CHAPTER X.
PORT ELIZABETH AND GRAHAMSTOWN.
FROM Capetown I went on by sea to Port Elizabeth or Algoa Bay, thus travelling from the Western to the Eastern Province,—leaving the former when I had as yet seen but little of its resources because it was needful that I should make my tour through Natal and the Transvaal before the rainy season had commenced.[12] The run is one which generally occupies from thirty to forty hours, and was effected by us under the excellent auspices of Captain Travers in something but little in excess of the shorter period. It rained during the whole of our little journey, so that one could not get out upon the deck without a ducking;—which was chiefly remarkable in that on shore every one was complaining of drought and that for many weeks after my first arrival in South Africa this useless rain at sea was the only rain that I saw. Persons well instructed in their geography will know that Algoa Bay and Port Elizabeth signify the same seaport,—as one might say that a ship hailed from the Clyde or from Glasgow. The Union Steam Ship Company sends a first-class steamer once a month from Southampton to Algoa Bay, without touching at Capetown.
Port Elizabeth, as I walked away from the quay up to the club where I took up my residence, seemed to be as clean, as straight, and as regular as a first class American little town in the State of Maine. All the world was out on a holyday. It was the birthday of the Duke of Edinburgh, and the Port-Elizabethians observed it with a loyalty of which we know nothing in England. Flags were flying about the ships in the harbour and every shop was closed in the town. I went up all alone with my baggage to the club, and felt very desolate. But everybody I met was civil, and I found a bedroom ready for me such as would be an Elysium, in vain to be sought for in a first class London hotel. My comfort, I own, was a little impaired by knowing that I had turned a hospitable South African out of his own tenement. On that first day I was very solitary, as all the world was away doing honour somewhere to the Duke of Edinburgh.
In the evening I went out, still alone, for a walk and, without a guide, found my way to the public park and the public gardens. I cannot say that they are perfect in horticultural beauty and in surroundings, but they are spacious, with ample room for improvement, well arranged as far as they are arranged, and with a promise of being very superior to anything of the kind at Capetown. The air was as sweet, I think, as any that I ever breathed. Through them I went on, leaving the town between me and the sea, on to a grassy illimitable heath on which, I told myself, that with perseverance I might walk on till I came to Grand Cairo. I had my stick in my hand and was prepared for any lion that I might meet. But on this occasion I met no lion. After a while I found myself descending into a valley,—a pretty little green valley altogether out of sight of the town, and which as I was wending along seemed at first to be an interruption in my way to the centre of the continent. But as I approached the verge from which I could look down into its bosom, I heard the sound of voices, and when I had reached a rock which hung over it, I saw beneath me a ring, as it might be of fairy folk, in full glee,—of folk, fairy or human, running hither and thither with extreme merriment and joy. After standing awhile and gazing I perceived that the young people of Port Elizabeth were playing kiss-in-the-ring. Oh,—how long ago it was since I played kiss-in-the-ring, and how nice I used to think it! It was many many years since I had even seen the game. And these young people played it with an energy and an ecstasy which I had never seen equalled. I walked down, almost amongst them, but no one noticed me. I felt among them like Rip Van Winkle. I was as a ghost, for they seemed not even to see me. How the girls ran, and could always have escaped from the lads had they listed, but always were caught round some corner out of the circle! And how awkward the lads were in kissing, and how clever the girls in taking care that it should always come off at last, without undue violence! But it seemed to me that had I been a lad I should have felt that when all the girls had been once kissed, or say twice,—and when every girl had been kissed twice round by every lad, the thing would have become tame, and the lips unhallowed. But this was merely the cynicism of an old man, and no such feeling interrupted the sport. There I left them when the sun was setting, still hard at work, and returned sadly to my dinner at the club.
The land round the town, though well arranged for such purpose as that just described, is not otherwise of a valuable nature. There seems to be an unlimited commonage of grass, but of so poor and sour a kind that it will not fatten and will hardly feed cattle. For sheep it is of no use whatever. This surrounds the town, and when the weather is cool and the air sweet, as it was when I visited the place, even the land round Port Elizabeth is not without its charms. But I can understand that it would be very hot in summer and that then the unshaded expanse would not be attractive. There is not a tree to be seen.
