CHAPTER V.
CAPETOWN; THE CAPITAL.
I HAD always heard that the entrance into Capetown, which is the capital of the Cape Colony, was one of the most picturesque things to be seen on the face of the earth. It is a town lying close down on the seashore, within the circumference of Table Bay so that it has the advantage of an opposite shore which is always necessary to the beauty of a seashore town; and it is backed by the Table Mountain with its grand upright cliffs and the Lion with its head and rump, as a certain hill is called which runs from the Table Mountain round with a semicircular curve back towards the sea. The “Lion” certainly put me in mind of Landseer’s lions, only that Landseer’s lions lie straight. All this has given to Capetown a character for landscape beauty, which I had been told was to be seen at its best as you enter the harbour. But as we entered it early on one Sunday morning neither could the Table Mountain nor the Lion be seen because of the mist, and the opposite shore, with its hills towards The Paarl and Stellenbosch, was equally invisible. Seen as I first saw it Capetown was not an attractive port, and when I found myself standing at the gate of the dockyard for an hour and a quarter waiting for a Custom House officer to tell me that my things did not need examination,—waiting because it was Sunday morning,—I began to think that it was a very disagreeable place indeed. Twelve days afterwards I steamed out of the docks on my way eastward on a clear day, and then I could see what was then to be seen, and I am bound to say that the amphitheatre behind the place is very grand. But by that time the hospitality of the citizens had put me in good humour with the city and had enabled me to forget the iniquity of that sabbatical Custom House official.
But Capetown in truth is not of itself a prepossessing town. It is hard to say what is the combination which gives to some cities their peculiar attraction, and the absence of which makes others unattractive. Neither cleanliness, nor fine buildings, nor scenery, nor even a look of prosperity will effect this,—nor will all of them combined always do so. Capetown is not specially dirty,—but it is somewhat ragged. The buildings are not grand, but there is no special deficiency in that respect. The scenery around is really fine, and the multiplicity of Banks and of Members of Parliament,—which may be regarded as the two most important institutions the Colonies produce,—seemed to argue prosperity. But the town is not pleasing to a stranger. It is as I have said ragged, the roadways are uneven and the pavements are so little continuous that the walker by night had better even keep the road. I did not make special enquiry as to the municipality, but it appeared to me that the officers of that body were not alert. I saw a market out in the open street which seemed to be rather amusing than serviceable. To this criticism I do not doubt but that my friends at the Cape will object;—but when they do so I would ask whether their own opinion of their own town is not the same as mine. “It is a beastly place you know,” one Capetown gentleman said to me.
“Oh no!” said I in that tone which a guest is obliged to use when the mistress of a house speaks ill of anything at her own table. “No, no; not that.”
But he persisted. “A beastly place,”—he repeated. “But we have plenty to eat and plenty to drink, and manage to make out life very well. The girls are as pretty as they are any where else, and as kind;—and the brandy and water as plentiful.” To the truth of all these praises I bear my willing testimony,—always setting aside the kindness of the young ladies of which it becomes no man to boast.
The same thing may be said of so many colonial towns. There seems to be a keener relish of life than among our steadier and more fastidious folk at home, with much less to give the relish. So that one is driven to ask oneself whether advanced Art, mechanical ingenuity, and luxurious modes of living do after all add to the happiness of mankind. He who has once possessed them wants to return to them,—and if unable to do so is in a far worse position than his neighbours. I am therefore disposed to say that though Capetown as a city is not lovely, the Capetowners have as good a time of it as the inhabitants of more beautiful capitals.
