Capetown,Saturday,May 3d.
Dearest mother,After five weeks of waiting and worry,I have,at last,sent my goods on board the ship CAMPERDOWN,now discharging her cargo,and about to take a small party of passengers from the Cape.I offered to take a cabin in a Swedish ship,bound for Falmouth;but the captain could not decide whether he would take a passenger;and while he hesitated the old CAMPERDOWN came in.I have the best cabin after the stern cabins,which are occupied by the captain and his wife and the Attorney-General of Capetown,who is much liked.
The other passengers are quiet people,and few of them,and the captain has a high character;so I may hope for a comfortable,though slow passage.I will let you know the day I sail,and leave this letter to go by post.I may be looked for three weeks or so after this letter.I am crazy to get home now;after the period was over for which I had made up my mind,home-sickness began.
Mrs.R-has offered me a darling tiny monkey,which loves me;but Ifear A-would send me away again if I returned with her in my pocket.Nassirah,old Abdool's pretty granddaughter,brought me a pair of Malay shoes or clogs as a parting gift,to-day.Mr.M-,the resident at Singapore,tells me that his secretary's wife,a Malay lady,has made an excellent translation of the ARABIANNIGHTS,from Arabic into Malay.Her husband is an Indian Mussulman,who,Mr.M-said,was one of the ablest men he ever knew.Curious!
I sat,yesterday,for an hour,in the stall of a poor German basket-maker who had been long in Caffre-land.His wife,a Berlinerin,was very intelligent,and her account of her life here most entertaining,as showing the different ANSICHT natural to Germans.'I had never',she said,'been out of the city of Berlin,and KNEW NOTHING.'(Compare with London cockney,or genuine Parisian.)Thence her fear,on landing at Algoa Bay and seeing swarms of naked black men,that she had come to a country where no clothes were to be had;and what should she do when hers were worn out?They had a grant of land at Fort Peddie,and she dug while her husband made baskets of cane,and carried them hundreds of miles for sale;sleeping and eating in Caffre huts.'Yes,they are good,honest people,and very well-bred (ANSTANDIG),though they go as naked as God made them.The girls are pretty and very delicate (FEIN),and they think no harm of it,the dear innocents.'If their cattle strayed,it was always brought back;and they received every sort of kindness.'Yes,madam,it is shocking how people here treat the blacks.They call quite an old man 'Boy',and speak so scornfully,and yet the blacks have very nice manners,I assure you.'When I looked at the poor little wizened,pale,sickly Berliner,and fancied him a guest in a Caffre hut,it seemed an odd picture.But he spoke as coolly of his long,lonely journeys as possible,and seemed to think black friends quite as good as white ones.The use of the words ANSTANDIG and FEIN by a woman who spoke very good German were characteristic.She could recognise an 'ANSTANDIGKEIT'NOT of Berlin.I need not say that the Germans are generally liked by the coloured people.Choslullah was astonished and Pleased at my talking German;he evidently had a preference for Germans,and put up,wherever he could,at German inns and 'publics'.
I went on to bid Mrs.Wodehouse good-bye.We talked of our dear old Cornish friends.The Governor and Mrs.Wodehouse have been very kind to me.I dined there twice;last time,with all the dear good Walkers.I missed seeing the opening of the colonial parliament by a mistake about a ticket,which I am sorry for.
