited, with men, dogs, and guns; and a week afterwards I was sleeping soundly, in the Major’s house, on the skin of that same king of the forest, while his consort’s hide served me for a coverlid.

Although the keener sportsman prefers to go beyond the colonial boundary for prey, yet it is customary in the towns for a number of friends to make up a shooting party, who sally forth with waggons and a tent, which they pitch on some agreeable spot, and stay for several days, living al fresco,—enjoying good sport by day and good fare at the end of it, with merry songs, toasts, and stories. Others prefer hunting, mount their active little horses, and, followed by a whole host of curs, whose pedigrees would puzzle the most ingenious zoologist, sally forth in search of wild bucks; and many a good run they enjoy, and much do they contribute to the stock of good things which grace the table on the greensward at night.