June 7 Sunday – Sam was up at 6 a.m. and left Queenstown with Carlyle Smythe at 7 a.m., arriving in King Williams Town, Cape Colony in the late afternoon; they took rooms at the Central Hotel [Philippon 20]. Sam wrote to Livy:

Livy darling it is 5 pm — we have just arrived, & it is just 12 hours since we got out of bed this morning. Beautiful country all day — lovely brown hills and mountains & grand flowing swells like the sea. One blossom in this blossomless Africa — a cactus with a foot-long tongue of flame standing up out if it as red as the coat-of-arms at the head of this page [Sam wrote on Free State Hotel stationery].

Sam described the native kraals (villages), the “children stark naked,” the “darkies dressed European-wise & talking English,” the “negro women drifting from church dressed…in handsome and bright-colored & tasteful & swell European rig” [MTP].

Meanwhile, Livy and Clara arrived in East London at 10 a.m. on the Athenian. The ship would not leave for Port Elizabeth until the next day, June 8 [Philippon 20]. Note: in his June 8 to Livy, Sam noted he’s sent “two or three letters there to be sent on board,” suggesting Livy did not have to disembark to receive her mail, though Parsons writes that Livy and Clara had a “restful shore leave” in East London [“Traveler in S.A.” 26].