The population is something over 30,000,—which when we remember that the place is more than two centuries old and that it is the capital of an enormous country, and the seat of the colonial legislature, is not great. Melbourne which is just two hundred years younger than Capetown contains above a quarter of a million of inhabitants. Melbourne was of course made what it is by gold;—but then so have there been diamonds to enhance the growth of Capetown. But the truth, I take it, is that a white working population will not settle itself at any place where it will have to measure itself against coloured labour. A walk through the streets of Capetown is sufficient to show the stranger that he has reached a place not inhabited by white men,—and a very little conversation will show him further that he is not speaking with an English-speaking population. The gentry no doubt are white and speak English. At any rate the members of Parliament do so, and the clergymen, and the editors—for the most part, and the good-looking young ladies;—but they are not the population. He will find that everything about him is done by coloured persons of various races, who among themselves speak a language which I am told the Dutch in Holland will hardly condescend to recognise as their own. Perhaps, as regards labour, the most valuable race is that of the Malays, and these are the descendants of slaves whom the early Dutch settlers introduced from Java. The Malays are so-called Mahommidans, and some are to be seen flaunting about the town in turbans and flowing robes. These, I understand, are allowed so to dress themselves as a privilege in reward for some pious work done,—a journey to Mecca probably. Then there is a Hottentot admixture, a sprinkling of the Guinea-coast negro, and a small but no doubt increasing Kafir element. But all this is leavened and brought into some agreement with European modes of action and thought by the preponderating influence of Dutch blood. So that the people, though idle, are not apathetic as savages, nor quite so indifferent as Orientals. But yet there is so much of the savage and so much of the oriental that the ordinary Englishman does not come out and work among them. Wages are high and living, though the prices of provisions are apt to vary, is not costly. Nor is the climate averse to European labourers, who can generally work without detriment in regions outside the tropics. But forty years ago slave labour was the labour of the country, and the stains, the apathy, the unprofitableness of slave labour still remain. It had a curse about it which fifty years have not been able to remove.
The most striking building in Capetown is the Castle, which lies down close to the sea and which was built by the Dutch,—in mud when they first landed, and in stone afterwards, though not probably as we see it now. It is a low edifice, surrounded by a wall and a ditch, and divided within into two courts in which are kept a small number of British troops. The barracks are without, at a small distance from the walls. In architecture it has nothing to be remarked, and as a defence would be now of no avail whatever. It belongs to the imperial Government, who thus still keep a foot on the soil as though to show that as long as British troops are sent to the Cape whether for colonial or imperial purposes, the place is not to be considered free from imperial interference. Round the coast at Simon’s Bay, which is at the back or eastern side of the little promontory which constitutes the Cape of Good Hope, Great Britain possesses a naval station, and this is another imperial possession and supposed to need imperial troops for its defence. And from this possession of a naval station there arises the fiction that for its need the British troops are retained in South Africa when they have been withdrawn from all our other self-governing Colonies. But we have also a station for ships of war at Sydney, and generally a larger floating force there than at Simon’s Bay. But the protection of our ships at Sydney has not been made an excuse for having British troops in New South Wales. I will, however, recur again to this subject of soldiers in the Colony,—which is one that has to be treated with great delicacy in the presence of South African Colonists.
There was lately a question of selling the Castle to the Colony,—the price named having been, I was told, something over £60,000. If purchased by the municipality it would I think be pulled down. Thus would be lost the most conspicuous relic of the Dutch Government;—but an ugly and almost useless building would be made to give way to better purposes.
About thirty years ago Dr. Gray was appointed the first bishop of Capetown and remained there as bishop till he died,—serving in his Episcopacy over a quarter of a century. He has been succeeded by Bishop Jones, who is now Metropolitan of South Africa to the entire satisfaction of all the members of the Church. Bishop Gray inaugurated the building of a Cathedral, which is a large and serviceable church, containing a proper ecclesiastical throne for the Bishop and a stall for the Dean; but it is not otherwise an imposing building and certainly is anything but beautiful. That erected for the use of the Roman Catholics has been built with better taste. Near to the Cathedral,—behind it, and to be reached by a shady walk which is one of the greatest charms of Capetown, is the Museum, a handsome building standing on your right as you go up from the Cathedral. This is under the care of Mr. Trimen who is well known to the zoologically scientific world as a man specially competent for such work and whose services and society are in high esteem at Capetown. But I did not think much of his African wild beasts. There was a lion and there were two lionesses,—stuffed of course. The stuffing no doubt was all there; but the hair had disappeared, and with the hair all that look of martial ardour which makes such animals agreeable to us. There was, too, a hippopotamus who seemed to be moulting,—if a hippopotamus can moult,—very sad to look at, and a long since deceased elephant, with a ricketty giraffe whose neck was sadly out of joint. I must however do Mr. Trimen the justice to say that when I remarked that his animals seemed to have needed Macassar oil, he acknowledged that they were a “poor lot,” and that it was not by their merits that the Capetown Museum could hope to be remembered. His South African birds and South African butterflies, with a snake or two here and there, were his strong points. I am but a bad sightseer in a museum, being able to detect the deficiencies of a mangy lion, but unable from want of sight and want of education to recognise the wonders of a humming bird. But I saw a hideous vulture, and an eagle, and some buzzards, with a grand albatross or two, all of which were as glossy and natural as glass eyes and well brushed feathers could make them. A skeleton of a boa-constrictor with another skeleton of a little animal just going to be swallowed interested me perhaps more than anything else.