The town is built on a steep hill rising up from the sea, and is very neat. The town hall is a large handsome building, putting its rival and elder sister Capetown quite to shame. I was taken over a huge store in which, it seemed to me, that every thing known and wanted in the world was sold, from American agricultural implements down to Aberdeen red herrings. The library and reading room, and public ball room or concert hall, were perfect. The place contains only 15,000 inhabitants, but has every thing needed for instruction, civilization and the general improvement of the human race. It is built on the lines of one of those marvellous American little towns in which philanthropy and humanity seem to have worked together to prevent any rational want.
Ostrich feathers and wool are the staples of the place. I witnessed a sale of feathers and was lost in wonder at the ingenuity of the auctioneer and of the purchasers. They seemed to understand each other as the different lots were sold, with an average of 30 seconds allowed to each lot. To me it was simply marvellous, but I gathered that the feathers were sold at prices varying from £5 to £25 a pound. They are sold by the pound, but in lots which may weigh perhaps not more than a few ounces each. I need only say further of Port Elizabeth that there are churches, banks, and institutions fit for a town of ten times its size,—and that its club is a pattern club, for all Colonial towns.
Twenty miles north west of Port Elizabeth is the pleasant little town of Uitenhage,—which was one of the spots peopled by the English emigrants who came into the Eastern Province in 1820. It had previously been settled and inhabited by Dutch inhabitants in 1804, but seems to have owed its success to the coming of the English,—and is now part of an English, as distinct from a Dutch Colony. It is joined to Port Elizabeth by a railway which is being carried on to the more important town of Graff Reynet. It is impossible to imagine a more smiling little town than Uitenhage, or one in which the real comforts of life are more accessible. There is an ample supply of water. The streets are well laid out, and the houses well built. And it is surrounded by a group of mountains, at thirty miles distance, varying from 3,000 to 6,000 feet in height, which give a charm to the scenery around. It has not within itself much appearance of business, but everything and everybody seems to be comfortable. I was told that it is much affected by well-to-do widows who go thither to spend the evenings of their lives and enjoy that pleasant tea-and-toast society which is dear to the widowed heart. Timber is generally scarce in South Africa;—but through the streets of Uitenhage there are lovely trees, which were green and flowering when I was there in the month of August, warning me that the spring and then the heats of summer were coming on me all too soon.
During the last few years a special industry has developed itself at Uitenhage,—that of washing wool by machinery. As this is all carried on, not in stores or manufactories within the place, but at suburban mills placed along the banks of the river Swartzcop outside the town, they do not affect the semi-rural and widow-befitting aspect of the place. I remarked to the gentleman who was kindly driving me about the place that the people I saw around me seemed to be for the most part coloured. This he good-humouredly resented, begging that I would not go away and declare that Uitenhage was not inhabited by a white population. I have no doubt that my friend has a large circle of white friends, and that Uitenhage has a pure-blooded aristocracy. Were I to return there, as I half promised, for the sake of meeting the charming ladies whom he graciously undertook to have gathered together for my gratification, I am sure that I should have found this to be the case. But still I maintain that the people are a coloured people. I saw no white man who looked as though he earned his bread simply with his hands. I was driven through a street of pleasant cottages, and in asking who lived in the best looking of the lot I was told that he was an old Hottentot. The men working at the washing machines were all Kafirs,—earning on an average 3s. 6d. a day. It is from such evidence as this that we have to form an opinion whether the so called savage races of South Africa may or may not ultimately be brought into habits of civilization. After visiting one of the washing mills and being driven about the town we returned to Port Elizabeth to dine.
