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Next day we got light wind S.W. (which ought to be the S.E. trades), and the weather has been, beyond all description, lovely ever since. Cool, but soft, sunny and bright - in short, perfect; only the sky is so pale. Last night the sunset was a vision of loveliness, a sort of Pompadour paradise; the sky seemed full of rose-crowned AMORINI, and the moon wore a rose-coloured veil of bright pink cloud, all so light, so airy, so brilliant, and so fleeting, that it was a kind of intoxication. It is far less grand than northern colour, but so lovely, so shiny. Then the flying fish skimmed like silver swallows over the blue water. Such a sight! Also, I saw a whale spout like a very tiny garden fountain. The Southern Cross is a delusion, and the tropical moon no better than a Parisian one, at present. We are now in lat. 31 degrees about, and have been driven halfway to Rio by this sweet southern breeze. I have never yet sat on deck without a cloth jacket or shawl, and the evenings are chilly. I no longer believe in tropical heat at sea. Even during the calm it was not so hot as I have often felt it in England - and that, under a vertical sun. The ship that nearly ran us and herself down, must have kept no look-out, and refused to answer our hail. She is supposed to be from Glasgow by her looks. We may speak a ship and send letters on board; so excuse scrawl and confusion, it is so difficult to write at all.

30th August. - About 25 degrees S. lat. and very much to the west. We have had all sorts of weather - some beautiful, some very rough, but always contrary winds - and got within 200 miles of the coast of South America. We now have a milder breeze from the SOFT N.E., after a BITTER S.W., with Cape pigeons and mollymawks (a small albatross), not to compare with our gulls. We had private theatricals last night - ill acted, but beautifully got up as far as the sailors were concerned. I did not act, as I did not feel well enough, but I put a bit for Neptune into the Prologue and made the boatswain's mate speak it, to make up for the absence of any shaving at the Line, which the captain prohibited altogether; I thought it hard the men should not get their 'tips'. The boatswain's mate dressed and spoke it admirably; and the old carpenter sang a famous comic song, dressed to perfection as a ploughboy.

I am disappointed in the tropics as to warmth. Our thermometer stood at 82 degrees one day only, under the vertical sun, N. of the Line; ON the Line at 74 degrees; and at sea it FEELS 10 degrees colder than it is. I have never been hot, except for two days 4 degrees N. of the Line, and now it is very cold, but it is very invigorating. All day long it looks and feels like early morning; the sky is pale blue, with light broken clouds; the sea an inconceivably pure opaque blue - lapis lazuli, but far brighter. I saw a lovely dolphin three days ago; his body five feet long (some said more) is of a FIERY blue-green, and his huge tail golden bronze. I was glad he scorned the bait and escaped the hook; he was so beautiful. This is the sea from which Venus rose in her youthful glory. All is young, fresh, serene, beautiful, and cheerful.

We have not seen a sail for weeks. But the life at sea makes amends for anything, to my mind. I am never tired of the calms, and I enjoy a stiff gale like a Mother Carey's chicken, so long as I can be on deck or in the captain's cabin. Between decks it is very close and suffocating in rough weather, as all is shut up. We shall be still three weeks before we reach the Cape; and now the sun sets with a sudden plunge before six, and the evenings are growing too cold again for me to go on deck after dinner. As long as I could, I spent fourteen hours out of the twenty-four in my quiet corner by the wheel, basking in the tropical sun. Never again will I believe in the tales of a burning sun; the vertical sun just kept me warm - no more. In two days we shall be bitterly cold again.

Immediately after writing the above it began to blow a gale (favourable, indeed, but more furious than the captain had ever known in these seas), - about lat. 34 degrees S. and long. 25 degrees. For three days we ran under close-reefed (four reefs) topsails, before a sea. The gale in the Bay of Biscay was a little shaking up in a puddle (a dirty one) compared to that glorious South Atlantic in all its majestic fury. The intense blue waves, crowned with fantastic crests of bright emeralds and with the spray blowing about like wild dishevelled hair, came after us to swallow us up at a mouthful, but took us up on their backs, and hurried us along as if our ship were a cork. Then the gale slackened, and we had a dead calm, during which the waves banged us about frightfully, and our masts were in much jeopardy. Then a foul wind, S.E., increased into a gale, lasting five days, during which orders were given in dumb show, as no one's voice could be heard; through it we fought and laboured and dipped under water, and I only had my dry corner by the wheel, where the kind pleasant little third officer lashed me tight. It was far more formidable than the first gale, but less beautiful; and we made so much lee-way that we lost ten days, and only arrived here yesterday. I recommend a fortnight's heavy gale in the South Atlantic as a cure for a BLASE state of mind. It cannot be described; the sound, the sense of being hurled along without the smallest regard to 'this side uppermost'; the beauty of the whole scene, and the occasional crack and bear-away of sails and spars; the officer trying to 'sing out', quite in vain, and the boatswain's whistle scarcely audible. I remained near the wheel every day for as long as I could bear it, and was enchanted.

Then the mortal perils of eating, drinking, moving, sitting, lying; standing can't be done, even by the sailors, without holding on. THE night of the gale, my cot twice touched the beams of the ship above me. I asked the captain if I had dreamt it, but he said it was quite possible; he had never seen a ship so completely on her beam ends come up all right, masts and yards all sound.

