Part 3

Some of the nurses had rather a joke the other day--a joke which had good results for the rest of us. There is a confectioner's shop near here which we largely patronise, and these girls who were on night duty were hungry as usual, and they went into this shop for tea and scones before going to bed. While they were there, our secretary superintendent came in; and afterwards Mrs. ---- (who is quite a friend of ours) told the nurses that, seeing them there, he asked her whether many nurses were customers of hers; and she, pretending not to know him, said, "Oh yes, sir; but we gets more nurses from the Children's Hospital than from any of the other hospitals round here. You see, they feeds them _that_ badly there!" I believe he went straight back to the hospital and made inquiries about our food, for not many days after we had bacon for breakfast; and now there is always _something_ besides the bread put on the table, and we find it a vast improvement.

Another thing has happened which has helped us considerably. A new nurse has joined, who is a cousin of the senior surgeon. She is an awfully nice girl, but does not look very strong, and after a week or two she retired to bed with a strained back (not very bad). Then her cousin visited her, and then he visited the committee; and it seems they had no idea we had to carry all the big lotion bottles up from the dispensary, and the heavy blocks of ice from the basement, and that we had to drag down the great bags of soiled linen to the basement and then along a lengthy passage--no joke on the doctor's day, when all the twenty cots have clean sheets and counterpanes, &c. So now the porters do these things for us, and we mournfully regret that we were not clever enough to arrange for one of our number to strain her back at the beginning of our training, instead of nearly at the end; but without a senior surgeon for a cousin it might not have paid! Nurse is nearly well again now, and she has asked me to spend part of my next free Sunday with her at the house of this same senior surgeon. I shall be horribly shy, but I can't well refuse.

My brother H. has come to live in town now, and it is very nice for me. He is reading for an exam., and has rooms in Barnard's Inn--such a funny old rookery near Holborn, and not far from here. He stands me a good dinner about once a week, when I am off in the evening; and in return I darn his socks for him, try to take him to church on Sundays, and report his doings in my letters home, so that he need only send them occasional post-cards!

While I was in the Out-Patient Department I was supposed to have my Sundays free, unless an "extra" was especially wanted anywhere; and one Saturday evening I was preparing to go away for the night, when a message came that the night sister was not well, and Matron (who was going away till Monday) wished me to go on duty for her for the two nights. That was about 6 P.M.; so I went to lie down for a bit, and at 10 P.M. the home sister gave me the report and the hospital keys, and I took charge, feeling rather important, but also rather a fraud, as several of the charge nurses then on night duty had been here for many years, and knew far more than I did. However, we got on very well together, and I rather enjoyed running round to the different wards, and helping with the bad cases.

There was one especially sad case--a girl of ten who had been frightened by rats when left locked up in a house. She had chorea so badly that we had to let her sleep on a mattress on the floor, and it was most difficult to keep any clothes on her, or to feed her. Poor child, her temperature gradually rose till it reached 107.8 before she died, a few days later. The doctors said it was the worst case they had ever seen, and I hope I may never see another case die of chorea.

On the Monday morning I went to bed at 5 A.M., and had to be on duty in the Out-Patient Department at 8 A.M. We had a heavy day; and when we finished at 5.30 P.M., you can imagine my disgust at receiving a message from Matron that I was to relieve the nurse who was in quarantine with a whooping-cough case, from 6 to 10 P.M. I was very glad the child whooped fairly often, as otherwise I should probably have gone to sleep.

The next morning I _did_ over-sleep, and was ten minutes late for breakfast, thereby incurring a lecture from the Matron; but I could not refrain from remarking to her that I had had only two hours' sleep since Sunday (until that night), and she said, "What _do_ you mean, Nurse?" And then it came out that when she sent me to quarantine she had quite forgotten that I had been on night-duty for those two nights, but I had to relieve in quarantine again that night in spite of it. Of course none of us ever mind doing extra duty when it is necessary, but there were plenty of others who might have done it, and got their full amount of off-duty time as well.

