THE TRANSVAAL.--PRETORIA.
Pretoria itself, the capital of our new country, is a little town, lying
in a basin on a plateau 4,500 feet above the level of the sea,--lat. 25°
45´, S., long. 28° 49´, E. From its latitude it would be considered to
be semitropical, but its altitude above the sea is so great as to make
the climate temperate. In regard to heat and cold it is very
peculiar,--the changes being more rapid and violent than I have
experienced in any other place. I was there during the last days of
September, which would answer to the last days of March on our side of
the equator. The mornings were very fine, but somewhat chilly,--not so
as to make a fire desirable but just to give a little sting to the
water. The noon-day was hot,--not too hot for exercise; but the heat
seemed to increase towards the afternoon, the level rays of the sun
being almost oppressive. Then suddenly there would come an air so cold
that the stranger who had not expected the change and who was wearing
perhaps his lightest clothes would find that he wanted a great coat and
a warm cravat round his neck. It was not till I was about to leave the
place that I became alive to its peculiarities. I caught a cold every
evening in consequence of my ignorance, becoming quite hoarse and
thinking of hot water externally and internally as I went to bed;--but
in the morning I was always quite well again. I was assured, however,
that the climate of Pretoria was one which required great care from its
inhabitants. It is subject to very violent storms, and deaths from
lightning are not uncommon. The hailstorms, when they come, are very
violent, the stones being so large as not unfrequently to batter the
cattle to death. I was glad to find that they were unfrequent, and that
my good fortune saved me from experiencing their effects. “What does a
man do if he be out in the veld?” I asked when I heard these frightful
stories. “Put his saddle over his head,” was the answer, showing much as
to the custom of a people who seldom walk to any distance always having
horses at command. “But if he have not a saddle?” “Ah, then indeed, he
would be badly off.” My informants, for I was told of the hailstorms and
the necessary saddles more than once, seemed to think that in such a
dilemma there would be no hope for a man who, without a saddle, might
chance to be beyond the reach of a roof. I could not, however, learn
that people were often killed. I therefore accepted the Pretorian
hailstones with a grain of salt.
The first President of the Colony was named Pretorius and hence the name
of the town, which became the capital in the time of his son who was the
second President. The old man was one of the pioneer farmers who first
entered in upon the country under circumstances already described, and
the family now is very numerous in the Transvaal, occupying many farms.
Potchefstroom,--a hundred miles to the south-west of Pretoria,--was the
first capital and is still the bigger town; but President Pretorius the
second thought it well to move the seat of Government more to the centre
of the large district which the Republic was then claiming, and called
the little city Pretoria, after the name of his father.
I am quite unable to say what is the population of the capital, as those
of whom I inquired could only guess at it from their own point of view.
I should think it might amount to two thousand exclusive of the
military. At the time I was there it was of a very shifting nature, and
will be so for; some months. It has lately become the seat of a British
Government, and people have flocked into it knowing that money will be
flying about. Money has flown about very readily, and there are hands of
course to receive it. Six hundred British soldiers are stationed there
under tents, and soldiers, though their pay is low, are great consumers.
A single British soldier will consume as much purchased provender as a
whole Boer family. But as people are going in, so are they going out.
The place therefore in its present condition is like a caravansary
rather than an established town. All menial services are done by a Kafir
population,--not permanently resident Kafirs who can be counted, but by
a migratory imported set who are caught and used as each master or
mistress of a family may find it possible to catch and use them. “They
always go when you have taught them anything,” one poor lady said to me.
Another assured me that two months of continuous service was considered
a great comfort. And yet they have their domestic jealousies. I dined at
a house at which one of our British soldiers waited at table, an
officer who dined there having kindly brought the much-needed assistance
with him. The dinner was cooked by a Kafir who, as the lady of the house
told me, was very angry because the soldier was allowed to interfere
with the gala arrangements of the day. He did not see why he should not
be allowed to show himself among the company after having undergone the
heat of the fray. These Kafirs at Pretoria, and through all those parts
of the Transvaal which I visited, are an imported population,--the Dutch
having made the land too hot to hold them as residents. The Dutch hated
them, and they certainly have learned to hate the Dutch in return. Now
they will come and settle themselves in Pretoria for a short time and be
good-humoured and occasionally serviceable. But till they settle
themselves there permanently it is impossible to count them as a
resident population.