Under the same roof with the Museum is the public library which is of its nature very peculiar and valuable. It would be invidious to say that there are volumes there so rare that one begrudges them to a distant Colony which might be served as well by ordinary editions as by scarce and perhaps unreadable specimens. But such is the feeling which comes up first in the mind of a lover of books when he takes out and handles some of the treasures of Sir George Grey’s gift. For it has to be told that a considerable portion of the Capetown library,—or rather a small separate library itself numbering about 5,000 volumes,—was given to the Colony by that eccentric but most popular and munificent Governor. But why a MS. of Livy, or of Dante, should not be as serviceable at Capetown as in some gentleman’s country house in England it would be hard to say; and the Shakespeare folio of 1623 of which the library possesses a copy,—with a singularly close cut margin,—is no doubt as often looked at, and as much petted and loved and cherished in the capital of South Africa, as it is when in the possession of a British Duke. There is also a wonderful collection in these shelves of the native literature of Africa and New Zealand. Perhaps libraries of greater value have been left by individuals to their country or to special institutions, but I do not remember another instance of a man giving away such a treasure in his lifetime and leaving it where in all human probability he could never see it again.
The remaining, or outer library, contains over thirty thousand volumes, of which about 5,000 were left by a Mr. Dessin more than a hundred years ago to the Dutch Reformed Church in Capetown. These seem to have been buried for many years, and to have been disinterred and brought into use when the present public library was established in 1818. The public are admitted free, and ample comforts are supplied for reading,—such as warmth, seats, tables and a handsome reading-room. A subscription of £1 per annum enables the subscriber to take a set of books home. This seems to us to be a munificent arrangement; but it should always be remembered that at Boston in the United States any inhabitant of the city may take books home from the public library without any deposit and without paying anything. Among all the philanthropical marvels of public libraries that is the most marvellous. I was told that the readers in Capetown are not very numerous. When I visited the place there were but two or three.
A little further up along the same shady avenue, and still on the right hand side is the entrance to the Botanic Gardens. These, I was told, were valuable in a scientific point of view, but were, as regards beauty and arrangement, somewhat deficient, because funds were lacking. There is a Government grant and there are subscriptions, but the Government is stingy,—what Good Government ever was not stingy?—and the subscriptions are slender. I walked round the garden and can imagine that if I were an inhabitant of Capetown and if, as would probably be the case, I made frequent use of that avenue, I might prolong my exercise by a little turn round the garden. But this could only be three times a week unless my means enabled me to subscribe, for on three days the place is shut against the world at large. As a public pleasure ground the Capetown gardens are not remarkable. As I walked up and down this somewhat dreary length I thought of the glory and the beauty and the perfect grace of the gardens at Sydney.
Opposite to the Museum and the Gardens is the Government House in which Sir Bartle Frere with his family had lately come to reside. In many Colonies, nay in most that I have visited, I have heard complaints that Government Houses have been too small. Seeing such hospitality as I have seen in them I could have fancied that Governors, unless with long private purses, must have found them too large. They are always full. At Melbourne, in Victoria, an evil-natured Government has lately built an enormous palace which must ruin any Governor who uses the rooms placed at his disposal. When I was there the pleasant house at Tourac sufficed, and Lord Canterbury, who has now gone from us, was the most genial of hosts and the most sage of potentates. At Capetown the house was larger than Tourac, and yet not palatial. It seemed to me to be all that such a house should be;—but I heard regrets that there were not more rooms. I know no office in which it can be less possible for a man to make money than in administering the government of a constitutional Colony. In a Colony that has no constitution of its own,—in which the Governor really governs,—the thing is very different. In the one there is the salary and the house, and that is all. In a Crown Colony there is no House of Commons to interfere when this and the other little addition is made. We all know what coals and candles mean at home. The constitutional Governor has no coals and candles.
Wherever I go I visit the post-office, feeling certain that I may be able to give a little good advice. Having looked after post-offices for thirty years at home I fancy that I could do very good service among the Colonies if I could have arbitrary power given to me to make what changes I pleased. My advice is always received with attention and respect, and I have generally been able to flatter myself that I have convinced my auditors. But I never knew an instance yet in which any improvement recommended by me was carried out. I have come back a year or two after my first visit and have seen that the things have been just as they were before. I did not therefore say much at Capetown;—but I thought it would have been well if they had not driven the public to buy stamps at a store opposite, seeing that as the Colony pays salaries the persons taking the salaries ought to do the work;—and that it would be well also if they could bring themselves to cease to look at the public as enemies from whom it is necessary that the officials inside should be protected by fortifications in the shape of barred windows and closed walls. Bankers do their work over open counters, knowing that no one would deal with them were they to shut their desks up behind barricades.
