Raphael Semmes, Memoirs of Service Afloat During the War Between the States

[639] came provided with tents and camp-equipage. Almost every one had some present of game or curiosity to offer, as he came on board. One would bring me a wild-peacock for dinner, which he had shot on the wayside; another a brace of pheasants; others ostrich-eggs fresh from the nest, plumes of ostrichfeathers, spikes from the head of the spring-bok three and four feet in length, &c. We showed them around the ship—the young boers lifting our hundred-pound rifle-shot, and looking over the sights of our guns, and the young women looking at the moustaches of my young officers.

The Saldanha settlement is almost exclusively Dutch, notwithstanding it has been fifty years and more in possession of the English. Dutch is the language universally spoken; all the newspapers are published in that melodious tongue, and the ‘young idea’ is being taught to ‘shoot’ in it. One young man among our visitors, though he was twenty-three years of age, and lived within twenty miles of the sea, told me he had never been on board of a ship before. He became very much excited, and went into ecstasies at everything he saw, particularly at the size and weight of the guns, which seemed to transcend all his philosophy—the largest gun which he had hitherto seen, being his own rifle, with which he was in the habit of bringing down the ostrich or the tiger. The climate seemed to be well suited to these descendants of the Hollanders. The men were athletic and well-proportioned, and the young women chubby, and blooming with the blended tints of the lily and the rose—the rose rather preponderating. The beauty of these lasses—and some of them were quite pretty—was due entirely to mother Nature, as their large and somewhat rough hands, and awkward courtesies showed that they were rather more familiar with milking the cows and churning the butter, than with the airs and graces of the saloon.

We remained a week in Saldanha Bay, during the whole of which, we had exceedingly fine weather; the wind generally prevailing from the south-east, and the sky being clear, with now and then a film of gray clouds. This was quite remarkable for the first days of August—this month being equivalent, at the ‘stormy Cape,’ to the month of February, in the northern hemisphere. The natives told us that so gentle a