The following vivid account of an “omnibus” journey from Cape Town to Wynberg - part of a series of “Sketches of Life at the Cape” - was published in the very first edition of the Argus, on Saturday, January 3, 1857. The south-easter is still very much with us, but Adderley Street and the rest of the city form - along with transport options - have changed immeasurably.
A Cape Bus in a South-Easter
The omnibus is ready to start. Ten pairs of legs are dangling over its sides, and twelve human bodies are jammed closely within its inner regions.
Four miserable scarecrows complimentarily called horses, but each of them lean enough to be the ghost of Rosinante himself - the leanest steed immortalised by genius - stand half-asleep, dreaming perhaps of unwonted feasts of corn; in harness even more dilapidated than their own unfortunate carcases.
A jolly looking Malay coachman grasps the reins and flourishes an endless whip; a very small boy of doubtful breed, standing on the door-step, shouts, “right”, the Malay coachman re-echoes “right”, and makes the endless whip perform a gyratory motion over the heads of the lean steeds; the lean steeds wake up and, finding their feast of corn “an unsubstantial pageant faded”, make a heavy lunge forward, and the Wynberg Omnibus turns away from Adderley Street, and faces the south-easter.
The ten bodies belonging to the ten pairs of legs now prepare for the contest with the headlong breeze. But let us see who are the owners of these bodies and legs. In England you would be pretty safe in guessing “clerks” as forming about three-fourths of the number, but not so here. For many sit outside a Cape omnibus between a judge and a clergyman - a bishop for aught we know, at the same, time you may find a publican (and sinner) next to the parson, and a lawyer’s clerk next to the judge.
We are not at all exclusive, and as a general rule, you may take the passengers of a Cape omnibus, outside and inside, to represent nearly every class of society in the colony. And then there are the ladies, pretty darlings, in the most charming of muslins, and the most seductive of bonnets, side by side with a negress in a not very clean gown, and her head tied up in a red and yellow bandana.
But while we are prosing away, the omnibus has reached the toll, and the south-easter is pitching into it in all its fury. Gentlemen who are doubtful as to the adhesive properties of their wide-awakes, are holding on to them with desperation; while the wind struggles against them, and roars at them, and hits them as if in a rage at being robbed of his prey, and determined to get the heads off as well as the hats, if he can.
Those in caps are comparatively easy in their minds as to the safety of their head-gear but have the slight draw-back of getting burnt to the orthodox colour of a Red Indian, and losing the skin off their noses about once a fortnight. And then the dust!
The ingenious mathematician who calculated that every man eats a pound of dirt in his lifetime had evidently never been to the Cape. There is a gentleman with big whiskers who has been heard to declare positively that he washes just nine ounces of dust out of them at the end of every journey in a south-easter. Now, how much must he swallow through mouth and nostrils during the same period! It is doubtful whether a pound would supply him for a week. If he were of the feathered race he would have a plentiful supply to keep his gizzard in proper healthy condition, without having any recourse to picking of gravel.
The omnibus has reached that part of the road which may be said to be at right angles with the eye of the Devil’s Peak, and here all before it is rendered invisible by the dense cloud of sand and dust. “Stop!” roars a choking voice. “Stop!” echo half a dozen more.
Careering over the Cape Flats, in the most lively and playful way in the world, is the straw hat of a gentleman who has rashly ventured to don that light article of dress. Down jumps the unlucky man, up the embankment he climbs, and away he goes in full chase after his vagrant head-gear, while his fellow passengers make facetious remarks on his personal appearance, and watch him with varying interest till he finally succeeds in putting his foot on the hat, and smashing it into the form of a pancake. Dragging it indignantly on to his head, he puffs back to the waiting bus dusty and soporific to behold, and horribly out of temper.
Mowbray is reached, and now there is a little relief from the wind’s fury, afforded by the trees. We have now time to admire the pretty cottages we see on all sides, and we heartily wish ourselves inside one of them instead of outside the bus. But the south-easter is treacherous.
He has clever little ways of darting 'round corners, and through unexpected openings in hedges and avenues, and of pitching volumes of sand into our eyes and down our throats.
Whenever the omnibus pulls up, which it does about every five minutes to take someone up or set someone down, everybody wipes their faces, and looks at their neighbour, and wonders whether he himself is quite as dirty and grimy-looking as them, and he generally satisfies himself that he is not, though it is more probable that he is a few degrees worse.
At last, the omnibus has reached Wynberg, and we descend from it. Our eyes are lined with amalgamated dust and sand, our nostrils are stopped up with the same compound, our mouths all gritty, so that we are afraid to use our jaws at all; our clothes are of one uniform tint of yellow-brown, our hair holds dust as a powder-puff holds powder, and if we had any whiskers - but the south-easter won’t let them grow - they would be exactly like those of our unfortunate friend, who requires three basins of water to wash his clean.