The Vancouver independent. (Vancouver, W.T. [Wash.]) 1875-1910, 1879-09-04
Winter in South Africa.

For the last few days up there, how
ever, the cold had been uncomfortable;
snow had even fallen, and had withstood
the melting powers of the sun for two
or three days, imparting to the hills
quite homeike effects, which we never
expected to see in South Africa But
refreshing as it was to be able to fancy
ourselves for moment in England, the
illusion unluckily did not carry us so
far as to make us imagine ourselves in
side substantial walls, and sitting i'll
front of glowing fire, with good
sheet of plate-glass instead of thin
canvas between us and the cold. And
it is marvellous how unexhilarating is
even the most bracing cold, when
it has to be encountered in a
tent like a sieve, with the moon and
stars beautifully visible overhead, and
through which the wind sweeps as it list
eth, rutfling your hair as you lie in bed.
1t is distinctly not amusing, but, on the
contrary, to the last degree dreadful and
depressing, to have to lie in bed to
get warm, and finding that fail, to have
to get up to avoid being frozen; to have
to sit in tent like a wet rag, with all
your clothes as wet as il lin laundry
parlance) they had been damped for
ironing, with the utter impossibility of
driving them staring you in the face. 1t
is not inspiriting to know that nothing
except the suspension of the ordinary
laws of cause and effect can save you
from an attack of ague or rheumatic
fever; to have your chair, your bedstead,
anything that unexpectedly touches the
tent, turned snaightway into channel
for the conduction of miniature water
spout to strike your head against the
tent, and bring perfect shower-bath
upon your clothes, which will have
to dry of their own accord-when
the sun comes out, probably in a
day or two! to no have lunch, because
the snow and rain have put the fire out;
to make your dinner Oft watery stew,
plus any amount of grease; and, more
over, to have to eat the said stew out of
its native stew pan, because the state of
weather renders any attempt at dishing
up ridiculous.
Since our return to Utrecht, it is not
the cold that we have been martyrs to,
but the dust. Oh, the hours that those
sand storms blow day after day and,
oh, the unspeakable grimaces and gritti-
ness of everything get-at-able, clothes
and provisions included. All day long
a sort of dull-red cloud seems sweeping
across the veldt, and an incessant storm
of hot sand, that cuts into your eyes
like needles halls down upon the tent.
The wind, too, which is hot and parch-
ing to an extraordinary degree, does
not seem to come in putfs and
gusts, as it does at home, but in one
continuous, unbroken blast, that makes
you feel quite out of breath to hear it.
Everything taken up from the table
leaves perfect representation of itself
printed in the dust which mas collected
around it, though it may not have been
lying there for more than five minutes
or so; and from time to time sand will
pour in at the door of the tent, which is
always, of course, rigidly laced and
closed, as if someone We're emptying it
out of funnel. Everything eatable
has to be brought to table in covered
saucepan, and even the teapot, at such
times, appears with little hood to pro
tect the spout. The air, too, appears to
get intolerably dry. Our skins peel
away, and om hands have cracks and
chaps in them, as in the coolest weather
at home. The few treasures the white
ants left us have been entirely ruined by
several weeks Of this weather, books of
all kinds warping out of all recognition,
though kept in drawers, and the ivory
cases of my opera glasses splitting into
hundred pieces, until there is nothing
left of them to hold the lenses together.
The incesssnt noise and tapping of the
tent is wearying beyond belief, and the
bullying and motion Of it makes one feel
almost as if one were on a ship, watch.
ing the sails; some people going even so
far as to say that it makes them seasick.
Mrs. Hutchinsons an Tents in the
Transvaal"