Starting from Port Elizabeth I had to commence the perils of South African travel. These I was well aware would not come from lions, buffaloes, or hippopotamuses,—nor even, to such a traveller as myself, from Kafirs or Zulus,—but simply from the length, the roughness and the dustiness of roads. I had been told before I left England that a man of my age ought not to make the attempt because the roads were so long, so rough,—and so dusty. In travelling round the coast there is nothing to be dreaded. The discomforts are simply of a marine nature, and may easily be borne by an old traveller. The terrible question of luggage does not disturb his mind. He may carry what he pleases and revel in clean shirts. But when he leaves the sea in South Africa every ounce has to be calculated. When I was told at Capetown that on going up from Natal to the Transvaal I should be charged 4s. extra for every pound I carried above fifteen I at once made up my mind to leave my bullock trunk at Government House. At Port Elizabeth a gentleman was very kind in planning my journey for me thence up to Grahamstown, King Williamstown &c.,—but, on coming into my bed room, he strongly recommended me to leave my portmanteau and dispatch box behind me, to be taken on, somewhither, by water, and to trust myself to two bags. So I tied on addresses to the tabooed receptacles of my remaining comforts, and started on my way with a very limited supply of wearing apparel. In the selection which one is driven to make with an agonized mind,—when the bag has been stamped full to repletion with shirts, boots, and the blue books which are sure to be accumulated for the sake of statistics, the first thing to be rejected is one’s dress suit. A man can live without a black coat, waistcoat, and trousers. But so great is colonial hospitality wherever the traveller goes, and so similar are colonial habits to those at home, that there will always come a time,—there will come many times,—in which the traveller will feel that he has left behind him the very articles which he most needed, and that the blue books should have been made to give way to decent raiment. These are difficulties which at periods become almost heartbreaking. Nevertheless I made the decision and rejected the dress suit. And I trusted myself to two pair of boots. And I allowed my treasures to be taken from me, with a hope that I might see them again some day in the further Colony of Natal.
From Port Elizabeth there is a railway open on the road to Grahamstown as far as a wretched place called Sand Flat. From thence we started in a mail cart,—or Cobb’s omnibus as it is called. The whole distance to Grahamstown is about 70 miles, and the journey was accomplished in eleven hours. The country through which we passed is not favourable for agriculture or even for pasture. Much of it was covered with bush, and on that which is open the grass is too sour for sheep. It is indeed called the Zuurveld, or sour-field country. But as we approached Grahamstown it improved, and farming operations with farm steads,—at long distances apart,—came in view. For some miles round Port Elizabeth there is nothing but sour grass and bush and the traveller inspecting the country is disposed to ask where is the fertility and where the rural charms which produced the great effort at emigration in 1820, when 5,000 persons were sent out from England into this district. The Kafirs had driven out the early Dutch settlers, and the British troops had driven out the Kafirs. But the country remained vacant, and £50,000 was voted by Parliament to send out what was then a Colony in itself, that the land might be occupied. But it is necessary to travel forty or fifty miles from Port Elizabeth, or Algoa Bay, before the fertility is discovered.
Grahamstown when it is reached is a smiling little town lying in a gentle valley on an elevated plateau 1,700 feet above the sea. It contains between eight and nine thousand inhabitants of whom a third are coloured. The two-thirds are almost exclusively British, the Dutch element having had little or no holding in this small thriving capital of the Eastern Province. For Grahamstown is the capital of the East, and there are many there who think that it should become a Capital of a Colony, whether by separation of the East from the West, or by a general federation of South African States—in which case the town would, they think, be more eligible than any other for all the general honours of government and legislation. I do not know but that on the whole I am inclined to agree with them. I think that if there were an united South Africa, and that a site for a capital had to be chosen afresh, as it was chosen in Canada, Grahamstown would receive from an outside commission appointed to report on the matter, more votes than any other town. But I am far from thinking that Grahamstown will become the capital of a South African Confederation.
The people of Grahamstown are very full of their own excellencies. No man there would call his town a “beastly place.” The stranger on the other hand is invited freely to admire its delights, the charm of its position up above the heat and the musquitoes, the excellence of its water supply, the multiplicity of its gardens, the breadth and prettiness of its streets, its salubrity,—for he is almost assured that people at Grahamstown never die,—and the perfection of its Institutions. And the clock tower appended to the cathedral! The clock tower which is the work of the energetic Dean was when I was there,—not finished indeed for there was the spire to come,—but still so far erected as to be a conspicuous and handsome object to all the country round. The clock tower was exercising the minds of men very much, and through a clever manœuvre,—originating I hope with the Dean,—is supposed to be a town-clock tower and not an appanage of the cathedral. In this way all denominations have been got to subscribe, and yet, if you were not told to the contrary, you would think that the tower belongs to the cathedral as surely as its dome belongs to St. Paul’s.
