LETTER I - CAPE TOWN

Summary

October 16, 1875.

Safe,—safe at last, after twenty-three days of nothing but sea and sky, of white-crested waves, which made no secret of their intention of coming on board whenever they could, or of tossing the good ship Edinburgh Castle hither and thither, like a child's plaything—and of more deceitful, sluggish, rolling billows, looking tolerably calm to the unseafaring eye, but containing a vast amount of heaving power beneath their slow, undulating water-hills and valleys. Sometimes sky and sea have been steeped in dazzling haze of golden glare; sometimes brightened to blue of a sapphire depth.

Again, a sudden change of wind has driven up serried clouds from the south and east, and all has been grey and cold and restful to eyes wearied with radiance and glitter of sun and sparkling water Never has there been such exceptional weather (although the weather of my acquaintance invariably is exceptional). No sooner had the outlines of Madeira melted and blended into the soft darkness of a summer night, than we appeared to sail straight away into tropic heat with a sluggish vapour brooding on the water like steam from a giant geyser. This simmering, oily, exhausting temperature carried us close to the line. “What is before us?” we asked each other languidly. “If it be hotter than this, how can mortal man, woman, still less child, endure their existence?”