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was the way in which I was
led to go to Cape
Town. Mr John Byles, nephew of my Mr Byles,
was sent home to buy an Otley printing machine,
types, and other office furnishings for a Conservative
newspaper at Cape Town, started by gentlemen who
undertook to supply the capital for floating it, and
who appointed Messrs Pyke and Byles their printers.
These two had previously been the proprietors of a
provincial paper at Swellendam, where they were
doing fairly well until they were burned out by one
of the most destructive veldt fires that had ever
taken place in the Colony a fire which burned all
before it for a length of three hundred miles and a
breadth of twenty or so. The selection of an editor
was entrusted to Mr Thompson, a London merchant.
I was asked through Mr John Byles if I would take
the situation, and at first declined to do so. When
I was approached again, seeing that the salary
offered was pretty liberal, I said I would, provided
if at a year's end I and mine would have a free
passage home, as well as the free passage out, should
either side wish to terminate the engagement. The
free passage home was consented to, which was
fortunate for me, because at the end of nine months
I got a trouble in my right knee which kept me
long in pain before it came to a crisis, and then
made me walk on crutches for the rest of my life,
which was a sad affliction for a man in his prime,
who loved to breathe the air of mountain tops.
But I scaled Table Mountain, shot snipe on the
Downs, and had several visits through the cleuch to
Camp Bay before my ailment began. On landing
we were taken to Wynberg, and hospitably entertained in a capital reed-thatched house there, until
the office in Cape Town was fitted up, and until I
took a house above the Government Gardens, near
the waterworks, where on one hand we nad Sir
Cristofer Brand, the Speaker of the Assembly, for
a neighbour, and below us Dean Douglas, afterwards
Bishop of Bombay, with whom I had many walks
and talks when he was going to the Cathedral and
I to the "Standard" office. He was a man whom it
did one good to come in contact with. When we
were at Wynberg I explored, besides the Downs
and their splendid heaths, the beautiful places held
in the loving embrace of the mountain range from
Constantia, famous for its wines, to the neighbour-
hood of Cape Town. My wife and I liked the
country and climate so well, that if it had not
been for that wretched knee disablement, we would
probably have not thought of ever returning to
England except on a visit. But perchance if we
stayed I would have passed from journalism to
farming, for which I always retained a hereditary
hankering that made me a crofter at Fortingall
and Balquhidder. |
