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Page 1
Pleasing as the picture is when seen from the deck of a Castle Liner,
disappointment generally overtakes the voyager who has landed. Capetown
itself has little to boast of in the way of architecture. Except
Adderley Street, which is adorned by the massive buildings of the Post
Office and Standard Bank, the thoroughfares of the town offer scarcely
any attractions. The Dutch are not an artistic race, and the fact that
natives here live not in "locations" but anywhere they choose has
covered some portions of the town's area with ugly and squalid houses.
Nor, as a matter of fact, does the general tone of thought and feeling
in Cape Colony naturally lend itself to aesthetic considerations. Even
the churches fail to escape the influence of a spirit which subordinates
everything else to practical and utilitarian considerations. Can two
uglier buildings of their kind be found in the civilised world than the
English and Dutch cathedrals at Capetown?
Another unpleasant feature of life in Capetown is the misfortune, not
the fault, of the inhabitants in being frequently exposed to the full
fury of the south-east wind. Sometimes for whole days together the Cape
is swept by tremendous blasts, which tear up the sea into white foam and
raise clouds of blinding dust along the streets of the town.
Nevertheless the kindness and generosity of the people are not in any
way lessened by these unpleasant features in their surroundings. The
warmth of colonial hospitality is acknowledged by all travellers, and
may be partly due to that love of the mother country which survives in
the hearts of Englishmen who have never left South Africa, and yet
recognise in the visitor a kind of tie, as it were, between themselves
and old England. Such hospitality blesses him that gives as well as him
that takes, and the host listens with deepest interest to his guest's
chatter about London, or perhaps the country town or village where he or
his forefathers lived in days gone by. Any one who is accustomed in
England to the conventional "Saturday to Monday" or the "shooting week"
in a country house opens his eyes with wonder when he receives a warm
invitation from a colonial to spend a month with him at his house on the
Karroo. And such invitations, unlike those which the Oriental traveller
receives, are uttered in earnest and meant to be accepted.
Capetown is by far the most cosmopolitan of all our colonial capitals.
Englishmen, Dutchmen, Jews, Kaffirs, "Cape boys" and Malays bustle about
the streets conversing in five or six different languages. There is a
delightful freedom from conventionalism in the matter of dress. At one
moment you meet a man in a black or white silk hat, at another a
grinning Kaffir bears down upon you with the costume of a scarecrow; you
next pass a couple of dignified Malays with long silken robes and the
inevitable _tarbush_, volubly chattering in Dutch or even Arabic. These
Malays form a particularly interesting section of the population. They
are largely the descendants of Oriental slaves owned by the Dutch, and,
of course, preserve their Moslem faith, though some of its external
observances, _e.g._, the veiling of women, have ceased to be observed. I
did my best during a few days' stay at Somerset West to witness one of
their great festivals called "El Khalifa". At this feast some devotees
cut themselves with knives until the blood pours from the wounds, and a
friend of mine who had witnessed the performance on one occasion seemed
to think that in some cases the wounding and bleeding were not really
objective facts, but represented to the audience by a species of
hypnotic suggestion. As, however, my visit to Somerset West took place
during the month of Ramazan there was no opportunity of witnessing the
"Khalifa," which would be celebrated during Bairam, the month of
rejoicing which amongst Moslems all the world over succeeds the
self-mortifications of Ramazan. Even if their external observances of
the usages of Islam seem somewhat lax, the Cape Moslems, I found,
faithfully observe the month of abstinence, and I remember talking to a
most intelligent Malay boy, who was working hard as a mason in the full
glare of the midday heat, and was touching neither food nor drink from
sunrise to sunset.
All around were signs and tokens of the war. Large transports lay gently
rolling upon the swell in every direction, and it was said that not less
than sixty ships were lying at anchor together in the bay. H.M.S.
_Niobe_ and _Doris_ faced the town, and further off was stationed the
_Penelope_, which had already received its earlier contingents of Boer
prisoners. It is very difficult, by the way, to understand how some of
these captives contrived later on to escape by swimming to the shore,
for, apart from the question of sharks, the distance to the beach was
considerable.
On land the whole aspect of the streets was changed. Every few yards one
met men in khaki and putties. This cloth looks fairly smart when it is
new and the buttons and badges are burnished; but, after a very few
weeks at the front, khaki uniforms become as shabby as possible. No one
who is going into the firing line has any wish to draw the enemy's fire
by the glint of his buttons or his shoulder-badges, and so these are
either removed or left to tarnish. Nor does khaki--at any rate the
"drill" variety--improve its beauty by being washed. When one has
bargained with a Kaffir lady to wash one's suit for ninepence it comes
back with all the glory of its russet brown departed and a sort of limp,
an�mic look about it. And when the wearer has lain upon the veldt at
full length for long hours together in rain and sun and dust-storm his
kit assumes an inexpressible dowdiness, and preserves only its one
superlative merit of so far resembling mother earth that even the keen
eyes behind the Mauser barrels fail to spot Mr. Atkins as he lies prone
behind his stone or anthill.
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