But I am bound to say that my letters were sent after me with that despatch and regularity which are the two first and greatest of post-official virtues. And the services in the Colony generally are very well performed, and performed well under great difficulties. The roads are bad, and the distances long, and the transit is necessarily rough. I was taken out to see such a cart as I should have to travel on for many a weary day before I had accomplished my task in South Africa. My spirit groaned within me as I saw it,—and for many a long and weary hour it has since expanded itself with external groanings though not quite on such a cart as I saw then. But the task has been done, and I can speak of the South African cart with gratitude. It is very rough,—very rough indeed for old bones. But it is sure.
I should weary my reader were I to tell him of all the civilized institutions,—one by one,—which are in daily use in Capetown. There is a Custom House, and a Sailors’ Home, and there are hospitals, and an observatory,—very notable I believe as being well placed in reference to the Southern hemisphere,—and a Government Herbarium and a lunatic asylum at Robben Island. Of Mr. Stone, the Astronomer Royal and lord of the Observatory, I must say one word in special praise. “Do you care for the stars?” he asked me. In truth I do not care for the stars. I care, I think, only for men and women, and so I told him. “Then,” said he, “I won’t bother you to come to the Observatory. But if you wish to see stars I will show them to you.” I took him at his word and did not then go to the Observatory. This I had said with some fear and trembling as I remembered well the disgust which Agazziz once expressed when I asked permission not to be shown his museum at Cambridge, Massachusetts. But Mr. Stone seemed to understand my deficiency, and if he pitied me he abstained from expressing his pity. Afterwards I did make a special visit to the Observatory,—which is maintained by the imperial Government and not by the Colony,—and was shown all the wonders of the Southern Heavens. They were very beautiful, but I did not understand much about them.
There is a comfortable and hospitable club at Capetown, to which, as at all colonial clubs, admission is given to strangers presumed to be of the same social standing as the members. The hour of lunch seems to be the hour of the day at which these institutions are most in request. This is provided in the form of a table d’hôte, as is also a dinner later on in the day. This is less numerously attended, but men of heroic mould are thus enabled to dine twice daily.
Capetown would be no city without a railway. The Colony at present has three starting-points for railways from the coast, one of which runs out of Capetown, with a branch to Wynberg which is hardly more than a suburb and is but eight miles distant, and a second branch to Worcester which is intended to be carried up the country to the distant town of Graaf Reynet and so on through the world of Africa. The line to Wynberg is of infinite importance to the city as giving to the inhabitants easy means of access to a charming locality. Capetown itself is not a lovely spot on which to reside, but the district at the back of the Table Mountain where are Mowbray, Rondebusch, Wynberg and Constantia,—which district is reached by the railway,—supplies beautiful sites for houses and gardens. There are bits of scenery which it would be hard to beat either in form or colour, so grand are the outlines of the mountain, and so rich and bountiful the verdure of the shrubs and timbers. It would be difficult to find a site for a house more charming than that occupied by the bishop, which is only six miles from town and hardly more than a mile distant from a railway station. Beyond Wynberg lies the grape district of Constantia so well known in England by the name of its wine;—better known, I think, forty years ago than it is now.
All these places, Rondebusch, Wynberg, Constantia and the rest lie on that promontory which when we look at the map we regard as the Cape of Good Hope. The Dutch had once an idea of piercing a canal across the isthmus from sea to sea, from Table Bay to False Bay,—in which lies Simon’s Bay where is our naval station,—and maintaining only the island so formed for its own purposes, leaving the rest of South Africa to its savagery. And, since the time of the Dutch, it has been suggested that if England were thus to cut off the Table Mountain with its adjacent land, England would have all of South Africa that it wants. The idea is altogether antagonistic to the British notion of colonization, which looks to a happy home for colonists or the protection natives, rather than the benefit or glory of the Mother Country. But were such a cutting off to be effected, the morsel of land so severed would be very charming, and would demand I think a prettier town than Capetown.
