Why Has No One Ever Mentioned The Curious
Little Soft Voices Of These Coolies?
- You can't hear them with the
naked ear, three feet off.
The most hideous demon (whose
complexion had not only the colour, but the precise metallic lustre
of an ill black-leaded stove) at last chirruped a wish for orders,
which I gave. I asked the pert, active, cockney housemaid what I
ought to pay them, as, being a stranger, they might overcharge me.
Her scorn was sublime, 'Them nasty blacks never asks more than
their regular charge.' So I asked the black-lead demon, who
demanded 'two shilling each horse in waggon', and a dollar each
'coolie man'. He then glided with fiendish noiselessness about the
room, arranged the furniture to his own taste, and finally said,
'Poor missus sick'; then more chirruping among themselves, and
finally a fearful gesture of incantation, accompanied by 'God bless
poor missus. Soon well now'. The wrath of the cockney housemaid
became majestic: 'There, ma'am; you see how saucy they have grown-
-a nasty black heathen Mohamedan a blessing of a white Christian!'
These men are the Auvergnats of Africa. I was assured that bankers
entrust them with large sums in gold, which they carry some hundred
and twenty miles, by unknown tracks, for a small gratuity. The
pretty, graceful Malays are no honester than ourselves, but are
excellent workmen.
To-morrow, my linen will go to a ravine in the giant mountain at my
back, and there be scoured in a clear spring by brown women,
bleached on the mountain top, and carried back all those long miles
on their heads, as it went up.
My landlady is Dutch; the waiter is an Africander, half Dutch, half
Malay, very handsome, and exactly like a French gentleman, and as
civil.
Enter 'Africander' lad with a nosegay; only one flower that I know-
-heliotrope. The vegetation is lovely; the freshness of spring and
the richness of summer. The leaves on the trees are in all the
beauty of spring. Mrs. R- brought me a plate of oranges, 'just
gathered', as soon as I entered the house - and, oh! how good they
were! better even than the Maltese. They are going out, and DEAR
now - two a penny, very large and delicious. I am wild to get out
and see the glorious scenery and the hideous people. To-day the
wind has been a cold south-wester, and I have not been out. My
windows look N. and E. so I get all the sun and warmth. The beauty
of Table Bay is astounding. Fancy the Undercliff in the Isle of
Wight magnified a hundred-fold, with clouds floating halfway up the
mountain. The Hottentot mountains in the distance have a fantastic
jagged outline, which hardly looks real. The town is like those in
the south of Europe; flat roofs, and all unfinished; roads are
simply non-existent. At the doors sat brown women with black hair
that shone like metal, very handsome; they are Malays, and their
men wear conical hats a-top of turbans, and are the chief artisans.
At the end of the pier sat a Mozambique woman in white drapery and
the most majestic attitude, like a Roman matron; her features large
and strong and harsh, but fine; and her skin blacker than night.
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