14 SOUTH AFRICA. 



little Cape hacks were the general locomotive 

 factors employed by the more sturdy classes. 

 Society was based on unostentatious principles; 

 manners were decidedly better than those of the 

 modern type, and morals probably no worse, 

 although less encased in the fortifications of more 

 modern cant and pretension. A member of the 

 heroic Napier family, who had left an arm on one 

 of the grand battlefields of the Peninsula, worthily 

 represented Royalty, and made the shabby old 

 Government House a pleasant and hospitable 

 centre liberally accessible. 



On the Cape flats jackals did duty for foxes, 

 and v/ere hunted by a good subscription pack, well 

 ridden to by a not too numerous field, including 

 both sexes. Some of the good old Cape Dutch 

 families now, I regret to say, hustled out of the 

 position they then so worthily occupied allowed 

 their charming daughters, splendidly mounted, to 

 participate in the pleasures of hunting and flirta- 

 tion. One of these young Africanders captured 

 an English military officer the heir to a duke- 

 dom and would no doubt have fulfilled perfectly 

 all the wifely and aristocratic duties of a duchess 

 had not a hard fate and a swift transport ship 

 intervened to forbid the banns. 



