Rathfelder's Halfway House,6th November.-I drove out here yesterday in Captain T-'s drag,which he kindly brought into Capetown for me.He and his wife and children came for a change of air for whooping cough,and advised me to come too,as my cough continues,though less troublesome.It is a lovely spot,six miles from Constantia,ten from Capetown,and twelve from Simon's Bay.Iintend to stay here a little while,and then to go to Kalk Bay,six miles from hence.This inn was excellent,I hear,'in the old Dutch times'.Now it is kept by a young Englishman,Cape-born,and his wife,and is dirty and disorderly.I pay twelve shillings a day for S-and self,without a sitting-room,and my bed is a straw paillasse;but the food is plentiful,and not very bad.That is the cheapest rate of living possible here,and every trifle costs double what it would in England,except wine,which is very fair at fivepence a bottle -a kind of hock.The landlord pays 1pound a day rent for this house,which is the great resort of the Capetown people for Sundays,and for change of air,&c.-a rude kind of Richmond.His cook gets 3pounds 10S.a month,besides food for himself and wife,and beer and sugar.The two (white)housemaids get 1pound 15S.and 1pound 10S.respectively (everything by the month).Fresh butter is 3S.6D.a pound,mutton 7D.;washing very dear;cabbages my host sells at 3D.a piece,and pumpkins 8D.He has a fine garden,and pays a gardener 3S.6D.a day,and black labourers 2S.THEY work three days a week;then they buy rice and a coarse fish,and lie in the sun till it is eaten;while their darling little fat black babies play in the dust,and their black wives make battues in the covers in their woolly heads.But the little black girl who cleans my room is far the best servant,and smiles and speaks like Lalage herself,ugly as the poor drudge is.
The voice and smile of the negroes here is bewitching,though they are hideous;and neither S-nor I have yet heard a black child cry,or seen one naughty or quarrelsome.You would want to lay out a fortune in woolly babies.Yesterday I had a dreadful heartache after my darling,on her little birthday,and even the lovely ranges of distant mountains,coloured like opals in the sunset,did not delight me.This is a dreary place for strangers.Abdul Jemaalee's tisanne,and a banana which he gave me each time I went to his shop,are the sole offer of 'Won't you take something?'or even the sole attempt at a civility that I have received,except from the J-s,who,are very civil and kind.
When I have done my visit to Simon's Bay,I will go 'up country',to Stellenbosch,Paarl and Worcester,perhaps.If I can find people going in a bullock-waggon,I will join them;it costs 1pound a day,and goes twenty miles.If money were no object,Iwould hire one with Caffres to hunt,as well as outspan and drive,and take a saddle-horse.There is plenty of pleasure to be had in travelling here,if you can afford it.The scenery is quite beyond anything you can imagine in beauty.I went to a country house at Rondebosch with the J-s,and I never saw so lovely a spot.The possessor had done his best to spoil it,and to destroy the handsome Dutch house and fountains and aqueducts;but Nature was too much for him,and the place lovely in neglect and shabbiness.
Now I will tell you my impressions of the state of society here,as far as I have been able to make out by playing the inquisitive traveller.I dare say the statements are exaggerated,but I do not think they are wholly devoid of truth.The Dutch round Capetown (Idon't know anything of 'up country')are sulky and dispirited;they regret the slave days,and can't bear to pay wages;they have sold all their fine houses in town to merchants,&c.,and let their handsome country places go to pieces,and their land lie fallow,rather than hire the men they used to own.They hate the Malays,who were their slaves,and whose 'insolent prosperity'annoys them,and they don't like the vulgar,bustling English.The English complain that the Dutch won't die,and that they are the curse of the colony (a statement for which they can never give a reason).
But they,too,curse the emancipation,long to flog the niggers,and hate the Malays,who work harder and don't drink,and who are the only masons,tailors,&c.,and earn from 4S.6D.to 10S.a day.
