CHAPTER VII. THE LOST SCHOONER. THERE were few Anglo-Indians in those days who did not, at some period of their career in the East, seek health at the Cape or in Australia. England denied to them, which they could not visit without sacrificing their situations in the Company's service, they preferred going to the Cape or Australia for a year or two, on sick leave. When I first visited Cape Town, its Dutch aspect struck me at once most forcibly, as its peculiar characteristic. Founded by the Dutch, and in their possession for nearly a hundred and fifty years, it is no wonder that their air of solid stability and utilitarian massiveness should pervade its streets and public buildings. Your true Dutchman is a broad backed, stable, portly individual, not to be easily moved by common events, solemn and phlegmatic even when most enjoying himself— the Turk of Christendom-whilst your true Dutch frau is of large and massive dimensions, ample girth, particularly at the shoulders and hips, and steady, plodding, and formal gait. Every thing Dutch partakes more or less of the same character. A Dutch lugger is a thickset, squat, short-masted, broad-sailed vessel, that can be mistaken at a distance for nothing else, except, perhaps, an improved Chinese junk. A Dutch church is a massive structure, with walls six or eight feet thick, and not more than fifteen feet high; its windows sunk deeply into the ponderous brick-work or stone, its benches made with such an evident regard to strength, that one would be disposed to regard them as intended only for hippopotamus-like individuals of equal width and length; its whole air and aspect that of solidity without elegance, of disproportionate breadth without sufficient height. A Dutch town is exactly like the church and lugger, on a larger scale-wide streets (scrupulously clean, however), regularly laid out, intersecting each other at right angles, shaded, if possible, with dumpy oaks and elms; broad massive houses, of red brick or stone, and never more than two stories high, rise on either side, with here and there a public edifice, that looks like an ornamental gaol, with its broad turret, or angular spire, of so solidly square a base, as to defy earthquakes. : Such are the usual characteristics of Dutch colonial towns; and those who have visited Cape Town, will not fail to recognize some of them as the most obvious features of that pleasant seaport. I trust I shall not be mistaken, but if one only smiles at anything ludicrous nowa-days, he is set down forthwith as wishing to bring down contempt upon every thing connected with it let me therefore explain. In the first place, I have a profound admiration for much that is Dutch. This very stability, this massive broad-based perpetuity, is it not a thousand times more praise-worthy than the flimsy pasteboard, lath-and-plaster work of modern English towns? And if the Dutchman be traditionally broad and massive himself, and so he is, and so he has been for ages, or Dutch painters, Van Ostade, Gerard Douw, and Brauwer are not to be believed,-why should he not leave his impress behind him in Africa and Asia, a perpetual reminder to succeeding ages that he, Herr Holländer, has been there in times past? It avails nothing, good sir, that you assure me Amsterdam is an elegant town, and the Hague a beautiful watering place. Unfortunately I have never been at either one or the other town, nor do I pretend to predicate any thing respecting them. I speak of Dutch colonial cities only, and those who have visited Cape Town, Colombo, and Chinsurah, will, I am sure, agree with me. Even when the Dutchman puts up a verandah before his house in a tropical country, he does it with a solidity unknown to other men, undreamt of by men in tropical climes generally. No flimsy pillar, however graceful, will satisfy his fancy; he must have an upright, downright, massive thick block of wood or masonry, that looks firm and immovable as himself; and as Herr Holländer throws himself back in his easy chair, with his never-failing pipe in his mouth, blowing cloud after cloud of the densest smoke from his wellfilled cheeks, he eyes the pillar with gratula tion and self-satisfaction. It is an honest, steady pillar that, mutters he to himself, when he feels equal to the exertion of muttering any thing, and then he smokes again, contemplating it for an hour together silently. From Fort Knokke-a Dutch fort, of course, as its name implies-from Fort Knokke the spectator can enjoy an excellent view of Table Bay. The fort is to the east of the castle, and connected with it by a rampart called the Sealines. Looking out from Fort Knokke, then, the idle Anglo-Indian may watch the troubled waters of Table Bay. Several vessels ride at anchor in the Bay, vessels from all climes, some of the larger visiting this half-way house between the Eastern and the Western world only to take in water and provisions, others coming close up to the jetty to discharge their cargoes and receive fresh ones. At most periods of the year, but particularly in summer, that is to say, in December and January, the Bay presents a busy, cheerful, animated scene. Boats from the various vessels constantly pulling in to the town, manned by their own crews, or boats from the shore broader and more Dutch-like, for the most part manned with tawny, half Hottentot |