Beyond the City Lights

ILLUSTRATIONS CONTENTS Chapter Plaas Japie Paarl Vineyards Oak And Cannon Bellingham One Long Main Street Huguenot Treasures Of The Huguenots Du Toit's Kloof Pass The Last Outpost Du Toit' Kloof Wine And Bread Jonkershoek Antjie Somers And Others Wheatlands The Mountains Of Africa Montagu Old Cunning One Pont Under The Snow Peaks Blue Buck Trappes Planned A Town Valley Of The Witch Happy Valley Some Farms Have Survived In The Wheat Belt Among The Cedar Mountains Old Stellenbosch Hottentots-Holland Groenland And Caledon Muscadel Country Last Pont. Lost Blue-Buck CHAPTER 1 With the hoenderpastei I drank a Paarl wine OAK AND CANNON which cannot be bought. Then came the cheese and summer fruits and liqueurs of the farm, so New Year's Day in the furnace of Western that the experience lingers as a noble memory. Province, but the heat cannot harm me. I have They made me carry off bottles of the wine I had been among friends on a hospitable farm stoep, admired. Thus I am mellow and thoughtful as I looking out from the eastern slopes of the drive through the hot darkness towards the cool Perdeberg, and now I am driving home in the dark sea. night with a comfortable and benevolent feeling. No doubt the brandy had something to do with it, For this has been more than a meal. The man who sent me this New Year's Day invitation has set my the mature brandy that certain farmers secure mind working. He is an invalid, crippled after as from their distillery on enviable terms, but which active a life as any man could lead; a retired forest costs me a fortune in town. Certainly the hoenderpastei also influenced me. This is the officer, nursed by his wife like a baby. But he is dish which is the special pride of the old Cape also a philosopher. He has memories, and a districts, a chicken pie with a difference: I do not cheerful nature which illness cannot subdue. "An know whether the crushed coriander seeds and earthbound man like myself lives on his wine give it a special character; or the lean pork imagination, and you will be staggered when you hear of the journeys I have planned when God and herbs, the blade of mace or the puff pastry. At permits," he told me. Beside his bed I saw all events it is the great dish of the Western Toynbee's "Study of History" between Melt Brink Province, so good indeed that you can eat your fill and a text-book on Arab horses. "One day I shall at night and still look forward to finishing the pie scramble on Kismet's back into a cowboy for breakfast. saddle and start travelling again," remarked waited all his life for him.1 And then he raised this old horseman calmly. himself in bed, and his eyes shone as he lifted his glass and gave me a toast. "Here's to the Then he talked of the trees he had seen. In his happy Boland, the grand old Western young days there was no forestry course in Province! Drink to the land of oak and cannon, South Africa, and so he had gone from the old the land of wine and bread!" Victoria College, Stellenbosch, to learn his craft in the United States. He had stood in By this time a number of friends had gathered groves of immortal redwoods and wandered round the bed. One of them asked: "Where is among gigantic firs. On the Mississippi banks the Boland? What is the Western Province? he had listened spellbound while the negroes Where does it begin and end? "I listened to the opened their hearts and revealed the spirit of argument and made some inquiries of my own, the river in their melancholy yearning songs. so that now I am fairly sure of the answers. This man spoke fondly of the Knysna You will remember a rascally and intolerant evergreens, the scarlet-flowering kaffirboom of old governor named Lord Charles Somerset the Amatola range, sneezewood and boxwood, who feathered his own nest without paying the Cape ebony and Cape mahogany and the penalty. In his time an official commission gnarled and scented cedars of the Cedarberg. recommended that the Cape Colony should be He talked for a long time of distant landscapes split into two provinces, with the Cape seen from the saddle. At last he returned to this governor ruling the Western Province and a farm, his birthplace, the little Western lieutenant governor in the Eastern Province. Province farm on the Perdeberg that had 1 My friend Piet Botha died not long after my visit, but I have left my memories of him unaltered. This was more than the colony could afford, Porterville are all in the Boland, and so is and the plan was abandoned. However, two Robertson. I am not so sure, however, about divisions were