Since then I have been working in several different wards, and there are so many new nurses who have come since I did, that I am generally first probationer now, and it is far more interesting, and when the staff nurse is off duty, I take her place.

Matron has been quite civil to me lately, so I suppose my reports have been all right, as I believe she disliked me very much at first, and did not take much trouble not to show it.

Just now I am again in the Out-Patient Department, as Sister has been called home on account of illness, and I am working it with another probationer, and with no sister. The other probationer is two weeks senior to me, but she has not been down in the out-patients before, so we are not quite clear which of us is in command; at present I make her take the lead on medical days, and I do on the surgical days, as I am more used to the surgeons and their ways; and we get along very well.

I shall very soon have finished my year here, and have been very much exercised over the question of what I had better do next.

One of the sisters that I have liked here has been appointed Matron of a small Children's Hospital, and she has offered me a post as Staff Nurse. This was very kind of her; but, on the whole, I think I would rather get my adult training before I do anything else, as I am afraid it would be rather hard to begin at the beginning again, if I went on to being a staff nurse with children.

The Matron advises me to take a good long rest before beginning in an adult hospital, as I have got very thin and run down of late, and I am still a year too young to be received at the best hospitals; so it is just possible I may accept an invitation from my eldest brother to go out to him for a year in South Africa.

In the meantime, I am gathering all information about the London hospitals, and am to visit two or three of them for interviews with the Matrons before I leave here.

I have passed my exams. all right, so my first certificate is fairly safe. For many reasons I shall be very sorry to leave here, but oh! I am so tired, and to think of being able to stay in bed till I feel I want to get up, is a joy indeed.

VII

KIMBERLEY, SOUTH AFRICA, _July 1892_.

When I last wrote to you I was still a humble pro., often a weary, hungry, and foot-sore pro., but withal a happy one, and I hope one day to be a pro. again--but for the present, times have changed.

I have come out to stay with my brother, who is the Judge-President here. He has lived here for the last eleven or twelve years, but this year there is a great Exhibition in Kimberley, so he has taken a larger house for the time being, and will be able to entertain a few friends who will be coming up for the Exhibition.

I left Southampton in June, on the R.M.S. _Scot_, and had a very pleasant voyage out in good weather. I suppose people are always especially kind to a "lone lady" on board ship; at any rate, I had a very good time.

There were not many passengers on board, only forty-two gentlemen in the first class, and seventeen ladies, so I had a nice big cabin to myself.

The _Scot_ is the only twin-screw steamer on that line, and it was lucky she had a twin screw, as, when I woke up the first morning out from Southampton, there was a strange silence on board, and when I got on deck I found there had been an explosion in the engine-room, and the top of the high-pressure valve was blown off; there was some talk of having to signal for a steamer to tow us into Brest, but after awhile, the engineers concluded they could patch up matters, and we could proceed with one screw working; this reduced our speed, but I did not mind that at all.

The Bay behaved very nicely, and I did not miss a meal in the saloon all the way out. We had a few hours ashore at Madeira while they were coaling and overhauling the damaged machinery, and the flowers and fruit were beautiful as ever; the men and boys swarmed round the steamer in little boats, and would dive into the sea for silver coins thrown overboard: one or two of them could dive down under our ship and come up on the other side.

The next day we passed the Canary Islands, and had a good view of my old friend, the Peak of Tenerife.

