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[Page 16]
[Letter written to be circulated to friends of Mrs Read]
Please forward to Mrs Garland
"Werringulla"
Wahroonga.
T.S.S. Demosthenes,
Off Simons Bay,
South Africa.
5th February, 1915
After a very tedious trip we arrived at Durban at 6 pm on February 1st & got off the Ship at 8 pm. Children & all went to the Royal Hotel. Mr & Mrs Sear & the Le Hunt Wards fellow passengers also went to the Royal. It is a most comfortable hotel & they gave us 2 double bedrooms & 2 single bedrooms – Charges 15/- per day as it was out of season. Almost everyone left the boat & went to different hotels, as we had to take on 21,000 tons of coal, & coaled all night on both sides & the Kaffirs make the dickens of a row while working. After we had some supper & put the children to bed the Sears & Trixy & I went round the town in Rickshaws. Durban is a pretty place with a magnificent town hall which cost about &poun;250,000 (nearly a quarter of a million).
The next morning the children had rides in Rickshaws & Trixy, Mrs Sear & I went round the town & did some shopping. After lunch we got a car & with Mr & Mrs Sear, Amy & the babies we went round the town for 2½ hours, with a break for afternoon tea on the Espanade.
The town is a mixture of Zulus, Kaffirs, Hindoos [Hindus] Poorwhites & Whites. Most of the houses are a very poor type & ill kept – tops of chimneys falling off & spoutings loose, lacking in paint & repairs generally, but the streets are very clean, double decker electric trams, which carry natives & white folk together, white & native police (Zulus) & we saw about 50 convicts (white & black) working on a building with a guard of 4 white soldiers & about 4 native police, the latter armed with a stick with a knob about 8eight inches from the point.
We drove round the Berea (rhymes with Morea) the fashionable quarter of the town. The soil is a most wonderful red colour, almost the colour of a coral tree flower & everywhere are fine shady bright green trees, like a jacaranda in leaf but with dense foliage & scarlet flowers. There were some nice houses here with plenty of grass & palms & hedges & groups of shrubs, one especially beautiful one with bright peach-pink flowers, but practically no beds of annuals or small flowers. Some fine crotons & some cannas, with the wonderful soil gave the necessary touches of colour. Add to these the many coloured robes of the natives & hindoos & toy have a gay scene.
We saw surf bathing, but it was a tame affair compared with ours & the sand did not look nice & clean – too grey in colour. The harbour is the work of man, two huge breakwaters being built out to from [form] a safe anchorage. I did not like the rickshaw man – too cheeky & too importunate, but they certainly add to the quant appearance of the town, with gaily dressed heads adorned with horns, feathers, pampas grass, porcupine quills, coloured rags & huge celluloid balls multicoloured glued to their caps.
Most of the rickshaws bear a notice "for Europeans only". They carry 2 adults & charge 3d per person per mile & go at a fair pace. The streets are nearly all level & covered with asphalt or some such substance. They wear the same garments as Caidley only trimmed with coloured rags sewn on promiscuous like.
Except that the harbour is closed from dusk to dawn, that there was a small encampment at the foot of the lighthouse & a few men in khaki about the streets, we would not have known that a big war was in progress.
The Bank hours are from 9 to 1 am [1 pm?] on Wednesday & Saturday & 9 to 2 other days. Shops shut at 5.30. the public are kept off the Bank Counters by strong brass bars almost at the edge of the counters & each teller is further enclosed in wire netting, much after the style of dangerous animals in cages at a zoo. Most of the hotel servants were Hindoos & seemed to despise the natives. There is a fine square in front of the town hall, & there were statues & beds of salvias. In the streets men were selling asters & carnations. Fruit – pawpaws, pineapples, passionfruit & pears were plentiful & good, but the apples we saw were very poor. We were delighted to get the Newspapers.
We hope to get to Capetown to-night & intend seeing as much of the place as we can. We have on board a Mr Daniel Crawford who says he is an Explorer & Missionary, but none of the African passengers have ever heard of him. He is very bombastic & incoherent. He says he had spent 23 years in the heart of Africa, but his fat oily skin belies him. [He was in fact a Scottish missionary of the Plymouth Brethren]. "Daniel" as we call him was seen going to the bath the other day in a dinner jacket & socks with suspenders & nothing else. My luck was out as I did not see the vision, & he does physical culture exercises in his cabin with no clothes on & with the door & window wide open & the lights on. He is in the cabin next to me, but thank goodness he leaves us at the Cape.
The little boys on the boat whose fathers are at the front are very funny – I heard one say the other day "My father's in the Light Horse" & another who stutters said m m m my Father w a a s as in the " T t torch, b b b but now he may be in the N n n n n North Sea" & the words he doesn't stutter on he says very fast & it sounded so funny.
The Zulus who pull the rickshaws at Durban have their bare legs painted to represent socks, fancy or plain & we saw several with imitation suspenders painted above the socks.
We are now passing along the Coast & have just passed Simon's Bay which has 3 lighthouses at its entrance & now Table Mt is in sight.
Best wishes to all – We are all A. 1 but will be glad when the voyage is over.
Nearing Tenerife.
18th February, 1915.
Leaving Durban we ran along the coast – a fine bold coast with mountains rising almost from the edge of the cliffs – & we arrived at Capetown at 6 pm. As we drew in to the harbour a big cloud settled on top of the Mountain & we saw the famous "Tablecloth" spread on the top of the Table Mountain which at a distance looks quite flat & the cloud ran down the sides, about 1/8 of the way down & then seemed to keep pouring over the sides to this distance & yet never got any further down. Capetown is most beautifully situated, nestling under this huge mass of rock with various isolated peaks & masses of mountain around.
After dinner we went ashore with Mr & Mrs Sear, got a taxi & went up the town. At Durban we found it hard to realize that a big war was in progress. – Here it was the opposite. As we entered the harbour a hospital ship left for German South West Africa & every man