7. Cape Railways
The Cape Government railways are divided into three systems : The Western - from Cape Town to the North ; The Midland - from Port Elizabeth to the North by Graaf Reinet or Cradoek ; and the Eastern system from East London to the North.
The three systems are connected by a bridle railway running from De Aar to Stormberg Junction.
Trains running for any great distance are made up (with the exception of the third class) of coaches of the corridor pattern, each being fitted with a lavatory and space for baggage.
Every compartment has sleeping accommodation for four persons, for whom berths are provided, which fold into the wall of the carriage when not in use, and each compartment can be shut off from the rest of the coach by sliding doors which can be fastened on the inside with a catch. The first-class compartments have also folding tables. A conductor travels with these trains, whose duty is to attend to the comfort of the passengers, and make their beds at night - and receive tips !
All passenger luggage is weighed, numbered, and registered, before being placed in the train, the owner receiving a ticket for it, which must be given up at his destination before he can claim his baggage. There are no diningcars, but the Government have built refreshment rooms at different points on the line. These are run by contractors, some of whom provide excellent meals, handsomely served. In other cases the meals are anything but attractive. One redeeming feature is that there is always ample time to eat one's food, for the Cape Government railways never seem to be in a hurry ; on sections of the line they travel at not more than twelve miles an hour, including stoppages. This, no doubt, is partly accounted for by the steep gradients, bad coal, and worse water, all of which tax the ingenuity of the engineers.
The water difficulty is so great that any place along the route of the railways, where a reasonable quantity of water is found, has become an important centre, round which flourishing railway ** camps" have risen, with workshops, coaling and engine-sheds, .and rows of trim cottages, each surrounded by a neat garden. These are the homes of guards, drivers, firemen, and other railway employes. These little oases are a very pleasant surprise to the traveller after a long dusty journey over parched and uninteresting country. 1 have been told that in at least one of these camps, they had to blast holes in the rock, and fill them with earth, before they could plant any trees.
The Cape Railway Company provides three classes of carriages for the accommodation of travellers. No white man would think of travelling third class, if he could possibly afford to pay the second-class fare. The thWda^^ lost entM, devoted to ^tive passenger traffic, company which to a white man does not prove agreeable. For one thing, they all, both male and female, smoke incessantly, using long -bowled pipes, from which rise an assortment of perfumes which are not of Araby. A native's person has also anything but a pleasant odour, which is natural to them, but does not agree with the taste of any white man. In the second-class compartments you are nearly sure to have the company of some hardy, dried-up Dutch farmers, who are always willing to be sociable and liberal, possibly offering you a quince or other delicacy, as wooden and knotty as themselves, though their intention is evidently of the best. It is a mystery how many of these Dutch farmers exist at all. They are easily satisfied, and if they make enough to keep them alive, do not seem to care about working for anything more. They, as a people, do not improve the condition of the country very much, for their farms, which are usually extensive, are often absolutely barren, and quite innocent of any cultivation. We can hardly blame them for being unwilling to sell any part of their possessions to more enterprising outsiders, though it is no doubt very exasperating for the outsiders to see valuable land uncultivated, and not to be able to get hold of it !
An English doctor told me some of his experiences when working amongst the Dutch. He gave one Dutchman a lotion for some complaint, and not long afterwards the man returned for some more medicine. He congratulated the doctor on the very good quality of the lotion, and said that it was grand medicine, the strongest any doctor had ever given him: it had actually burst the bottle!
Another Dutchman came to the same doctor, complaining that he had a weak chest. The sjrmpathetic doctor prepared to sound him, for which purpose the man opened his coat and shirt and removed six layers of flannel, which he said he had worn for some months. The doctor told him it was not surprising if he had a weak chest; he must only wear one flannel, and wash his chest in cold water each day. This was too much for the Dutchman, who, for a moment or two, could only stand aghast. When he did find his voice, he indignantly told the doctor that he used always to wash himself all over each New Year's Day, but that was now a long time ago - he could not exactly say how long!
I do not wish to imply that this is characteristic of all the Cape Dutch. Many whom I know are real gentlemen, whose daily life puts many English Colonials to shame. None can properly sympathise with the rugged nature of the Cape Dutch but those who have roughed it themselves in the Colonies ; these can judge them by their own experiences of the lowering influence which the constant loneliness and contact with wild nature has.
One feature of the Cape Government railways is the cottages of the surfacemen. For loneliness, the life of these surfacemen and their families must be almost unique, isolated as they are from other society, their nearest neighbour being often the next surfaceman five miles away. On every side stretch miles of barren and uninhabited country.
The cottages of these men are comfortable, and are built of stone ; they are nearly all surrounded by a garden patch and a few trees. For supplies, these men and their families depend on the Railway Company, and, in times of drought, even for their water.
Many Europeans, who cannot get work, go on tramp along the railways, which are extensively used as a highway by all sorts of pedestrians. An interesting account of a tramp's experiences along the Cape rallways appeared in the Cape Times some time ago. Unfortunately, a large number of railway tramps are not so refined as the one mentioned in the Ca/pe Times, and make a livelihood by begging at the railway cottages, whose occupants dare not refuse to supply them, especially when the surfaceman is busy on the line, leaving his wife and children done in the cottage.
The Western system of railways, running from Cape Town, is the dreariest of any of the trunk lines. After the first hundred miles or a little more, the coast country is left behind, and the railway mounts sharply to the great Karroo, across which it runs for hundreds of miles. The E^arroo is said to be covered with green vegetation after heavy rains, but I have never been fortunate enough to see it anything else than a bare, barren, sand-covered waste, with mountains in the distance to relieve it from absolute and painful monotony. True, when the sun begins to set, the mountains deck themselves in rich, glowing, russet reds and purples, which makes up for many evils.
