CHAPTER XI

THE BLUE SHADOW ACROSS THE FLATS

Our ponies met us at Muizenberg, and we crossed the railway-line on to the long white beach.

It was Easter Monday, and trainloads of inhabitants swarmed like gaudy bees round the bathing-huts. At no other time can one see to better advantage the wonderful fusion of races which has gone to the making of the population of the Cape Peninsula.

In the shade of one of the small, stationary wooden bathing-houses I saw the gardener's family, their colour scheme running through the gamut of shades from white to chocolate. The gardener had once had a Cockney wife, and his life was ''ell,' so he married Marlie, the slightly coloured girl brought up on a German mission-station, who made excellent stews, washed his shirts well, and sang Lutheran hymns to the children when they howled. There were ancestors, black and white, on both sides--and everyone hasn't ancestors.

We passed a wagon-load of Malays in gala dress of silks and spangles--our washerwomen--possessing the wondrous Oriental gift of elusive speech, which will turn away good Christian wrath. One old Malay told us he remembered the days when all the Malays made their pilgrimage yearly to the grave of Sheik Joseph. A political prisoner of the East India Company, of great wealth and position in the East, he was exiled to the Cape, and lived at the mouth of the Eerste River, near the farm of the Governor's witty brother, Franz Van der Stel. There is a sepulchre which is called the 'Kramat,' or resting-place of a holy man. The wanderers of the Flats in those early days would often come upon the Sheik and his forty followers galloping across the sand-hills. This generation of followers wore suits of neat blue serge, and, over the fez, a wide reed hat with a low, pointed crown.

Marinus and I thought it would require a Shakespeare to describe the heterogeneous mass we passed through. Pathetic sometimes--a knock-kneed clerk from Cape Town, shivering in a new, dark-blue bathing suit, vainly trying to acclimatize his pasty-faced offspring to the waves. Complexions are hard to keep in South Africa; the sun is our master, all-absorbing and requiring all--colour, brain, energy--your puny effort of concentration useless against this fierce, concentrated mass, this alluring South African sun--Lorelei of the South.

The very people here are an example--not one concentrated type. Marinus and I soliloquized quietly until we reached the shallow river which feeds the Lakeside Vleis (lakes). We avoided the beach and kept close up to the sand-dunes, the white sand protected from the tearing gales of the 'south-easters' by a network of creeping 'Hottentot fig,' a fleshy plant with wonderful bright flowers of every hue, and bearing an acquired taste in fruit--a small, dried-up-looking fig.

Tall flowering reeds grow in 'klompjes,'[7] and dotted about are small green bushes covered with red berries--'dinna bessies,' the coloured folk call them. 'Not much cover for the hippo,' laughed Marinus.

My mind went back with a jerk to the old days of Muizenberg, the Mountain of Mice, its cannon buried in the sand, its battle, its fort and barracks, the Caapmans, who wandered with their herds over the flats and killed sea-cows, or hippo, on the very spot where the enterprising boatman of Lakeside had built his café.

'And elephants roamed,' I quoted; 'and always the reflection of Table Mountain--always the same blue lotus lilies, and the sand-hills, and the blue river flowing across the beach.'

We made for Strandfontein, regaining the beach as the tide was going out and we could avoid the quicksands. Strandfontein, a little desolate bay boasting one reed-covered house and a celebrated beach--celebrated for its shells, huge blue mussels, pale pink mussels, daintily carved nautili, and rows and rows of coral and mauve fan shells.

Again we talked of the old 'Company days,' and the wonderful plan of Commander Van Riebeek to drain the Liesbeek and the Salt Rivers into one big canal which would cut off the peninsula from the mainland, and, like the great Wall of Hadrian, would keep the barbarians out, away from the Company's freemen growing flax, wheat, and disaffection on the swampy flats.

Van Riebeek bewails the impracticability in his journal, which, bound in ancient brown leather, and written in heavy Dutch lettering, is carefully preserved in Cape Town.

'_February 4, 1656._

'Dry, calm weather. Riebeeck proceeds to False Bay (roads being favourable), accompanied by a guard of soldiers, to see whether the Canal, proposed by Van Goens, could be made across the Isthmus. Took the river course to see whether it at all approached False Bay. Found that the Sweet River, now Liesbeek, which with the Salt River runs into Table Bay, runs snake-like three or four leagues crosswise over the Isthmus, and at some places appears to be stagnant, forming small lakes, between which low and sandy lands lie, until within a league of certain high sand-hills of False Bay, where it again turns into small streams, which gradually become broader, and form a river of fresh water running further on into a large lake, almost as broad as the Meuse and about two hours on foot in circumference, with deep and brackish water full of sea-cows and sea-horses, and supplied from the downs of False Cape. There was apparently no opening, but the water percolated through the sands. The Lake is still about one and a half hours on foot from the seashore, which is about half an hour's walk broad. The Downs about a league, and so high, that they are almost mountains, twenty or twenty-four behind each other, it would therefore be impossible to cut them through. Besides, there would be lakelets on the Flats, some a quarter, some half a league broad to be cut through. This would also be difficult, because of the rocky ground, as we found the next day, after having spent the night in the veldt. The matter is therefore impossible, and would be useless and most injurious to the Company, as the Canal could not be made so wide and deep as to prevent the natives swimming across with their cattle. In case it is supposed that on this side the passage would be closed to them, it must be borne in mind that a large sheet of water on the south side of False Cape about three hours' walk in circumference, becomes a large dry and salt flat in summer, so that no proper Canal could be pierced through it--as the sand is soft and the downs are high--which latter would continually fill up the channel; thousands of men would be required to keep it open; so that the Company cannot for a moment think of it, as the expense would be enormous in comparison with the advantages derived. _Millions of gold would be required!_ and if finally the work be finished and communication with the natives cut off, it would be absurd to suppose that they could be confined on this side--for the artificial island would have such dimensions that, in order to control it, a large number of men would be required, scattered in the veldt, not a few, but a good many, soldiers.