In truth Grahamstown is a very pretty town, and seen, as it is on all sides, from a gentle eminence, smiles kindly on those who enter it. The British troops who guarded the frontier from our Kafir enemies were formerly stationed here. As the Kafirs have been driven back eastwards, so have the troops been moved in the same direction and they are now kept at King Williamstown about 50 miles to the North East of Grahamstown, and nearer to the Kei river which is the present boundary of the Colony;—or was till the breaking out of the Kafir disturbance in 1877. The barracks at Grahamstown still belong to the Imperial Government, as does the castle at Capetown, and are let out for various purposes. Opening from the barrack grounds are the public gardens which are pretty and well kept. Grahamstown altogether gives the traveller an idea of a healthy, well-conditioned prosperous little town, in which it would be no misfortune to be called upon to live. And yet I was told that I saw it under unfavourable circumstances, as there had been a drought for some weeks, and the grasses were not green.
I was taken from Grahamstown to see an ostrich farm about fifteen miles distant. The establishment belongs to Mr. Douglas, who is I believe among the ostrich farmers of the Colony about the most successful and who was if not the first, the first who did the work on a large scale. He is, moreover, the patentee for an egg-hatching machine, or incubator, which is now in use among many of the feather-growers of the district. Mr. Douglas occupies about 1,200 acres of rough ground, formerly devoted to sheep-farming. The country around was all used not long since as sheep walks, but seems to have so much deteriorated by changes in the grasses as to be no longer profitable for that purpose. But it will feed ostriches.
At this establishment I found about 300 of those birds, which, taking them all round, young and old, were worth about £30 a piece. Each bird fit for plucking gives two crops of feathers a year, and produces, on an average, feathers to the value of £15 per annum. The creatures feed themselves unless when sick or young, and live upon the various bushes and grasses of the land. The farm is divided out into paddocks, and, with those which are breeding, one cock with two hens occupies each paddock. The young birds,—for they do not breed till they are three years old,—or those which are not paired, run in flocks of thirty or forty each. They are subject to diseases which of course require attention, and are apt to damage themselves, sometimes breaking their own bones, and getting themselves caught in the wire fences. Otherwise they are hardy brutes, who can stand much heat and cold, can do for long periods without water, who require no delicate feeding, and give at existing prices ample returns for the care bestowed upon them.
But, nevertheless, ostrich farming is a precarious venture. The birds are of such value, a full grown bird in perfect health being worth as much as £75, that there are of course risks of great loss. And I doubt whether the industry has, as yet, existed long enough for those who employ it to know all its conditions. The two great things to do are to hatch the eggs, and then to pluck or cut the feathers, sort them, and send them to the market. I think I may say that ostrich farming without the use of an incubator can never produce great results. The birds injure their feathers by sitting and at every hatching lose two months. There is, too, great uncertainty as to the number of young birds which will be produced, and much danger as to the fate of the young bird when hatched. An incubator seems to be a necessity for ostrich farming. Surely no less appropriate word was ever introduced into the language, for it is a machine expressly invented to render unnecessary the process of incubation. The farmer who devotes himself to artificial hatching provides himself with an assortment of dummy eggs,—consisting of eggshells blown and filled with sand,—and with these successfully allures the hens to lay. The animals are so large and the ground is so open that there is but little difficulty in watching them and in obtaining the eggs. As each egg is worth nearly £5 I should think that they would be open to much theft when the operation becomes more general, but as yet there has not come up a market for the receipt of stolen goods. When found they are brought to the head quarters and kept till the vacancy occurs for them in the machine.
The incubator is a low ugly piece of deal furniture standing on four legs, perhaps eight or nine feet long. At each end there are two drawers in which the eggs are laid with a certain apparatus of flannel, and these drawers by means of screws beneath them are raised or lowered to the extent of two or three inches. The drawer is lowered when it is pulled out, and is capable of receiving a fixed number of eggs. I saw, I think, fifteen in one. Over the drawers and along the top of the whole machine there is a tank filled with hot water, and the drawer when closed is screwed up so as to bring the side of the egg in contact with the bottom of the tank. Hence comes the necessary warmth. Below the machine and in the centre of it a lamp, or lamps, are placed which maintain the heat that is required. The eggs lie in the drawer for six weeks, and then the bird is brought out.
