KIMBERLEY.
Having described the diamond mines in the Kimberley district I must say
a word about the town of Kimberley to which the mines have given birth.
The total population as given by a census taken in 1877 was 13,590,
shewing the town to be the second largest in South Africa. By joining to
this Du Toit’s Pan and Bultfontein which are in fact suburbs of
Kimberley we get a total urban population of about 18,000. Of these
nearly 10,000 are coloured, and something over 8,000 are Europeans.
Among the Europeans two-fifths are females, and of course there is the
ordinary population of children--with the coloured people the females
are about 1 to 7. Of the adult male population two-thirds are of
coloured races,--Kafirs for the most part,--and one-third is European.
At present both the one and the other are a shifting people;--but the
Kafirs shift much the quickest. Each man remains generally only six or
eight months on the Fields and then returns home to his tribe. This mode
of life, however, is already somewhat on the decrease, and as the love
of making money grows, and as tribal reverence for the Chieftains dies
out, the men will learn to remain more constantly at their work. Unless
the diamonds come to an end all together,--which one cannot but always
feel to be possible,--the place will become a large town with a settled
Kafir population which will fall gradually into civilized ways of life.
There is no other place in South Africa where this has been done, or for
many years can be done to the same extent. I mention this here because
it seems to be so essentially necessary to remember that South Africa is
a land not of white but of black men, and that the progress to be most
desired is that which will quickest induce the Kafir to put off his
savagery and live after the manner of his white brethren.
Throughout the whole country which the English and the Dutch between
them have occupied as their own, the Kafirs are the superiors in numbers
in much greater proportion than that stated above in reference to the
town of Kimberley;--but these numbers are to be found, not in towns, but
out in their own hitherto untouched districts, where they live
altogether after their old ways, where the Kafirs of to-day are as were
the Kafirs of fifty years ago. And even with those who have come under
our dominion and who live to some degree intermixed with us, the greater
proportion still follow their old customs of which idleness and
dependence on the work of women for what is absolutely necessary to
existence, may be said to be the most prominent. The work of civilizing
as it has been carried out by simple philanthropy or by religion is
terribly slow. One is tempted sometimes to say that nothing is done by
religion and very little by philanthropy. But love of money works very
fast. In Griqualand West, especially in the Diamond Fields, and above
all at Kimberley, it is not only out in the wilds, by the river sides,
on the veld, and in their own kraals, that the black men outnumber the
white; but in the streets of the city also and in the work shops of the
mine. And here they are brought together not by the spasmodic energy of
missionaries or by the unalluring attraction of schools but by the
certainty of earning wages. The seeker after diamonds is determined to
have them because the making of his fortune depends upon them; and the
Kafir himself is determined to come to Kimberley because he has learned
the loveliness of 10s. a week paid regularly into his hand every
Saturday night.
Who can doubt but that work is the great civilizer of the world,--work
and the growing desire for those good things which work only will bring?
If there be one who does he should come here to see how those dusky
troops of labourers, who ten years since were living in the wildest
state of unalloyed savagery, whose only occupation was the slaughter of
each other in tribal wars, each of whom was the slave of his Chief, who
were subject to the dominion of most brutalizing and cruel
superstitions, have already put themselves on the path towards
civilization. They are thieves no doubt;--that is they steal diamonds
though not often other things. They are not Christians. They do not yet
care much about breeches. They do not go to school. But they are
orderly. They come to work at six in the morning and go away at six in
the evening. They have an hour in the middle of the day, and know that
they have to work during the other hours. They take their meals
regularly and, what is the best of all, they are learning to spend
their money instead of carrying it back to their Chiefs.
Civilization can not come at once. The coming I fear under any
circumstances must be slow. But this is the quickest way towards it that
has yet been found. The simple teaching of religion has never brought
large numbers of Natives to live in European habits; but I have no doubt
that European habits will bring about religion. The black man when he
lives with the white man and works under the white man’s guidance will
learn to believe really what the white man really believes himself.
Surely we should not expect him to go faster. But the missionary has
endeavoured to gratify his own soul by making here and there a model
Christian before the pupil has been able to understand any of the
purposes of Christianity. I have not myself seen the model Christian
perfected; but when I have looked down into the Kimberley mine and seen
three or four thousand of them at work,--although each of them would
willingly have stolen a diamond if the occasion came,--I have felt that
I was looking at three or four thousand growing Christians.
Because of this I regard Kimberley as one of the most interesting places
on the face of the earth. I know no other spot on which the work of
civilizing a Savage is being carried on with so signal a success. The
Savages whom we have encountered in our great task of populating the
world have for the most part eluded our grasp by perishing while we have
been considering how we might best deal with them. Here, in South
Africa, a healthy nation remains and assures us by its prolific
tendency that when protected from self-destruction by our fostering care
it will spread and increase beneath our hands. But what was to be done
with these people? Having found that they do not mean to die, by what
means might we instruct them how to live? Teach them to sing hymns, and
all will be well. That is one receipt. Turn them into slaves, and make
them work. That is another receipt. Divide the land with them, and let
them live after their own fashions;--only subject to some little control
from us. That was a third. The hymns have done nothing. The slavery was
of course impossible. And that division of land has been, perhaps not
equally futile, but insufficient for the growing needs of the
people;--insufficient also for our own needs. Though we abuse the Kafir
we want his service, and we want more than our share of his land. But
that which no effort of intelligence could produce has been brought
about by circumstances. The Diamond Fields have been discovered and now
there are ten thousand of these people receiving regular wages and quite
capable of rushing to a magistrate for protection if they be paid a
shilling short on Saturday night.
