FIRST YEARS IN SOUTH AFRICA. 13 



and, strange to say, the ordinary official classes 

 repudiated the manners and customs of bumble- 

 dom, and were genial and polite. Showy plate- 

 glassed shop fronts were unknown, but a sufficiency 

 of dark, cool retail shops, containing good stocks, 

 supplied luxuries and necessaries at moderate 

 prices. Upon the whole, the place, with its sur- 

 rounding villages, villas, and climate, impressed 

 the visitor pleasantly, notwithstanding a great 

 dearth of hotels, the paucity of the clerical 

 element, and the prevalence of that quiet content 

 which the modern age of progress abhors. 



At that time and until the overland route to 

 India was available the Cape was the great 

 sanitarium where military and civil officers of the 

 Honourable East India Company came to recover 

 from wounds or to freshen up exhausted con- 

 stitutions. Some two thousand of these visitors, 

 with wives and families in proportion, enlivened 

 the place, and circulated a very appreciable amount 

 of welcome coin while recovering their health. 

 Tasteful carriages, well horsed, and driven by 

 stately Indian coachmen clad in turbans and 

 spotless white muslin, were numerous in the town 

 and suburbs ; railways were unknown, and active 