All this is simple enough, and yet the work of hatching is most complicated and requires not only care but a capability of tracing results which is not given to all men. The ostrich turns her egg frequently, so that each side of it may receive due attention. The ostrich farmer must therefore turn his eggs. This he does about three times a day. A certain amount of moisture is required, as in nature moisture exudes from the sitting bird. The heat must be moderated according to circumstances or the yolk becomes glue and the young bird is choked. Nature has to be followed most minutely, and must be observed and understood before it can be followed. And when the time for birth comes on the ostrich farmer must turn midwife and delicately assist the young one to open its shell, having certain instruments for the purpose. And when he has performed his obstetrical operations he must become a nursing mother to the young progeny who can by no means walk about and get his living in his earliest days. The little chickens in our farm yards seem to take the world very easily; but they have their mother’s wings, and we as yet hardly know all the assistance which is thus given to them. But the ostrich farmer must know enough to keep his young ones alive, or he will soon be ruined,—for each bird when hatched is supposed to be worth £10. The ostrich farmer must take upon himself all the functions of the ostrich mother, and must know all that instinct has taught her, or he will hardly be successful.
The birds are plucked before they are a year old, and I think that no one as yet knows the limit of age to which they will live and be plucked. I saw birds which had been plucked for sixteen years and were still in high feather. When the plucking time has come the necessary number of birds are enticed by a liberal display of mealies,—as maize or Indian corn is called in South Africa,—into a pen one side of which is moveable. The birds will go willingly after mealies, and will run about their paddocks after any one they see, in the expectation of these delicacies. When the pen is full the moveable side is run in, so that the birds are compressed together beyond the power of violent struggling. They cannot spread their wings or make the dart forward which is customary to them when about to kick. Then men go in among them, and taking up their wings pluck or cut their feathers. Both processes are common but the former I think is most so, as being the more profitable. There is a heavier weight to sell when the feather is plucked; and the quil begins to grow again at once, whereas the process is delayed when nature is called upon to eject the stump. I did not see the thing done, but I was assured that the little notice taken by the animal of the operation may be accepted as proof that the pain, if any, is slight. I leave this question to the decision of naturalists and anti-vivisectors.
The feathers are then sorted into various lots, the white primary outside rim from under the bird’s wing being by far the most valuable,—being sold, as I have said before, at a price as high as £25 a pound. The sorting does not seem to be a difficult operation and is done by coloured men. The produce is then packed in boxes and sent down to be sold at Port Elizabeth by auction.
As far as I saw all labour about the place was done by black men except that which fell to the lot of the owner and two or three young men who lived with him and were learning the work under his care. These black men were Kafirs, Fingos, or Hottentots—so called, who lived each in his own hut with his wife and family. They received 26s. a month and their diet,—which consisted of two pound of meat and two pound of mealies a day each. The man himself could not eat this amount of food, but would no doubt find it little enough with his wife and children. With this he has permission to build his hut about the place, and to burn his master’s fuel. He buys coffee if he wants it from his master’s store, and in his present condition generally does want it. When in his hut he rolls himself in his blanket, but when he comes out to his work attires himself in some more or less European apparel according to regulation. He is a good humoured fellow, whether by nature a hostile Kafir, or a submissive Fingo, or friendly Basuto, and seems to have a pleasure in being enquired into and examined as to his Kafir habits. But, if occasion should arise, he would probably be a rebel. On this very spot where I was talking to him, the master of the farm had felt himself compelled during the last year,—1876—to add a couple of towers to his house so that in the event of an attack he might be able to withdraw his family from the reach of shot, and have a guarded platform from whence to fire at his enemies. Whether or not the danger was near as he thought it last year I am unable to say; but there was the fact that he had found it necessary so to protect himself only a few months since within twenty miles of Grahamstown! Such absence of the feeling of security must of course be injurious if not destructive to all industrial operations.
