India. The handsome, blood-like electric cars, with their impatient
gongs and racing trolleys, were pure America (the motor-men were
actually imported from that hustling clime to run them). For Capetown
itself--you saw it in a moment--does not hustle. The machinery is the
West's, the spirit is the East's or the South's. In other cities with
trolley-cars they rush; here they saunter. In other new countries they
have no time to be polite; here they are suave and kindly and even
anxious to gossip. I am speaking, understand, on a twelve hours'
acquaintance--mainly with that large section of Capetown's inhabitants
that handled my baggage between dock and rail way-station. The niggers
are very good-humoured, like the darkies of America. The Dutch tongue
sounds like German spoken by people who will not take the trouble to
finish pronouncing it.

All in all, Capetown gives you the idea of being neither very rich nor
very poor, neither over-industrious nor over-lazy, decently successful,
reasonably happy, whole-heartedly easy-going.

The public buildings--what I saw of them--confirm the idea of a placid
half-prosperity. The place is not a baby, but it has hardly taken the
trouble to grow up. It has a post-office of truly German stability and
magnitude. It has a well-organised railway station, and it has the merit
of being in Adderley Street, the main thoroughfare of the city: imagine
it even possible to bring Euston into the Strand, and you will get an
idea of the absence of push and crush in Capetown.

When you go on to look at Government House the place keeps its
character: Government House is half a country house and half a country
inn. One sentry tramps outside the door, and you pay your respects to
the Governor in shepherd's plaid.