Down many of the streets of the town,--down all of them that are on the
slope of the descent,--little rivulets flow, adding much to the
fertility of the gardens and to the feeling of salubrity. Nothing seems
to add so much to the prettiness and comfort of a town as open running
water, though I doubt whether it be in truth the most healthy mode of
providing for man the first necessary of life. Let a traveller, however,
live for a few days but a quarter of a mile from his water supply and he
will learn what is the comfort of a rivulet just at his door-step. Men
who have roughed it in the wilderness, as many of our Colonists have had
to do before they have settled themselves into townships, have learned
this lesson so perfectly that they are inclined, perhaps, to be too fond
of a deluge. For purposes of gardening in such a place as Pretoria
there can be no doubt about the water. The town gardens are large,
fertile, and productive, whereas nothing would grow without irrigation.
The streets are broad and well laid out, with a fine square in the
centre, and the one fact that they have no houses in them is the only
strong argument against them. To those who know the first struggling
efforts of a colonial town,--who are familiar with the appearance of a
spot on which men have decided to begin a city but have not as yet
progressed far, the place with all its attributes and drawbacks will be
manifest enough. To those who have never seen a city thus struggling
into birth it is difficult to make it intelligible. The old faults of
old towns have been well understood and thoroughly avoided. The old town
began with a simple cluster of houses in close contiguity, because no
more than that was wanted. As the traffic of the day was small, no
provision was made for broad spaces. If a man could pass a man, or a
horse a horse,--or at most a cart a cart,--no more was needed. Of
sanitary laws nothing was known. Air and water were taken for granted.
Then as people added themselves to people, as the grocer came to supply
the earlier tanner, the butcher the grocer, the merchant tailor his
three forerunners, and as a schoolmaster added himself to them to teach
their children, house was adjoined to house and lane to lane, till a
town built, itself after its own devise, and such a London and such a
Paris grew into existence as we who are old have lived to see pulled
down within the period of our own lives. There was no foresight and a
great lack of economy in this old way of city building.
But now the founder has all these examples before his eyes, and is
grandly courageous in his determination to avoid the evils of which he
has heard and perhaps seen so much. Of course he is sanguine. A founder
of cities is necessarily a sanguine man, or he would not find himself
employed on such a work. He pegs out his streets and his squares
bravely, being stopped by no consideration as to the value of land. He
clings to parallelograms as being simple, and in a day or two has his
chief thoroughfare a mile long, his cross streets all numbered and
named, his pleasant airy squares, each with a peg at each corner, out in
the wilderness. Here shall be his Belgravia for the grandees, and this
his Cheapside and his Lombard Street for the merchants and bankers. We
can understand how pleasant may be the occupation and how pile upon pile
would rise before the eyes of the projector, how spires and minarets
would ascend, how fountains would play in the open places, and pleasant
trees would lend their shade to the broad sunny ways.
