Six Months at the Cape Part 13

All this, and a great deal more, had I read with profound interest, many years before my visit to the Cape, and the whole subject had made a deep impression on my memory--especially the figure of the gallant Bishop returning from his raid on the men-stealers with the little wearied Dauma on his shoulders!

Well, one day I went to visit the "Saint George's Orphanage for Girls,"

in Capetown. I was conducted over the dormitories and schools, etcetera, and at last came to a cla.s.s-room in which were a.s.sembled some hundred or so of _black_ orphans--infants almost, most of them, and irresistibly comic in their little looks and actions.

It was here that I received the agreeable surprise before referred to.

The teacher of this cla.s.s was as black as her pupils.

"She is herself an orphan, one of the best girls in our school," said Miss Arthur, referring to her. "She was saved from the slavers in Central Africa many years ago."

"What!" I exclaimed, "the little girl who was saved by the missionaries of the Shire River?"

"The same."

"And who was carried home on the shoulders of Bishop Mackenzie?"

"Yes; her name is Dauma."

I shook hands with Dauma immediately, and claimed old acquaintance on the spot!

Chief among the many interesting visits which I paid while at Capetown was one to the beautiful towns of Stellenbosch and Wellington. Both are but a short distance from the capital, and connected with it by rail.

The former is one of the oldest towns of the colony. Many of the French refugees settled there in 1685.

When, in 1684, Governor Van der Stell founded the lovely town of Stellenbosch, and led out the sparkling waters of its river to irrigate trees which afterwards became very giants of the forest, little did he, or his oppressive and tyrannical son and successor, imagine that they had sown the seed of that which was destined to become an academic grove, in the pleasant retirement of which lads and men should study the universal laws of matter and of mind.

That, however, which made the deepest impression on me during this visit was the manner in which the work of training the young is conducted.

Everything seemed to be done with an amount of wisdom and vigour which cannot fail to tell most beneficially and extensively on future generations.

Well do I remember in days gone by, how, with my juvenile mind addled and my juvenile fingers tingling after an application of the "tawse," I have stared at my arithmetic book in despair--hopelessly ignorant of the meaning of words and terms, utterly incapable of comprehending explanatory "rules," pa.s.sionately averse to learning in every form, and longingly anxious for the period of emanc.i.p.ation to arrive, when I should be old and big enough to thrash my master! No such feelings, sentiments, or difficulties can ever find a place in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of those fortunate pupils whose happy lot has been cast in the Seminaries of Stellenbosch and Wellington.

Periwinkle, my friend, farewell.