8. Fever And Holiday
To live in South Africa without getting a fever of some kind would hardly be the correct thing I Very many new-comers take it soon after they get to work. They either drink tainted water, or bathe in it, and the thing is done. They have taken the poison into their system, and, not being acclimatised, are very soon stretched on their backs in the clutches of typhoid. Then comes a spell of tossing fever and a wandering brain, with pictures of all that is most horrible, or most beautiful, to the imagination. Then there is the awakening to a sense of extreme weakness, and a return of the memory to things which happened before the fever took its full grip. The weary wait after the temperature has reached its normal figure, the anxiety lest it may go bounding up again before the testing time is over, and with it all, that sickening and unchanging diet of milk. All being well, the patient then goes through the various stages of slops and soft foods, and so on to fully recovered health. True, he is still weak, but he has had his dose of fever, and congratulates himself that typhoid is seldom recurrent. He may be very grateful if he comes out of it without some permanent mark, by which he will always be reminded of the fee he has paid to one of Africa's grim toll keepers.
The hospitals of Cape Colony nearly always have a few cases of fever; often they are full of them. The hospitals are, as far as I have seen them, provided with excellent and devoted doctors and nurses. Natives and Europeans receive the same treatment, but in different wards. I think that most of the nurses prefer nursing black babies to white ones, and many doctors confess to the same weakness! Even if the sufferer from sickness or accident is unable to get to the hospital, he is sure to find willing, simple-hearted and practical help and sympathy from his neighbours. These Colonials take the business of helping others when in trouble as a matter of course.
When the disease has run its course, and the patient begins to gain strength, he naturally looks out for a suitable place in which to recruit his health.
A holiday, after two months or more on one's back in a raging fever, is more enjoyable than at any other time. The air seems fresher, the birde sing more sweetly, "nd the rolling mountains seem to stretch further away into distance than ever before, and to be touched with more beautiful tones and colouring. The lingering weakness restrains the convalescent from scouring miles of country as he used to do ; he is more content with short walks and long rests, during which he sees more wonderful and beautiful things than he ever dreamed of in his former hurried walks and climbs.
It was after a long spell of typhoid that my wife, a friend, and myself went for such a holiday. We chose for our residence L----Hotel, situated by itself on a hill, and surrounded by plantations of fir-trees and eucalyptus. The hotel was a rambling old place, which had been used by its former owners as a private summer residence for a few months in each year. Many additions had been made to the building at various times, with the usual result in such cases of long passages and rooms in comers where one least expected to find them. There were separate verandahs on three sides of the house, some overgrown with shady creepers, and others shadowed by stately rows of pines and eucalyptus, so that at all times of the day it was possible to find a shady spot.
To sit in the shade of a row of sombre eucalyptustrees, and look out on a sunny scene of hill and valley, framed in by the tall and graceful tree-trunks, tinted with grey and grey-red, is a very enjoyable occupation when you feel good for nothing else.
We lodged in a half-ruined cottage belonging to the hotel. To reach it, we had to pass through the hotel gardens, which were well timbered with beautiful trees, and planted with rose-bushes so thickly covered with blossoms that they looked like bouquets of flowerswhite and red. Our landlord was justly very proud of his garden.
We occupied the only two habitable rooms in the cottage, one having a hirge open firepkce, round which we spent many pleasant evenings. Both rooms had a door opening upon a sunny verandah, which we had to ourselves. Other doors opened into the ruined interior of the cottage.
The first night we spent in our new quarters was an exciting one, suggestive of ghosts who objected to intruders. We had gone to bed, and were dreaming such peaceful dreams as one will dream when perfectly satisfied with one's surroundings, when a loud crash in the next room, which was separated from our own by a glazed door, woke us up with a start, and set our hearts thumping. What was it? Listen! Was the house falling in ? No ! Snakes ? (and our blood began to freeze all down our backs). No - Listen 1 Shuflae, shuffle, tramp, tramp - What can it be ? - Natives ? We each wanted to go and see, but each thought it would be bad for the other's health to get out of bed in the cold, so we lay still and listened.
Then came an energetic clattering and rolling of tins and bottles over the floors of empty rooms and passages, then some more shuffling, smashing of glass, creaking floorboards, and more clattering. The noise lasted all night, and we had little sleep, for as soon as we began to doze, there would be a violent renewal of the noise, which would wake us up again with a start. An exploration of the ruined part of the house next morning partly unravelled the mystery for us. We had tea and biscuits in the afternoon, and when we had finished, we put the tray, containing a basin of sugar amongst other things, into an empty and disused room behind our own. Our exploration revealed the tray and its contents distributed over the floor; everything that was edible had disappeared. There was an empty tin and a bottle, and some broken glass in other rooms and passages, which had evidently played an important part in the entertainment of the night before.