I may add with regard to ostrich farming that I have heard that 50 per cent. per annum on the capital invested has been not uncommonly made. But I have heard also that all the capital invested has not been unfrequently lost. It must be regarded as a precarious business and one which requires special adaptation in the person who conducts it. And to this must be added the fact that it depends entirely on a freak of fashion. Wheat and wool, cotton and coffee, leather and planks men will certainly continue to want, and of these things the value will undoubtedly be maintained by competition for their possession. But ostrich feathers may become a drug. When the nurse-maid affects them the Duchess will cease to do so.
Grahamstown is served by two ports. There is the port of Port Elizabeth in Algoa Bay which I have already described as a thriving town and one from which a railway is being made across the country, with a branch to Grahamstown. All the mail steamers from England to Capetown come on to Algoa Bay, and there is also a direct steamer from Plymouth once a month. The bulk of the commerce for the whole adjacent district comes no doubt to Port Elizabeth. But the people of Grahamstown affect Port Alfred, which is at the mouth of the Kowie river and only 35 miles distant from the Eastern Capital. I was therefore taken down to see Port Alfred.
I went down on one side of the river by a four-horsed cart as far as the confluence of the Mansfield, and thence was shewn the beauties of the Kowie river by boat. Our party dined and slept at Port Alfred, and on the following day we came back to Grahamstown by cart on the other side of the river. I was perhaps more taken with the country which I saw than with the harbour, and was no longer at a loss to know where was the land on which the English settlers of 1820 were intended to locate themselves. We passed through a ruined village called Bathurst,—a village ruined while it was yet young, than which nothing can be more painful to behold. Houses had been built again, but almost every house had at one time,—that is in the Kafir war of 1850,—been either burnt or left to desolation. And yet nothing can be more attractive than the land about Bathurst, either in regard to picturesque situation or fertility. The same may be said of the other bank of this river. It is impossible to imagine a fairer district to a farmer’s eye. It will grow wheat, but it will also grow on the slopes of the hills, cotton and coffee. It is all possessed, and generally all cultivated;—but it can hardly be said to be inhabited by white men, so few are they and so far-between. A very large proportion of the land is let out to Kafirs who pay a certain sum for certain rights and privileges. He is to build his hut and have enough land to cultivate for his own purposes, and grass enough for his cattle;—and for these he contracts to pay perhaps £10 per annum, or more, or less, according to circumstances. I was assured that the rent is punctually paid. But this mode of disposing of the land, excellent for all purposes as it is, has not arisen of choice but of necessity. The white farmer knows that as yet he can have no security if he himself farms on a large scale. Next year there may be another scare, and then a general attack from the Kafirs; or the very scare if there be no attack, frightens away his profits;—or, as has happened before, the attack may come without the scare. The country is a European country,—belongs that is to white men,—but it is full of Kafirs;—and then, but a hundred miles away to the East, is Kafraria Proper where the British law does not rule even yet.
No one wants to banish the Kafirs. Situated as the country is and will be, it cannot exist without Kafirs, because the Kafirs are the only possible labourers. To utilize the Kafir and not to expel him must be the object of the white man. Speaking broadly it may be said of the Colony, or at any rate of the Eastern district, that it has no white labourers for agricultural purposes. The Kafir is as necessary to the Grahamstown farmer as is his brother negro to the Jamaica sugar grower. But, for the sake both of the Kafir and of the white man, some further assurance of security is needed. I am inclined to think that more evil is done both to one and the other by ill defined fear than by actual danger.
Along the coast of the Colony there are various sea ports, none of which are very excellent as to their natural advantages, but each of which seems to have a claim to consider itself the best. There is Capetown of course with its completed docks, and Simon’s Bay on the other side of the Cape promontory which is kept exclusively for our men of war. Then the first port, eastwards, at which the steamers call is Mossel Bay. These are the chief harbours of the Western Province. On the coast of the Eastern Province there are three ports between which a considerable jealousy is maintained, Port Elizabeth, Port Alfred, and East London. And as there is rivalry between the West and East Provinces, so is there between these three harbours. Port Elizabeth I had seen before I came up to Grahamstown. From Grahamstown I travelled to Port Alfred, taken thither by two patriotic hospitable and well-instructed gentlemen who thoroughly believed that the commerce of the world was to flow into Grahamstown