Then comes the real commencement with some little hovel at the corner of
two as yet invisible streets. Other hovels arise always at a distance
from each other and the town begins to be a town. Sometimes there will
be success, but much more often a failure. Very many failures I have
seen, in which all the efforts of the sanguine founder have not produced
more than an Inn, a church, half a dozen stores; and twice as many
drinking booths. And yet there have been the broad streets,--and the
squares if one would take the trouble to make enquiry. Pretoria has not
been a failure. Among recent attempts of the kind Pretoria is now
likely to be a distinguished success. An English Governor is to live
there, and there will be English troops;--I fear, for many years. Balls
will be given at Pretoria. Judges will hold their courts there, and a
Bishop will live in a Pretorian Bishopstowe. But the Pretoria of to-day
has its unknown squares, and its broad ill defined streets about which
houses straggle in an apparently formless way, none of which have as yet
achieved the honours of a second storey. The brooks flow pleasantly, but
sometimes demand an inconvenient amount of jumping. The streets lie in
holes, in which when it rains the mud is very deep. In all such towns as
these mud assumes the force of a fifth element, and becomes so much a
matter of course that it is as necessary to be muddy, as it is to be
smoke-begrimed in London. In London there is soap and water, and in
Pretoria there are, perhaps, clothes-brushes; but a man to be clean
either in one place or the other must always be using his soap or his
clothes-brush. There are many gardens in Pretoria,--for much of the
vacant spaces is so occupied. The time will come in which the gardens
will give place to buildings, but in the mean time they are green and
pleasant-looking. Perhaps the most peculiar feature of the place is the
roses. There are everywhere hedges of roses, hedges which are all
roses,--not wild roses but our roses of the garden though generally less
sweet to the smell. And with the roses, there are everywhere weeping
willows, mourning gracefully over the hitherto unaccomplished
aspirations of the country. This tree, which I believe to have been
imported from St. Helena, has become common to the towns and homesteads
of the Transvaal. To the eye that is strange to them the roses and
weeping willows are very pretty; but, as with everything else in the
world, their very profusion and commonness detracts from their value.
The people of Pretoria think no more of their roses, than do those of
Bermuda of their oleanders.
In such towns the smallness of the houses is not the characteristic
which chiefly produces the air of meanness which certainly strikes the
visitor, nor is it their distance from each other, nor their poverty;
but a certain flavour of untidiness which is common to all new towns and
which is, I fear, unavoidable. Brandy bottles and sardine boxes meet the
eye everywhere. Tins in which pickled good things have been conveyed
accumulate themselves at the corners. The straw receptacles in which
wine is nowadays conveyed meet the eye constantly, as do paper
shirt-collars, rags, old boots, and fragments of wooden cases. There are
no dust holes and no scavengers, and all the unseemly relics of a hungry
and thirsty race of pioneers are left open to inspection.
And yet in spite of the mud, in spite of the brandy bottles, in spite of
the ubiquitous rags Pretoria is both picturesque and promising. The
efforts are being made in the right direction, and the cottages which
look lowly enough from without have an air of comfort within. I was
taken by a gentleman to call on his wife,--an officer of our army who is
interested in the gold fields of the Transvaal,--and I found that they
had managed to gather round them within a very small space all the
comforts of civilized life. There was no front door and no hall; but I
never entered a room in which I felt myself more inclined to “rest and
be thankful.” I made various calls, and always with similar results. I
found internal prettinesses, with roses and weeping willows outside
which reconciled me to sardine boxes, paper collars, and straw
liquor-guards.
In the middle of Pretoria is a square, round which are congregated the
public offices, the banks, hotels, and some of the chief stores, or
shops of the place, and in which are depastured the horses of such
travellers as choose to use the grass for the purpose. Ours, I hope,
were duly fed within their stables; but I used to see them wandering
about, trying to pick a bit of grass in the main square. And here stands
the Dutch Reformed Church,--in the centre,--a large building, and as
ugly as any building could possibly be made. Its clergyman, quite a
young man, called upon me while I was in Pretoria, and told me that his
congregation was spread over an area forty miles round. The people of
the town are regular attendants; for the Dutchman is almost always a
religious father of a family, thinking much of all such services as were
reverenced by his fathers before him. But the real congregation consists
of the people from the country who flock into the Nichtmaal, or Lord’s
Supper, once in three months, who encamp or live in their waggons in the
square round the Church, who take the occasion to make their town
purchases and to perform their religious services at the same time. The
number attending is much too large to enter the church at once, so that
on the appointed Sunday one service succeeds another. The sacrament is
given, and sermons are preached, and friends meet each other, amid the
throng of the waggons. The clergyman pressed me to stay and see it;--but
at this time my heart had begun to turn homewards very strongly. I had
come out to see Pretoria, and, having seen it, was intent upon seeing
London once again.
