2110-1-7-19

[Printed letterhead] UNION-CASTLE LINE

[Printed letterhead] [picture of flag] R.M.S. "BRITON'

Sunday Sept 29 1901 [year added in pencil]

off mouth of Orange River.

This is my last Sunday at sea as we make Capetown early on Tuesday morning. There is a case of measles on board, so we may be quarantined, but otherwise I hope to get off with the night train and get to Johannesburg about Saturday morning. This letter should catch the home-going mail on Wednesday and be delivered about 17 days later.

The voyage has been quite featureless, since I last wrote as we have been far from land going straight across the great Bight of Benin. We crossed the Equator in bitterly cold weather, and all the week it has been more like the North Sea. As a matter of fact today we are just getting out of the Tropics, but as far as heat goes in my experience I think Edinburgh in an East Wind is warmer. The week has been entirely filled with sports and games which interfered sadly

[writing at top of page over letterhead - perpendicular to main letter] should reach you a week after this, but it may be a fortnight. Verily the seas between us braid hae rolled. I have odd fits of homesickness, but everything is so new and interesting that I do not suffer so much as I will later. I feel much younger than I felt in London, and when people guess my age here, I am generally taken for 23 or 24. Tell Mother I am extremely well in health.

With much love to all

Your affectionate brother

John

with my reading. However I submitted with a good grace and found considerable amusement in watching people. In cock-fighting I got into the final, but was ultimately defeated by a huge S. African cricketer who rolled me into the scuppers. There have been 3 or 4 concerts, dancing every night and our fancy dress ball, all rather amusing to a humorist like me. The passengers may be divided into 2 classes. One - a very large one- consists of rich colonials and English commercial people with their families. Most of them are good-humoured vulgar people and I find the colonials very interesting. They have all grievances which they pour out to me. One is the S. African agent of J & W Campbell of Glasgow and an elder in the Presbyterian Kirk at Johannesburg - a very good honest Scotsman, and a shrewd one. Another has just been staying with Marshall at Rachan. A third looks like a navvy and is really a millionnaire. Most of them gamble,

many of them drink, all of them use curious and intricate oaths. I have acquired a good deal of useful information from them, and made myself popular, as I must try and do with every class. They are full of schemes and prejudices, but all believe firmly in Milner and all offer to make my fortune, if I ever want any tips. It is an amazing country - the Transvaal, for the people are all wealthy, some of them enormously, and none seem to have much brain-power, except the Scotsman Gibson. As for the Colonial statesmen they are pleasant fellows but platitudinous to a degree, and in their whole mind and character more like provosts or baillies of a small town than serious politicians. However the able people must be there, somewhere.

The other class is very small and consists of the few of us who sit at the Captain's table. It is made up of the Rathdonnells, the Pleydell-Bouveries, a Mrs Nelson and a Mrs Cotterell (two soldiers' wives going out to join their husbands) two naval officers and myself. Barring us, they are very unpopular among the other passengers, and with cause, for they absolutely ignore them. I like Mrs Nelson very much, she is Scotch and a cousin of Ralston-Patrick, & was a Miss Ralston of Warwickhill in Ayrshire. She know hundreds of people I know and is my

Scotch indeed. She is one of the most beautiful creatures I have ever seen - a sort of taller and statelier Lady Curzon. Well, this gang always has tea together in a corner of the deck, sweeps in about half-an-hour late for meals, saunters in casually late to the concerts and generally behaves in the most royally exclusive way. I suppose it is the only thing English ladies could do, for though I like the colonial men, the colonial ladies are terrible. At the Fancy-dress ball we had a splendid reel. I put on my kilt & borrowed a lace cravat for Lady Rathdonnell, and Mrs Nelson gave me laced cuffs (one of which, I regret to say, went overboard) We could not get up an eightsome, but had a foursome - Mrs Bouverie & Lord Rathdonell, Mrs Nelson and myself. Except for that, which everybody stood and watched, the said fancy-dress ball was more like a penny-weddin' than a ball, and I got very tired of it.

I have been to church today, and am now finishing this letter with the sea rocking the ship like a cork. I have got entirely used to it, and have never a tremor now, but I am told that for a day or two after I land I shall be off my sleep, owing to the change. I am wearying for the next fortnight to pass that I may get a letter from home. I hope you are all well and cheerful and that my loving old mother is brave & sensible. My next letter will be from Johannesburg &