There is a middy about half M-'s size, a very tiny ten-year-older, who has been my delight; he is so completely 'the officer and the gentleman'. My maternal entrails turned like old Alvarez, when that baby lay out on the very end of the cross-jack yard to reef, in the gale; it was quite voluntary, and the other newcomers all declined. I always called him 'Mr. -, sir', and asked his leave gravely, or, on occasions, his protection and assistance; and his little dignity was lovely. He is polite to the ladies, and slightly distant to the passenger-boys, bigger than himself, whom he orders off dangerous places; 'Children, come out of that; you'll be overboard.'

A few days before landing I caught a bad cold, and kept my bed. I caught this cold by 'sleeping with a damp man in my cabin', as some one said. During the last gale, the cabin opposite mine was utterly swamped, and I found the Irish soldier-servant of a little officer of eighteen in despair; the poor lad had got ague, and eight inches of water in his bed, and two feet in the cabin. I looked in and said, 'He can't stay there - carry him into my cabin, and lay him in the bunk'; which he did, with tears running down his honest old face. So we got the boy into S-'s bed, and cured his fever and ague, caught under canvas in Romney Marsh. Meantime S- had to sleep in a chair and to undress in the boy's wet cabin. As a token of gratitude, he sent me a poodle pup, born on board, very handsome. The artillery officers were generally well-behaved; the men, deserters and ruffians, sent out as drivers. We have had five courts-martial and two floggings in eight weeks, among seventy men. They were pampered with food and porter, and would not pull a rope, or get up at six to air their quarters. The sailors are an excellent set of men. When we parted, the first lieutenant said to me, 'Weel, ye've a wonderful idee of discipline for a leddy, I will say. You've never been reported but once, and that was on sick leave, for your light, and all in order.'

Cape Town, Sept. 18.

We anchored yesterday morning, and Captain J-, the Port Captain, came off with a most kind letter from Sir Baldwin Walker, his gig, and a boat and crew for S- and the baggage. So I was whipped over the ship's side in a chair, and have come to a boarding house where the J-s live. I was tired and dizzy and landsick, and lay down and went to sleep. After an hour or so I woke, hearing a little GAZOUILLEMENT, like that of chimney swallows. On opening my eyes I beheld four demons, 'sons of the obedient Jinn', each bearing an article of furniture, and holding converse over me in the language of Nephelecoecygia. 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.

I have got a couple of Cape pigeons (the storm-bird of the South Atlantic) for J-'s hat. They followed us several thousand miles, and were hooked for their pains. The albatrosses did not come within hail.

The little Maltese goat gave a pint of milk night and morning, and was a great comfort to the cow. She did not like the land or the grass at first, and is to be thrown out of milk now. She is much admired and petted by the young Africander. My room is at least eighteen feet high, and contains exactly a bedstead, one straw mattrass, one rickety table, one wash-table, two chairs, and broken looking-glass; no carpet, and a hiatus of three inches between the floor and the door, but all very clean; and excellent food. I have not made a bargain yet, but I dare say I shall stay here.

Friday. - I have just received your letter; where it has been hiding, I can't conceive. To-day is cold and foggy, like a baddish day in June with you; no colder, if so cold. Still, I did not venture out, the fog rolls so heavily over the mountain. Well, I must send off this yarn, which is as interminable as the 'sinnet' and 'foxes' which I twisted with the mids.

LETTER II

Cape Town, Oct. 3.

I came on shore on a very fine day, but the weather changed, and we had a fortnight of cold and damp and S.W. wind (equivalent to our east wind), such as the 'oldest inhabitant' never experienced; and I have had as bad an attack of bronchitis as ever I remember, having been in bed till yesterday. I had a very good doctor, half Italian, half Dane, born at the Cape of Good Hope, and educated at Edinburgh, named Chiappini. He has a son studying medicine in London, whose mother is Dutch; such is the mixture of bloods here.

Yesterday, the wind went to the south-east; the blessed sun shone out, and the weather was lovely at once. The mountain threw off his cloak of cloud, and all was bright and warm. I got up and sat in the verandah over the stoep (a kind of terrace in front of every house here). They brought me a tortoise as big as half a crown and as lively as a cricket to look at, and a chameleon like a fairy dragon - a green fellow, five inches long, with no claws on his feet, but suckers like a fly - the most engaging little beast. He sat on my finger, and caught flies with great delight and dexterity, and I longed to send him to M-. To-day, I went a long drive with Captain and Mrs. J-: we went to Rondebosch and Wynberg - lovely country; rather like Herefordshire; red earth and oak- trees. Miles of the road were like Gainsborough-lane, on a large scale, and looked quite English; only here and there a hedge of prickly pear, or the big white aruns in the ditches, told a different tale; and the scarlet geraniums and myrtles growing wild puzzled one.

And then came rattling along a light, rough, but well-poised cart, with an Arab screw driven by a Malay, in a great hat on his kerchiefed head, and his wife, with her neat dress, glossy black hair, and great gold earrings. They were coming with fish, which he had just caught at Kalk Bay, and was going to sell for the dinners of the Capetown folk. You pass neat villas, with pretty gardens and stoeps, gay with flowers, and at the doors of several, neat Malay girls are lounging. They are the best servants here, for the emigrants mostly drink. Then you see a group of children at play, some as black as coals, some brown and very pretty. A little black girl, about R-'s age, has carefully tied what little petticoat she has, in a tight coil round her waist, and displays the most darling little round legs and behind, which it would be a real pleasure to slap; it is so shiny and round, and she runs and stands so strongly and gracefully.