There are various other churches,--all of them small edifices,--in the
place, among which there is a place of worship for the Church of
England. And there is a resident English clergyman, a University man,
who if he live long enough and continue to exercise his functions at
Pretoria will probably become the “clergyman of the place.” For such is
the nature of Englishmen. Now that the Transvaal is an English Colony
there can be no doubt but that the English clergyman will become the
“clergyman of the place.”
I would fain give as far as it may be possible an idea to any intending
emigrant of what may be the cost of living in Pretoria. Houses are very
dear,--if hired; cheap enough if bought. When I was there in September,
1877, the annexation being then four months old, a decent cottage might
be bought for seven or eight hundred pounds, for which a rental of seven
or eight pounds a month would be demanded. A good four-roomed house with
kitchen &c. might be built, land included, for a thousand pounds, the
rent demanded for which would be from £150 to £175 a year. Meat was
about 6d. a pound, beef being cheaper and I think better than mutton.
Butter, quite uneatable, was 2s. a pound. Eggs a shilling a dozen. Fowls
1s. 6d. each. Turkeys, very good, 7s. 6d. to 9s. 6d. each. Coals 10s. a
half hundredweight,--and wood for fuel about £2 for a load of two and a
half tons. These prices for fuel would add considerably to the cost of
living were it not that fires are rarely necessary except for the
purpose of cooking. Bread is quoted at 1s. a loaf of two pounds, but was
I think cheaper when I was there. Potatoes were very dear indeed, the
price depending altogether on the period of the year and on the season.
I doubt whether other vegetables were to be bought in the market, unless
it might be pumpkins. Potatoes and green vegetables the inhabitant of
Pretoria should grow for himself. And he should be prepared to live
without butter. Why the butter of South Africa should be almost always
uneatable, culminating into an acme of filth at Pretoria, I cannot
say;--but such was my experience. After all men and women can live
without butter if other things be in plenty.
Then comes that difficult question of domestic service. All that the
inhabitant of Pretoria will get in this respect will cost him very much
less than in Europe, very much less indeed than in England, infinitely
less than in London. With us at home the cost of domestic service has
become out of proportion to our expenditure in other respects, partly
because it has become to be thought derogatory to do anything for
ourselves, and partly because our servants have been taught by their
masters and mistresses to live in idle luxury. Probably no man earning
his bread eats so much meat in proportion to the work he does as the
ordinary London footman. This is an evil to those who live in London
from which the inhabitant of Pretoria will find himself free. He will
get a “boy” or perhaps two boys about the house,--never a girl let the
mistress of the family coming out to the Transvaal remember,--to whom
he will pay perhaps 10s. a month and whom he will feed upon mealies. The
“boy’s” wages and diet will cost perhaps £12 per annum. But indeed they
will not cost him so much, for the “boy” will go away, and he will not
be able to get another just when he wants one. These boys he will find
to be useful, good humoured, and trustworthy,--if only he could keep
them. They will nurse his baby, cook his dinner, look after his house,
make his bed, and dig his garden. That is they will half do all these
things,--with the exception of nursing the baby, whom the Kafir is never
known to neglect or injure. The baby perhaps may serve to keep him a
whole twelvemonth, for he is very fond of a white baby. The wife of the
British gentleman who thus settles himself at Pretoria will, at first,
be struck with horror at the appearance of the Kafir, who will probably
wear an old soldier’s jacket with a ragged shirt under it and no other
article of clothing; and she will not at first suffer the Savage to
touch her darling. But she will soon become reconciled to her inmate and
the darling will take as naturally to the Kafir man as though he were
some tendered, best instructed old English nurse out of a thoroughly
well-to-do British family. And very soon she will only regret the
reckless departure of the jet black dependant who had struck her at
first with unmingled disgust.
Gradually I suppose these people will learn to cling to their work with
some better constancy. I, as a stranger, was tempted to say that better
diet, better usage, and better wages would allure them. But I was
assured that I was wrong in this, and that any attempts in that
direction only spoilt “the Native.” No doubt if you teach a Native to
understand that he is indispensable to your comfort you raise his own
estimation of himself, and may do so in such a manner as to make him
absurdly fastidious. He is still irrational, still a Savage. He has to
be brought by degrees to bend his neck to the yoke of labour and to
learn that continued wages are desirable. That the thing will be done by
degrees I do not at all doubt, and do not think that there is just cause
of dissatisfaction at the rate of the present progress. The new comer to
Pretoria to whom I am addressing myself will doubtless do something
towards perfecting the work. In the meantime his domestic servants will
cost him very much less than they have done in England.
