FIRST VOYAGE TO SOUTH AFRICA-CAPE TOWN.
"O
h that mine adversary had written a book!"-JOB xxxi. 35.
The above words, written by one of the greatest philosophers of olden time,
have often impressed me, and I have frequently quoted them when asked
why I did not write an account of the interesting travels and adventures I
have had in my life. It has therefore required a great deal of courage to take
up my pen and record a few recollections of South Africa. I felt that, were
they ever to be written at all, it must be before the rapidly passing years di-
minish the interest in that land, which in the past has been the object of
such engrossing attention; and that at the present time, when the impend-
ing Federation of South Africa has at length crowned the hopes of those pa-
triots who have laboured patiently and hopefully to bring about this great
result, it might be appropriate to recall those days when Englishmen, who
had made South Africa their home, had much to contend with, even before
the fierce struggle to keep "the flag flying" in the years of 1899-1902.
During that period, which commenced after the disaster at Majuba Hill,
"equal rights" were a golden dream which only the most optimistic ever
3 LADY SARAH ISABELLA AUGUSTA WILSON
hoped to see realized. From then onwards, as old colonists have so often
told me, the Boers brought up the younger generation in the belief that the
"Roinek"[1] was a coward, and in consequence their arrogance in the coun-
try districts became wellnigh intolerable, while at the Cape the Bond party
grew so strong it bid fair to elbow out the English altogether. Now, while the
country is still young, the fair prospect opens out of Briton and Boer living
in amity and peace together, and mutually supplying, in the government of
their vast inheritance, such elements as are wanting in the character of each.
My first visit to South Africa was a short one, and took place at the end of
1895. During the foregoing summer everyone's attention had been directed
to the Transvaal, and more especially towards the Rand, by reason of the
unprecedented and, as it turned out, totally unwarranted rise in the gold-
mining shares of that district; in this boom, people both at home and in Jo-
hannesburg madly gambled, and large fortunes were quickly made by those
who had foresight enough not to hold on too long. For already the polit-
ical horizon was darkening, and the wrongs of the "Uitlanders," real and
apparent as they were, became a parrot-cry, which waxed and waned, but
never died away, till the ultimatum of President Kruger, in October, 1899,
brought matters to a climax.
We sailed from Southampton in December, 1895, in the Tantallon Castle,
then one of the most modern and up-to-date of the Castle liners. The ship
was crowded to its utmost capacity, and among the passengers, as I after-
wards learned, were many deeply concerned in the plottingwhichwas known
to be going on at Johannesburg, either to extort concessions from President
Kruger, or, failing this, to remove him altogether. I knew very little about all
this then, but before I had been many days on board it was not difficult to
discover that much mystery filled the air, and I was greatly excited at arriv-
ing in South Africa in such stirring times. There is no such place for getting
to know people well as on a sea-voyage of eighteen days. Somehow the sea
ull