'The idea that such a canal would enable the householders to live more securely is hardly worth considering, as those who may choose to live here and there may build stone dwellings sufficiently strong to protect them from the natives. Should such free householders cost the Company so much that soldiers are to be kept for their defence, instead of their assisting the Company?...'

We cantered over some small sand-hills, and came down to the plains, covered with 'quick' grass, dotted with small yellow protea-bush, tiny pink flowers, and scarlet heath called 'erica,' intersected by blue pools of water, their surfaces almost covered by a sweet-smelling, white waterweed. The Malays gather the flower, 'water-eintje,' and curry it or stew it into a thick soup. A narrow, white, sandy pathway ran between the pools, and far away, in a blue haze, we saw Table Mountain and the Devil's Peak.

Quoting again from the Diary:

'_June 29, 1656._

'Proceeded to the Flats where Van Goens wished to have canal dug. Find the whole country so inundated with rapid streams that the whole cutting, with redoubts and all, would, if made, be swept away at once. The Flats had become a combination of lakes; the work would therefore at present be left in abeyance.'

The ponies slopped through the wet sand, and ahead lay the big lake called Zeekoe Vlei (_i.e._, Sea-Cow Lake), separated from a smaller lake, Ronde Vlei, by a narrow isthmus.

Skirting a huge, precipitous mountain of sand, we rode round the vlei, disturbing great flocks of heron, gulls, and wild-duck.

Straight up out of a yellow protea-bush flew a brown bird with a dull orange-red breast--a wip-poor-will, or, as the coloured people say, the 'Christmas bird,' or 'Piet, mij vrouw.' Its call is more surely 'Piet, mij vrouw' than anything else.

'Do you know Le Vaillant's story?' said Marinus. I did. But Marinus loves to tell a story, and he has to listen to many; so I said: 'His story of what?' Then Marinus, being a dear, told me the tale:

'Le Vaillant and the faithful Hottentot chief, or Piet, as his master called him, were out shooting. Le Vaillant shot and killed a female bird. Piet brought up the bird. "Go back, you adorable Hottentot," said the traveller, "to the spot where you found this bird, for surely there you will find Monsieur le Mari." The "adorable Piet" began to weep; that Baas would excuse him, but this he could not do--never could he fire at the male bird. "Go--I insist!" said Le Vaillant. "No, no, Baas!" And the astonished Baas listened to the reason: that no sooner had Piet shot the female, when the male, to quote the old story, "began to pursue him with great fury, continually repeating, 'Piet, mij vrouw! Piet, mij vrouw!' This, in English, is, 'Piet, my wife! Piet, my wife!' Small wonder that Le Vaillant wrote of the misjudged, Dutch-ridden Hottentot as being "full of sensibility"!'

The sun had begun to set when we reached the other side of the vlei, and a coloured woman, carrying a mass of blue lotus lilies up to Town for sale, told us 'we had v-e-ry far way still to go.'

Marinus agreed that it was quite worth a hurried ride home, seeing this wonderful kaleidoscope of colouring reflected in the vleis.

The sand-hills around were pink, and over the tops of some appeared the purple of the Muizenberg Mountains. In the north were the Stellenbosch Mountains, with the Helderberg, in a blaze of red, underlined by long patches of shining white sand-hills.

But all the while the great blue shadow of Table Mountain crept over the Flats, over the vleis, until we watched it reach the north barriers. Slowly the blue mounted, absorbing the flush of sunset, reached the summits, and drove the pink into the fleecy, detached clouds above; these, like blazing balloons, floated over the bay.

I sat up--to reality.

'I have been lost on these Flats, Marinus, and still remember with horror the growing darkness and the interminable miles of sandy road and dense wattle plantations. Let us get on.'

So we rode and rode, through the brown rushes, splashing through water, over mealie patches, dozens of little German children from the tiny farms hidden in low wattle rushing out to see us pass.

On we flew into the darkening blue shadow; behind us, whirlwinds of sand rising like white wraiths of pursuing Erlkings; and before, the smoke from the Kaffir location near the mouth of the Salt River curling into the mist.

FOOTNOTE:

[7] _I.e._, clumps.

BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD