Some small concession is made to the thermometer in the matter
of puggeries and matted floors, but even then carpets are used wherever
it is practicable, because this matting never looks clean and nice after
the first week it is put down. All the houses are built on the ground
floor, with the utmost economy of building material and labor, and
consequently there are no passages: every room is, in fact, a passage
and leads to its neighbor. So the perpetually dirty bare feet, or, still
worse, boots fresh from the mud or dust of the streets, soon wear out
the matting. Few houses are at all prettily decorated or furnished,
partly from the difficulty of procuring anything pretty here, the cost
and risk of its carriage up from D'Urban if you send to England for it,
and partly from the want of servants accustomed to anything but the
roughest and coarsest articles of household use. A lady soon begins to
take her drawing-room ornaments _en guignon_ if she has to dust them
herself every day in a very dusty climate. I speak feelingly and with
authority, for that is my case at this moment, and applies to every
other part of the house as well.
I must say I like Kafir servants in some respects. They require, I
acknowledge, constant supervision; they require to be told to do the
same thing over and over again every day; and, what is more, besides
telling, you have to stand by and see that they do the thing. They are
also very slow.
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