Beyond and around Wynberg there is a little world of lovely scenery. Simonstown is about twelve miles from Wynberg, the road passing by the now growing bathing-place of Kalk bay. It is to Kalk bay that the ladies of Capetown go with their children when in summer they are in search of fresh air, and sea breezes, and generally improved sanitary arrangements. A most delightful spot it would be if only there were sufficient accommodation. The accommodation of course will come as years roll on. Beyond Kalk bay are Simonstown and Simon’s Bay, where lives the British Commodore who has the command of these waters. The road, the whole way down, lies between the mountain and the sea. Beyond Simonstown I rode out for six or seven miles with the Commodore along the side of the hill and through the rocks till we could see the lighthouse at the extremity of the Cape. It is impossible to imagine finer sea scenery or a bolder coast than is here to be seen. There is not a yard of it that would not be the delight of tourists if it were in some accessible part of Europe,—not a quarter of a mile that would not have its marine villa if it were in England.
Before I returned home I stayed for a week or two at an Inn, a mile or two beyond Wynberg, called Rathfelders. I suppose some original Dutchman of that name once kept the house. It is of itself an excellent place of resort, cool in summer, being on the cool side of the Table Mountains and well kept;—a comfortable refuge to sojourners who do not object to take their meals at a public table; but peculiarly pleasant as being in the midst of mountain scenery. From here there is a ride through the mountains to Hout’s Bay,—a little inlet on the other side of the Cape promontory,—which cannot be beaten for beauty of the kind. The distance to be ridden may be about ten miles each way, and good riding horses are kept at Rathfelders. But I did not find that very many had crossed the pass. I should say that in the neighbourhood of Wynberg there are various hotels and boarding houses so that accommodation may always be had. The best known of these is Cogill’s Hotel close to the Wynberg Railway Station. I did not stay there myself, but I heard it well spoken of.
Altogether the scenery of the Promontory on which the Dutch landed, the southern point of which is the Cape of Good Hope, and on which stands Capetown, is hardly to be beaten for picturesque beauty by any landskip charms elsewhere within the same area.
I was taken down to Constantia where I visited one of the few grape growers among whom the vineyards of this district are divided. I found him with his family living in a fine old Dutch residence,—which had been built I was told by one of the old Dutch Governors when a Governor at the Cape was a very aristocratic personage. Here he keeps a few ostriches, makes a great deal of wine, and has around him as lovely scenery as the eye of man can desire. But he complained bitterly as to the regulations,—or want of regulations,—prevailing in regard to labour. “If an idle people could only be made to work for reasonable wages the place would become a very Paradise!” This is the opinion as to labour which is left behind in all lands in which slavery has prevailed. The man of means, who has capital either in soil or money, does not actually wish for a return to slavery. The feelings which abolished slavery have probably reached his bosom also. But he regrets the control over his fellow creatures which slavery formerly gave him, and he does not see that whether a man be good or bad, idle by nature and habits or industrious, the only compulsion to work should come from hunger and necessity,—and the desire of those good things which industry and industry alone will provide.
On the other side of Capetown,—the other side from the direction towards Wynberg,—there is another and the only other road out of Capetown which leads down to Sea Point, where there is a second pleasant suburb and a second clustering together of villa residences. Here the inhabitants look direct on to Table Bay and have the surges of the Atlantic close to their front doors. The houses at Sea Point are very nice, but they have nothing of the Elysian scenery of Wynberg. Continuing the road from Sea Point the equestrian, or energetic walker, may return by the Kloof,—anglice Cleft,—which brings him back to town by a very picturesque route between the Lion and Table Mountains. This is almost too steep for wheels, or it would claim to be called a third road out of the town.
I was taken to see two schools, the high school at Rondebusch, and a school in the town for coloured lads. At the high school the boys were away for their holidays and therefore I could see nothing but the outside material. I do not doubt but that lads are educated there quite as well as at similar institutions in England. It is under the guidance of a clergyman of the Church of England, and is thoroughly English in all its habits. I found a perfect menagery of interesting animals attached to it, which is an advantage which English schools seldom possess. The animals, which, though wild by nature, were at this place remarkably tame, had, fortunately for me, not gone home for their holidays,—so that, wanting the boys, I could amuse myself with them. I will not speak here of the coloured school, as I must, as I progress, devote a short chapter to the question of Kafir education.
In speaking of the Capital of the Colony I need only further remark that it possesses a completed and adequate dock for the reception of large ships, and a breakwater for the protection of the harbour. The traffic from England to the Cape of Good Hope is now mainly conducted by two Steam Ship Companies, the Union and Donald Currie & Co., which carry the mails with passengers and cargo each way weekly. Many of these vessels are of nearly 3,000 tons burden, some even of more, and at Capetown they are brought into the dock so that passengers walk in and out from the quay without the disagreeable aid of boats. The same comfort has not as yet been afforded at any other port along the coast.