A man with a wife and family and £500 a year would I think live with
more comfort, certainly with more plenty in Pretoria, than in England.
The inhabitants of Pretoria will demur to this, for it is a matter of
pride to the denizens of every place to think that the necessaries of
life are dearer there than elsewhere. But the cheapness of a place is
not to be reckoned only by what people pay for the articles they use.
The ways of the country, the requirements which fashion makes, the pitch
to which the grandeur of Mrs. Smith has aroused the ambition of Mrs.
Jones, the propensities of a community to broadcloth or to
fustian,--these are the causes of expensive or of economical living. A
gentleman in Pretoria may invite his friends to dinner with no greater
establishment than a Kafir boy to cook the dinner and another to hand
the plates, whereas he does not dare to do so in London without paying
10s. for the assistance of the greengrocer.
As, however, men with £500 a year will not emigrate in great numbers to
Pretoria it would be more important to say how the labouring man might
live in the Transvaal. With him his condition of life does not depend so
much on what he will have to pay for what he consumes as on the wages
which he may receive. I found that an artizan can generally earn from
10s. to 12s. a day at almost any trade,--if the work of the special
trade be required. But I am far from saying that amidst so small a
community all artizans would find an opening. At the present moment
bricklayers and carpenters are in demand at Pretoria,--and can live in
great plenty on their wages.
As to workmen, who are not artizans but agricultural labourers, I hardly
think that there is any opening for them in the Transvaal. Though the
farmers all complain that they cannot plough their lands because there
is no labour, yet they will not pay for work. And though the Kafir is
lazy and indifferent, yet he does work sufficiently to prevent the white
man from working. As I have said before the white men will not work
along with the Kafir at the same labour. If there be but a couple of
black men with him he presumes that it is his business to superintend
and not to work. This is so completely the case in the Transvaal that it
is impossible to name any rate of wages as applicable to white rural
labour. Sons work for their fathers or brothers may work together;--but
wages are not paid. The Dutchman has a great dislike to paying wages.
The capital of the Transvaal is all alive with soldiers. There are 600
redcoats there, besides artillery, engineers and staff. These men live
under canvas at present, and are therefore very visible. Barracks
however are being built, with officers’ quarters and all the
appurtenances of a regular military station. It was odd enough to me to
see a world of British tents in the middle of a region hazily spoken of
at home six months ago as the South African Republic; but how much
stranger must it be to the Dutch Boers who certainly anticipated no such
advent. I had the honour of being invited to dine at the mess, and found
myself as well entertained as though I had been at Aldershott. When I
was sitting with the officers in their uniform around me it seemed as
though a little block of England had been cut out and transported to the
centre of South Africa.
It may be as well to say a few words here as elsewhere as to the state
of education in our new Colony. The law on this matter as it stood under
the Republic is the law still. Now, as I write, it is hardly more than
six months since the annexation and there has not been time for changes.
On no subject was the late President with his Cabinet more alive to the
necessity of care and energy, on no subject were there more precise
enactments, and on no subject were the legislative enactments more
pretentious and inefficacious. There are three classes of schools,--the
High Schools, the District Schools, and the Ward Schools, the whole
being under the inspection of a Superintendent General of Education. The
curriculum at the High Schools is very high indeed, including Dutch,
English, French, German, Latin, Greek, geometry, algebra, and all the
ologies, together with logic, music, drawing, and astronomy. The law
enacts that the principal master at a High School shall receive £400 a
year, and the Assistant Masters £250 each;--but even at these salaries
teachers sufficiently instructed could not be found, and when the
Superintendent made his last return there was but one High School in the
Transvaal, and at that school there were but five pupils. At the High
School, the pupils paid 30s. a month, which, presuming there to be two
months of holydays in the year, would give £15 per annum. There would be
therefore £75 towards maintaining a school of which the Head Master
received £400. But the reality of the failure was worse even than this.