set up, the Western consisting Montagu and Ashton. Probably the experts of the districts of the Cape, Stellenbosch, would say that the whole of the Boland lies Swellendam (which then included Caledon), within the Western Province. and Worcester, which was a huge area running "Here's to the happy Boland, the grand old up to the northern frontiers of the colony. Thus Western Province! "As I drive home to-night the so-called Western Province arose, though it it occurs to me that most of the Western was merely a division. Province has gone to the seaside. Last night, Officially there is no such place as the Western no doubt, they were dancing, and I am Province to-day. However, I think it is wondering whether there are still farms where generally accepted that if a slightly-curved the dorsvloer is used, the hard, flat threshing- line is drawn from the mouth of the Olifants floor. In the old days the concertina would River on the west coast to the Breede River in still be playing Jan Pierewiet when the sun the south, this will mark the Western Province rose. And on New Year's Day the old- boundaries. It will include Clanwilliam and fashioned ovens would be stoked up so that Montagu, and most people would be in favour the sucking-pigs and turkeys could be roasted. of taking in Swellendam as well. Some of the Tulbagh people choose the mountains at New Year rather than the The Boland, which my friend coupled with seaside. High in the Winterberg there is a the Western Province in his toast, is a rather shady dip called Sneeugat, where the snow smaller area: the winter rainfall area of the lies deep in winter, a cool place even in Cape running from the Berg River mouth to midsummer. So it is the custom to camp there Swellendam. Tulbagh, Ceres, Piketberg and for a week or more as an escape from the heat According to Paarl legend, many a young man of the valley. Sometimes you will find scores courting a pretty girl was informed by the of Tulbagh folk of all ages living in roofless prospective father-in-law that he would be shelters. A waterfall in the neighbourhood is welcome at the house only if he brought a the favourite bathing place. Nuwejaarsblom as a sign of his courage. For this flower usually grows in dangerous places; Many families from Paarl and Wellington on moist precipices beside the waterfalls. drive to Du Toit's Kloof, observing a New Sunbirds and butterflies reach them easily and Year custom which arose a century and more feed on the nectar, but a climber may pluck the before the road made the climb easy. Perhaps flower only at the risk of his life. I cannot say they still give the children model water- that the Nuwejaarsblom became a rarity owing wheels, which turn in the streams near the to raids by daring lovers. Baboons and waterfalls. Years ago, when wild flowers mountain fires destroyed the bulbs. Seedsmen could be picked without fear of prosecution, and amateur gardeners collected too many of there was much rivalry in the search for disas the specimens that survived. Now both flowers and other plants. Among the prized growths and bulbs are protected against human of these mountains is the rare and lovely interference. Nuwejaarsblom (Gladiolus cardinalis), which Dorothea Fairbridge called "Maid of the Mist" Marloth found this exquisite, gladiolus and others have named "New Year Lily" or growing with Disa uni flora in the French Hoek "Waterfall Gladiolus". The bright scarlet mountains. "Never shall I forget that sight," flowers appear in midsummer, as the wrote the botanist who had seen so many floral Afrikaans name suggests, and the petals wonders. It was the show piece of a "fairy quiver on long stems. glen" filled with tree ferns, Cape holly and red alder. The flowers of the Nuwejaarsblom have a Many thousands of people will line the streets faint lily scent. of Paarl to watch the vintage festival; the cellarmen rolling their barrels, the maidens of If you dislike mountain ordeals you can see the the vineyard, the wine wagon, the clowns and Nuwejaarsblom in the Paarl mountain flower carnival, Malay singers and folk dancers. reserve. Two brothers, Amie and Manas de Villiers, secured the bulbs more than twenty When I first saw wine pressed, there were still years ago after a perilous climb beside a one- many farmers who dumped their grapes into hundred foot waterfall in Du Toit's Kloof. This the trapbalie and set the coloured youths and bulb is not easily nurtured away from its girls (with scrupulously clean feet) trampling natural home, but flowers appeared fairly the juice out of the berries.

Load more