We had the usual board-ship entertainments; two dances (the stewards make a very good band), several concerts, an amusing "Trial by Jury" of one of the passengers, sports for the passengers and for the crew, plenty of cricket and other games. This is the programme for one day from my diary:--

Seven A.M.: Salt tub. 7.30: On deck, tramp and talk, and then read. 8.30: Breakfast; excitement over the sweepstakes on the ship's run, &c.; read, prepare programmes for the concert at night, hunt up people to sing, &c.; watch a whale and flying-fish. 12.30: Fire and boat drill by the crew. 1 P.M.: lunch, sleep. 3: play cricket. 4: tea, choir practice, tramp and talk. 6.30: dinner. 8.30: concert, tramp and talk and watch the phosphorescence, and look for the Southern Cross till 11 P.M.; then bed, and as sound a sleep as though I had done a day's work. A sea-voyage, with pleasant people on board, and not too rough a sea, is the most restful way of taking a holiday I can imagine.

It was very damp and hot crossing the Line, and the cabins became so stuffy that sleep at night was somewhat difficult; but one could make up for that by sleeping a few hours in the day when up on deck.

All too soon we anchored in Table Bay, under the shelter of Table Mountain. Many people are disappointed in their first view of Table Mountain, but it has a grandeur all its own, and it grows upon you.

My brother was unable to meet me as he had intended, but a friend of his came on board--a gentleman who was down in Cape Town for the session of Parliament--and I found it was arranged for me to spend a day or two with him and his family at Sea Point, a suburb of Cape Town, before continuing my journey "up country."

Having come nearly 7000 miles alone, it did not seem to make a great deal of odds having to do another 700 miles alone; but I was glad of a few days' rest, with pleasant people.

I had made so many friends on board the ship that it was quite sad to say good-bye to them all; and I had more than one kind invitation to stay with people in different parts of South Africa.

The day after we landed, I was taken to hear a debate in the House of Parliament on the Deceased Wife's Sister's Bill. The people I was staying with went on to a reception at Government House, and wanted to take me with them; but I begged off, not having unpacked suitable garments.

It is very pretty all round Cape Town, and I hope to see more of it before I return home.

Then, one evening at 9 P.M., I was seen off from Cape Town Station, and was once more a traveller on my own account, but not under such comfortable conditions as on board ship. I learnt that the dining and sleeping cars were attached to the trains only on one night of the week (the night the mail-boats come in), so I went in an ordinary first-class carriage, the ticket costing me more than £8, and found the seats were covered with horse-hair, and by no means comfortable for a night journey. Above the seat there is a shelf which lets down at night, so that four people can secure lying-down room in each carriage.

I soon learnt, also, that in this upside-down country, in spite of the fact that it was the month of July, it was also the middle of winter, and as we got up to higher altitudes it became intensely cold. I had the carriage to myself at first, and, having piled on all the clothes I had with me, I was trying to sleep, when, about 2 A.M., two old Dutch ladies were put in with me, and for the rest of the night they chattered, and ate cheese and apples and onions, so that sleep was impossible until they left the train at Matjesfontein.

I am told the scenery we passed through that night is very grand. I hope some time to see it under more favourable conditions.

Cold and hungry, about 7 A.M., we stopped for breakfast at Matjesfontein. I took my sponge-bag and towel, thinking I should find a waiting-room; but all I found was a tap on the platform, where we took our turn at a splash in icy-cold water, and then went on to a tin shanty, where breakfast was served--kippers, good bread, indifferent butter, and moderate tea.

There did not seem to be any hurry; but when we had all finished, and the engine had had a drink, and the engine-driver had lit his pipe, we started off again. And all that day we strolled across the Karroo, stopping (apparently) just when the driver felt inclined, and, when there was a hill, going so slowly one felt tempted to jump off and take a little exercise by running alongside.

It was very grey and brown, this wonderful Karroo country, with occasional kopjes (hills with great boulders of stones up the sides), and now and then a river or a stream, and always by any water a green line of the mimosa trees covered with their yellow flower.