The law required that all boys and girls should pay the regular fees,
but in order to keep up the number of pupils gratuitous instruction was
offered. Three months after annexation the five High School pupils had
dwindled down to two, and then the school was closed by order of the
British Governor. The education no doubt was far too advanced for the
public wants; and as it was given by means of the Dutch language only it
did not meet the needs of those who were most likely to make use of it.
For, even while the Transvaal was a Dutch Republic, the English language
was contending for ascendancy with that of the people. In this
contention the President with his Government did his best to make Dutch,
and Dutch only, the language of the country. For this we cannot blame
him. It was naturally his object to maintain the declining nationality
of his country. But the parents and pupils who were likely to profit by
such a school as I have described were chiefly English.
At the District and Ward schools the nature of the instruction proposed
to be given is lower. The District schools are held in the chief
towns,--such as they are,--and the Ward schools in sub-divisions of the
Districts. They too have failed for the same reasons. They are too
expensive and pretentious. The Salaries,--_i.e._ the lowest salaries
permitted by law,--are £200 and £100 for head masters at the two classes
of schools, and £125 and £30 for assistant masters. According to the
last return there were 236 pupils at the District schools, and 65 at the
Ward schools. The pupils pay varying fees, averaging 7s. a month or
about £3 10s. per annum each. There are six District schools and two
Ward schools, at which the masters’ salaries alone would amount to
£1,700 per annum,--presuming there to be no assistant masters,--while
the total of fees would be about £1,050 per annum. As the Government had
been for many months penniless, it need hardly be explained further that
the schools must have been in a poor condition. The nominal cost to the
State during the last years of the Republic was about £3,500, being more
than £11 per year for each pupil over and above the fees. What was still
due under the head had of course to be paid out of British taxes when
the country was annexed.
But all this does not show the extent of the evil. The white population
of the country is supposed to be 45,000, of which about a tenth or 4,500
ought to be at school. The public schools at present show 300. There are
some private schools as to which I could obtain no trustworthy
information; but the pupils educated at them are few in number.
The average Boer is generally satisfied in regard to education if his
children can be made to read the Bible. To this must be added such a
knowledge of the ritual of the religion of the Dutch Reformed Church as
will enable the children to pass the examination necessary for
confirmation. Until this ceremony has been completed they cannot marry.
So much, by hook or by crook, is attained, and thus the outermost
darkness of ignorance is avoided. But the present law as to education
does not provide for even this moderate amount of religious instruction,
and is therefore, and has been, most unpopular with the Boers. It must
be understood that on all religious matters the late Government was at
loggerheads with the bulk of the population, the President being an
advocate of free-thinking and absolute secularism,--of an education from
which religion should be as far as possible removed; whereas the Boer is
as fanatic, as conservative, and as firmly wedded to the creed of his
fathers as an Irish Roman Catholic Coadjutor. It may, on this account,
be the easier for the Colonial Government to reconcile the population to
some change in the law.
A few of the better class of farmers, in the difficulty which at present
exists, maintain a schoolmaster in their houses for a year or two,
paying a small salary and entertaining the teachers at their tables. I
have met more than one such a schoolmaster in a Boer’s house. In the
course of my travels I found an Englishman in the family of a Dutchman
who could not speak a word of English,--and was astonished to find so
much instructed intelligence in such a position. Formerly there existed
a class of itinerant schoolmasters in the Transvaal, who went from house
to house carrying with them some rudiments of education, and returning
now and again on their tract to see how the seed had prospered. These
were supported by the Government of the day, but the late Government in
its ambitious desire to effect great things, discontinued this
allowance. It is not improbable that the renewal of some such scheme may
be suggested.
It will be imperative on the Colonial Government to do something as the
law now existing has certainly failed altogether. But there are great
difficulties. It is not so much that education has to be provided for
the children of a people numbering 45,000;--but that it has to be done
for children dispersed over an area as big as Great Britain and Ireland.