One of the grandest bits of scenery on the Cape Colony railways is between Stormberg Junction and Queenstown, on the Eastern system. Shortly after leaving Stormberg Junction the line runs along the top of a ridge, from which the valley can be seen in which Queenstown lies. It seems impossible, unless we walk or fly, to reach the valley far down below us, from which rise grand masses of rock, divided from each other by precipitous kloofs. These piles of rock look like ' gigantic buttresses, placed there to keep the higher lands from sliding down upon the green country over which they frown. The line is laid in and out amongst these rocky masses, and eventually, after skirting a small valley, reaches the low land which had been seen from above. Between Queenstown and East London there are bits of country covered with rolling green hills, dotted with well-grown bush, which almost reminds one of some well-kept English park.
The Midland system passes through some pretty bits and some wild scenery. Passenger trains are so few and far between that it sometimes saves a good deal of time to travel by goods train ; which any one is allowed to do, but they jfirst have to sign a document, stating that they will not hold the Railway Company responsible if they get killed or injured ! There is a neat little bit of sarcasm in the signing of this " death warrant," as I have heard it called. Travelling by '* goods " is not luxurious, though it certainly is an interesting experience, and the privilege a useful and necessary one.
In the Colony, railway travelling for pleasure is not, I think, much indulged in, except in the neighbourhood of the larger towns. With the exception of a few places, which might be almost counted on the fingers, there is no place to go to for pleasure. Travelling is too slow; the sun is too hot; and the dust and dirt too irritating. No! it is those who are new to the country, business men and commercials, who do most of the travelling.
Commercials ! They might be called Railway Princes, from the calm, easy way in which they cover Iheir thousands of miles, and the evident anxiety of railway officials to please them. I was once travelling with a firiend, and we were congratulating ourselves in having secured a first-class compartment to ourselves, when just before the train started, a white-turbaned hotel-porter appeared at the door, with a quantity of luggage hung about his person ; this he packed into the racks, and went for some more, stacked that up, and fetched some more. Then the owner appeared, muffled up in yards of comforter. It was evident that he was a commercial traveller. He took out a handkerchief, saturated with eucalyptus oil, and sneezed as he took his seat opposite mine, then sneezed again, after which he gave us the information that he had " cod a gold." I soon found an excuse, and moved to the other end of the carriage, as if wishing to speak to my friend, and sat back in the comer to enjoy the scenery. Presently we passed a farm, to which I wished to draw my friend's attention, and leaned forward for the purpose. When, horrors! I discovered that my coat was glued to the back of the seat ! With a little gentle pulling I detached myself, and then found that some sticky substance, of the consistency of thick honey, had been trickling out of one of the parcels upon the back of my coat and the back of the seat. The commercial sneezed, blew his nose, and sneezed again, then smiling blandly, informed me, in the mildest of tones, that it was '* a dew baded breserving bixture, gomposed bostly of suggar." Then he sneezed again, and relapsed into silence. But my coat was spoilt, and I was not inclined to take the matter so easily, so, while getting the worst of the mess off with a knife, I told him what I thought of his carelessness, in not seeing that such parcels were packed away properly. He replied that it was " dearly all suggar, ad would host ligely cob off wid hod wader ; " he was " buch bore sorry dad I good bossably be," and, smiling benignly, settled down again and was silent. Having done my best with the knife, I put my coat on again, and leaned back in a fresh seat, to be immediately glued there with the sticky stuff remaining on my coat.
I had hardly settled myself down, when one of the commerciars hand-bags fell from the rack and knocked my hat off. I think I have an average amount of patience, but this was too much for it, and I rated the cause of the trouble roundly for his carelessness and indifference. But the only effect was that this bland commercial, with a look which was the picture of injured innocence, after violently sneezing and blowing his nose, declared that he had abeady said " he was berry sorry, wad bore conld I exbect, did I wand him to buy a dew suid ? " and suiting the action to the word, he thrust his hand deep into his trouser pocket and brought out - nothing, by way of showing his sincerity. Then he lapsed into silence again. The last I saw of him, he had the carriage to himself, and was leaning out of the window, sneezing and smiling. Whenever I enter a railway carriage now, I usually look, with a shiver apprehension, at the rack above me!
Another class of people that we meet with on these South-African railways, is one that is numerous in most parts of the world-people who never seem to stop eating or drinking. They come into a clean railway compartment, in which you have comfortably settled yourself, laden with suspicious-looking baskets, out of the corners of which the tops of rebellious bottles stick out, and the odd tags of paper. Or they come loaded with parcels and paperbags, broken into holes in various places, from which crumbs and squashed fruit stream out over the tables and upon the seats and floor. You could track these people all over the station by their droppings, as the hounds track the hares in a paper chase. But with even these people there is a limit, and having spilt food enough to feed a small family, they catch at stray remains, and carelessly throw them out of the window, and of course half of them fly back into your face, if you happen to be sitting in the opposite comer. Or they thoughtlessly throw empty bottles and other missiles from the train, without troubling to look first to see if there is any one in the way. I was once travelling in a first-class carriage, into which two young ladies got, whose whole luggage consisted of packets of eatables and some sort of pop in black bottles, and whose whole occupation seemed to be to eat, gossip, giggle, and generally enjoy themselves. As soon as they were in the car and had arranged their bottles in the racks, they fell to work on their parcels. They giggled, gossiped and ate, and ate, giggled, and gossiped the whole way. Presently the pop in the bottle got worked up with the heat and shaking, the corks blew out, and the dirty stuflF squirted all over the carriage. How these girls did enjoy the fun ! The giggling grew quite uproarious- Bah!