As the sun grew stronger I began to forget the discomforts of the night, and some pleasant Dutch people came on board and told me many interesting things about the country we were passing through. Then I was introduced to my first swarm of locusts; a weird sight it was, too. They were pointed out to me first when they were some miles ahead of us, and looked like a small black cloud; then, as they came near, the sky seemed to become black with them, and we had to shut all the windows or the carriage would soon have been full of them. They tell me sometimes the young ones settle on the lines in such masses, and the lines become so slippery, the trains can't get on, and the men have to turn out and shovel them off. Fancy a Great Northern express being held up by a swarm of locusts!

For most of the way the old waggon-road ran alongside the railway, and was marked out by the skeletons of horses and oxen, or the sadder sight of a mound of stones with a little wooden cross, where some poor fellow had "fallen by the way."

We stopped at Victoria West for dinner; and as there was another train (from up country) in the station, we were halted well out on the veldt, and I had to stumble along to the station, and then, across what seemed in the darkness to be a rickyard, to the tin shanty where dinner was served. I was the only lady there; but I had only had a snack lunch on board the train, and we were more than an hour later than we had expected to dine, so I was too hungry to mind much, and had a very good dinner. There is only a single line for all this long track, so the delays to allow trains to pass at the stations are numerous, and it is well never to travel without a supply of chocolate, as the meals are very movable feasts.

I managed to sleep through that night, as it was not so cold, and I had the carriage to myself. Early the next morning we steamed into Kimberley, and my brother met me at the station.

VIII

KIMBERLEY, SOUTH AFRICA, _December 1892_.

Two things are prominent in my mind to-day: the first is that the thermometer is at 104° in the shade, and the mosquitoes are perfectly vicious; and the second is that the Kimberley Exhibition, with its round of gaieties, is actually closed. But before I tell you about this Exhibition, I must try to go back and give you a few "first impressions" of the Diamond Fields.

As you come into Kimberley by train, you first pass the Kaffir Location; and, instead of the picturesque dwellings that one sees in pictures, you see an exceedingly untidy collection of huts built of all sorts of odds and ends--bits of galvanized iron, old paraffin tins, &c. Then come small tin shanties inhabited by the "poor whites"; and so the houses improve, as one nears the centre of the town.

We drove down from the station in a Cape cart, which takes the place of a fly here. It is a comfortable kind of dog-cart with two wheels, drawn by a pair of horses; it has a movable hood, and the four passengers all sit facing the horse's tail. The most comfortable seats are at the back, and part of the driver's seat lifts up on a hinge while you get to the back seat.

I found my brother had taken a house and bought all the furniture in it, so there was not much difficulty about settling in, except hanging our own pictures and buying a little more linen, plate, &c.

It was a nice brick-walled bungalow, with the usual galvanized-iron roof, and a shady balcony (called here a stoep) all the way round the house, so that one could generally find a fairly cool place to sit.

He had also secured a very good white woman as cook, and a dusky Zulu called George, who waited at table, and generally fagged for the cook. George looked about fifteen, so I treated him as I would a boy of eleven or twelve, and he was soon my most devoted slave. But one day I asked him how old he was, and he said, "I was thirty-four last census, missus." But I shall continue to treat him in the same way, as it seems to answer well; and, after all, I think these blacks will always be rather like children, however old they are. I find he has a wife at a kraal, up country, and he is now saving up to buy some cows wherewith to secure another wife. I understand the present value of "a nice Kaffir girl" is seven cows!

There is a large compound at the back of the house; and thrown in with the house we found two dogs, a dignified cat, and some fowls and turkeys.

At first I thought the Kimberley people were rather uninteresting, and felt inclined to agree with the barber who, when he was giving me a most refreshing and much-needed shampoo after the dusty journey up, said, "You _will_ think the ladies here funny, miss, for they absolutely never talk about anything but their dresses"; but, poor things, there was very little else to talk about.

Every one was kind in coming to call, and I soon found some very nice people amongst them. Sunday is the great day for all the gentlemen to call; and sometimes we had eight or nine men dropping in on Sunday afternoon, and generally one or two came in to supper after church.