The families live so far apart, owing to the absurdly large size of the
farms, that it is impossible to congregate them in schools.
When I was at Pretoria I rode out with four companions to see a
wonderful spot called the “Zoutpan” or saltpan. It is 28 miles from the
town and the journey required that we should take out a tent and food,
and that we should sleep in the veld. I was mounted on an excellent
horse who was always trying to run away with me. This tired me much, and
the ground was very hard. While turning myself about upon the ground I
could not but think how comfortable the beds are in London. The saltpan,
however, was worth the visit. That it had been a volcanic crater there
could be no doubt, but unlike all other volcanic craters that I have
seen it was not an aperture on the apex of a mountain. We went north
from Pretoria and crossing through the spurs of the Magaliesberg range
of hills found ourselves upon a plain which after a while became studded
with scrub or thorn bushes. Close to the saltpan, and still on the
plain, we came to the residence of a Boer who gave us water,--the
dirtiest that ever was given me to drink,--with a stable for our horses
and sold us mealies for our animals. As one of our party was a doctor
and as the Boer’s wife was ill, his hospitality was not ill repaid. A
gentle rise of about 200 feet from the house took us to the edge of the
pan, which then lay about 300 feet below us,--so as to look as though
the earthwork around the valley had been merely thrown out of it as
earth might be thrown from any other hole. And this no doubt had been
done,--by the operation of nature.
The high outside rim of the cup was about 2¼ miles round, with a
diameter of 1,500 yards; and the circle was nearly as perfect as that of
a cup. Down thence to the salt lake at the bottom the inside of the bowl
fell steeply but gradually, and was thickly covered with bush. The
perfect regularity of shape was, to the eye, the most wonderful feature
of the phenomenon. At the bottom to which we descended lay the shallow
salt lake, which at the time of our visit was about half full,--or half
covered, I might better say, in describing the gently shelving bottom of
which not more than a moiety was under water. In very dry weather there
is no water at all,--and then no salt. When full the lake is about 400
yards across.
Some enterprising Englishman had put up a large iron pan 36 feet by 20,
and 18 inches deep, with a furnace under it, which, as everything had
been brought out from England at a great cost for land transit, must
have been an expensive operation. But it had been deserted because the
late Government had been unable to protect him in the rights which he
attempted to hire from them. The farmers of the neighbourhood would not
allow themselves to be debarred from taking the salt,--and cared nothing
for the facts that the Government claimed the privilege of disposing of
the salt and that the Englishman had bought the privilege. The
Englishman therefore withdrew, leaving behind him his iron pan and his
furnace, no doubt with some bitter feelings.
It is probable, I believe, that another Englishman,--or a
Scotchman,--will now commence proceedings there, expecting that Downing
Street will give better security than a Republican President. In the
meantime our friend the Boer pays £50 per annum to the Government, and
charges all comers some small fine per load for what they take. Baskets
are inserted into the water and are pulled up full of slush. This is
deposited on the shore and allowed to drain itself. On the residuum
carbonate of soda rises, with a thick layer, as solid cream on standing
milk;--and below this there is the salt more or less pure,--very nasty,
tasting to me as though it were putrid,--but sufficing without other
operation for the curing of meat and for the use of cattle. I was told
by one of our party that the friable stone which we found all around is
soda-feldspar from which, as it melts in the rain, the salt is brought
down. Here, at this place, there is but one crater;--whereas at other
places of a like nature, as in New Zealand and Central America, I have
seen various mouths crowded together, like disjected fragments of a
great aperture down into the earth. Here there is but the one circle,
and that is as regular as though it had been the work of men’s hands.
Such saltpans in South Africa are common, though I saw none other but
the one which I have described. The northern district of the Transvaal
is called Zoutpansberg from the number of its saltpans,--and there are
others in other parts of the country. I do not know that there is much
else particularly worthy of notice in the neighbourhood of Pretoria,
unless it be the wonderboom,--a pretty green over-arching tree, which
makes for its visitors a large bower capable of holding perhaps 50
persons. It is a graceful green tree;--but not very wonderful.