We also found that two oatside doois had no locks and would not shut, and that many panes of glass were missing from doors and windows : so it was evident that some natives or dogs had been having a good time during the nighty enjoying alternate refreshments and impromptu skittles. After that we took good care not to provide entertainment for any more nocturnal visitors, and we were left undisturbed during the rest of our stay.
L ---- Hotel is situated in one of the few places in Cape Colony that I know of which might be called naturally pretty and almost grand at the same time. It is built on a ridge about 2000 feet above the sea. This ridge runs parallel with the coast, and rises abruptly from the lower coast-land. At either end rise higher hills, which stand out from the ridge like the watch-towers of a castle. Inland, the ridge falls sharply away to a valley which terminates in the K----river. Beyond this valley the hills rise, ridge behind ridge, until lost in distance in a dreamy blue mist.
The face of both hills and ridge are seamed with deep kloofs and valleys which are carpeted with wild vegetation of bush and trees, and the deeper and moister gullies with maiden-hair and other ferns.
Just below our cottage one of these valleys opened out, down at the bottom of which was a dry stream-bed, choked with arum lilies, and on each side grew shrubs and flowers, including the beautiful African heather, pink and white in colour, which is much larger than English heather, and has a fuller and more delicate flower.
A walk of a few hundred yards brought us to the south edge of the ridge, from which we could see the steely-blue Indian Ocean, thirty miles away. And between us and it lay the low coast country. The ridge rises so sharply from these lowlands that we see them almost as if we were looking down from a balloon. The country is spread out below us in rolling hills and flat table-lands, with deep kloofs and a few zigzagging roads curving round hills or lost sight of for a time in deep valleys. Here and there were small white farm-buildings, with patches of cultivated land, as sharply cut off from the surrounding bush as the squares on a chess-board, the largest of them looking ridiculously small amidst the vast extent of untouched bush country by which they are surrounded. As a whole, the low country looks in the glare of the sun flat, desolate and uninviting, but it gives an idea of unlimited space. Towards evening the lights and shades of hill and valley are intensified, and the deep kloofs become dark sinuous lines, and the shadows stretching out from the mountains clothe the nakedness of the country, which then fades away towards the ocean into a light blue haze.
Our holiday took place during the English-Dutch war, with the progress of which we anxiously kept in touch, even on our hill-top. As fellow-guests we had a family of Johannesburg refugees, including boys, who went daily into the neighbouring town to college. Each evening they would return laden with newspaper " specials," which those who had not been to town immediately pounced upon, in the hope of learning that the war was coming to the long-delayed close. The "specials" were mostly disappointing. Ten " specials " a day were not uncommon, but nine out of the ten contained nothing but stale news. The owners of newspapers must have reaped a rich harvest from them. It seemed only necessary to put any sort of news upon a slip of paper (it did not apparently matter to the public how old it was), then engage a number of "special boys," with loud voices and long legs, to scour the town. No one refused to buy a " special " when it was oflfered, so that the boys had often sold their copies before they had gone a hundred yards. The diflference of five minutes between the rival newspaper oflBices in the issue of a "special" must have made all the difference between a success or otherwise.
Our fellow-guests, as company, were rather a failure, for they were largely composed of inoffensive old ladies, so there were not many social evenings in the chilly public rooms, and we spent most of our evenings by our own roaring fireside. We did rise to the occasion once, and gave a musical evening in honour of a young widower, a farmer, who had come to welcome his intended bride, who also was staying at the hotel. The young lady herself played and sung to the evident rapture of the young farmer. She needed to be merry while she could be, for she was only about twentyone years old, looked very delicate, and was soon going to marry the widower with five children and an adopted child. She was a Roman Catholic by persuasion, he was a Wesleyan, and from their conversation we gathered that neither sympathized with the other in religious matters. She would have a farm-house to look after, which she was evidently quite willing to try and do, for she was most persistent in her enquiries as to how to make coffee and tea I She had been brought up in a convent, though her people were Protestants, and was there taught needlework, painting, and music, which seemed to us a poor substitute for the muscle and practical knowledge she would need in her farm life. It is an unanswerable mystery why so many people choose to send their children to the convent schools of Cape Colony. The Roman Church has influence enough already out there without the added power being given them, which the education and upbringing of the children of Protestant parents puts into their hands.