There is a splendid library nearly opposite the club (which is also a fine building), and I very much appreciate the cool reading-room, with all the English papers and magazines, only about a month old.

We play a good deal of tennis on gravel courts. There are two days in the week when ladies can play at the club, and some people who have private courts have regular "days," so that I generally play three or four afternoons a week. Just lately I have had some good riding, as a young lady I know has gone down to the Cape, and has left a nice and young horse behind. Her mother offered to lend it to me one day, and I had a glorious gallop over the veldt with their groom; and then a kind note came, saying that "I was doing them a great favour by exercising the horse, as it was too fresh for the younger girls." I am glad to be able to do a favour so easily, and we make up very pleasant little riding parties.

I think the thing one misses most in Kimberley is water. If you ride or drive, you may find some out at the waterworks or (a variable amount) in the river out at Alexanderfontein, but the water you can find within walking distance might be measured in bucketsful; and the men are fond of talking of the "early days," when it was cheaper to have a bath in soda-water than in plain water, and of a notice that was said to have been put up in a hotel, "Please do not use soap, as the water is required for tea."

In the season, with careful watering, one can grow a good many flowers. Roses do especially well, and some people who are diligent with the watering-pot cultivate a small piece of grass; but a few days' neglect, or a few hours' visitation from a flight of locusts, and your treasured piece of grass is as though a prairie fire had been over it.

Of course there was much excitement up here about the opening of the Exhibition. The Governor and family came up from Cape Town for the ceremony, and stayed nearly a fortnight in Mr. C.'s house--which he gave up to them--and there was much entertaining.

We had the Colonial Secretary and his wife staying with us, and also a daughter of the Governor of Bechuanaland. As Mr. ---- was the Minister in attendance on the Governor, he had to bring his secretary with him, and the police superintendent posted a mounted orderly at our gate to take his messages about; so we felt quite important.

Many interesting people from all over South Africa came up for the Exhibition, and I am afraid I shan't be able to remember all those to whom I have been introduced.

Mr. Cecil Rhodes was here for a few days, and we went to supper with him one Sunday evening. He is generally supposed to dislike ladies; but if that is true, he does not show it. There were not many there, and I sat next to him at supper. I believe it was a very good supper; but the conversation was so interesting (all about South Africa and South Africans) I couldn't attend to it, and I went home hungry, and had to have a private snack before I went to bed.

The morning after the Governor arrived we received an invitation to dine at Government House that evening; and it was rather awkward, as we had a dinner party here. But P. and Mr. ---- went off to call and explain matters, and we were excused. They gave two huge garden parties, which we attended, and I enjoyed them very much--both the Governor and lady so very pleasant and friendly. Another day they were the guests of De Beers, and we also were invited; so we saw all the process of diamond-mining under very comfortable circumstances: the blue stone as it was brought up from the mines in little trucks and laid out in the sun (surrounded by barbed-wire fences) to pulverize, then collected and crushed and washed; and then we went into the sorting-shed, and were given trowels to sort with, and I found four nice diamonds in ten minutes, and should like to have kept them! then to the packing-room, and saw _such_ diamonds, bags and bags of them. Afterwards we drove out to Kenilworth, the model village, all planned by Mr. Cecil Rhodes for the De Beers' men. Such nice little houses, with water laid on, and every convenience; a good garden to each house; a school and a club-house; a recreation ground; and then miles of fruit-trees--grapes, peaches, apricots, &c.--that Mr. Rhodes has planted and has had carefully irrigated. One could hardly believe it was so near to Kimberley, and Kimberley dust.

Every day at the Exhibition there was a good band playing, and every evening some fireworks and other entertainments. Cricket matches--played on a pitch of cocoanut matting--tennis tournaments, &c., were the order of the day; so that now, when the Governor and other visitors have returned to the Cape, and the Exhibition is closed, you can understand that Kimberley seems a little flat, and I am much looking forward to a run down to the Cape next month by way of a change.

IX