up in South African life. The discovery of vast stores of mineral
wealth in South Africa, more especially gold, has attracted suddenly
to its shores a large population which is not and cannot, at least
at once, be South African. This body is known under the name of the
Uitlanders (literally “Foreigners”).
Through a misfortune, and by no fault of its own, the mass of this
gold has been discovered mainly along the Witwatersrand, within the
territory of the Transvaal Republic, and more especially at the spot
where the great mining camp of Johannesburg now stands, thus throwing
upon the little Republic the main pressure of the new arrivals.
To those who know the great mining camps of Klondike and Western
America, it is perhaps not necessary to describe Johannesburg. Here are
found that diverse and many-shaded body of humans, who appear wherever
in the world gold is discovered. The Chinaman with his pigtail, the
Indian Coolie, the manly Kafir, and the Half-caste; all forms of dark
and colored folk are here, and outnumber considerably the white. Nor is
the white population less multifarious and complex. On first walking
the streets, one has a strange sense of having left South Africa, and
being merely in some cosmopolitan center, which might be anywhere where
all nations and colors gather round the yellow king. Russian Jews and
Poles are here by thousands, seeking in South Africa the freedom from
oppression that was denied that much-wronged race of men in their own
birth-land; Cornish and Northumberland miners; working men from all
parts of the earth; French, German and English tradesmen; while on the
Stock Exchange men of every European nationality are found, though
the Jew predominates. The American strangers are not large in number,
but are represented by perhaps the most cultured and enlightened
class in the camp, the mining engineer and large importers of mining
machinery being often of that race; our lawyers and doctors are of all
nationalities, while in addition to all foreigners, there is a certain
admixture of English and Dutch South Africans. In the course of a day
one is brought into contact with men of every species. Your household
servant may be a Kafir, your washerwoman is a Half-caste, your butcher
is a Hungarian, your baker English, the man who soles your boots a
German, you buy your vegetables and fruit from an Indian Coolie, your
coals from the Chinaman round the corner, your grocer is a Russian
Jew, your dearest friend an American. This is an actual, and not an
imaginary, description. Here are found the most noted prostitutes of
Chicago; and that sad sisterhood created by the dislocation of our yet
uncoordinated civilization, and known in Johannesburg under the name
of continental women, have thronged here in hundreds from Paris and the
rest of Europe. Gambling, as in all mining camps, is rife; not merely
men but even women put their money into the totalisator, and