This the diamonds have done, and it is the great thing which they have
done. We have fair reason to believe that other similar industries will
arise. There are already copper mines at work in Namaqualand, on the
western coast of South Africa, in which the Natives are employed, and
lead mines in the Transvaal. There are gold fields in the Transvaal at
which little is now being done, because the difficulties of working them
are at present overwhelming. But as years roll quickly on these, too,
will become hives of coloured labour, and in this way Kimberleys will
arise in various parts of the continent.
I cannot say that Kimberley is in other respects an alluring
town;--perhaps as little so as any town that I have ever visited. There
are places to which men are attracted by the desire of gain which seem
to be so repulsive that no gain can compensate the miseries incidental
to such an habitation. I have seen more than one such place and have
wondered that under any inducement men should submit themselves, their
wives and children to such an existence. I remember well my impressions
on reaching Charles Dickens’ Eden at the junction of the Ohio and
Mississippi rivers and my surprise that any human being should have
pitched his tent in a place so unwholesome and so hideous. I have found
Englishmen collected on the Musquito Coast, a wretched crew; and having
been called on by untoward Fate and a cruel Government to remain a week
at Suez have been driven to consider whether life would have been
possible there for a month. During my sojourn at Kimberley, though I was
the recipient of the kindest hospitality and met two or three whom I
shall ever remember among the pleasant acquaintances of my life,--yet
the place itself was distasteful to me in the extreme. When I was there
the heat was very great, the thermometer registering 160 in the sun, and
97 in the shade. I was not absolutely ill, but I was so nearly ill that
I was in fear the whole time. Perhaps having been in such personal
discomfort, I am not a fair judge of the place. But an atmosphere
composed of dust and flies cannot be pleasant,--of dust so thick that
the sufferer fears to remove it lest the raising of it may aggravate the
evil, and of flies so numerous that one hardly dares to slaughter them
by the ordinary means lest their dead bodies should be noisome. When a
gust of wind would bring the dust in a cloud hiding everything, a cloud
so thick that it would seem that the solid surface of the earth had
risen diluted into the air, and when flies had rendered occupation
altogether impossible, I would be told, when complaining, that I ought
to be there, in December say, or February,--at some other time of the
year than that then present,--if I really wanted to see what flies and
dust could do. I sometimes thought that the people of Kimberley were
proud of their flies and their dust.
And the meat was bad, the butter uneatable, vegetables a
rarity,--supplied indeed at the table at which I sat but supplied at a
great cost. Milk and potatoes were luxuries so costly that one sinned
almost in using them. A man walking about with his pocket full of
diamonds would not perhaps care for this; but even at Kimberley there
are those who have fixed incomes,--an unfortunate Deputy Governor or the
like,--to whom sugar at 2s. 6d. a pound and other equally necessary
articles in the same proportion, must detract much from the honour and
glory of the position. When I was there “transport,” no doubt, was
unusually high. Indeed, as I arrived, there were muttered threats that
“transport” would be discontinued altogether unless rain would come. For
the understanding of this it must be known that almost everything
consumed at Kimberley has to be carried up from the coast, five hundred
miles, by ox-waggons, and that the oxen have to feed themselves on the
grasses along the road. When there has been a period of drought there
are no grasses, and when there are no grasses the oxen will die instead
of making progress. Periods of drought are by no means uncommon in South
Africa. When I was at Kimberley there had been a period of drought for
many months. There had, indeed, been no rain to speak of for more than a
year. As one consequence of this the grocers were charging 2s. 6d. a
pound for brown sugar. Even the chance of such a state of things
militates very much against the comfort of a residence.
I do not think that there is a tree to be seen within five miles of the
town. When I was there I doubt whether there was a blade of grass within
twenty miles, unless what might be found on the very marge of the low
water of the Vaal river. Every thing was brown, as though the dusty dry
uncovered ugly earth never knew the blessing of verdure. To ascertain
that the roots of grass were remaining one had to search the ground.
There is to be a park; and irrigation has been proposed so that the park
may become green;--but the park had not as yet progressed beyond the
customary brown. In all Kimberley and its surroundings there was nothing
pretty to meet the eye;--except, indeed, women’s faces which were as
bright there as elsewhere. It was a matter of infinite regret to me that
faces so bright should be made to look out on a world so ugly.
The town is built of corrugated iron. My general readers will probably
not have seen many edifices so constructed. But even in England
corrugated iron churches have been erected, when the means necessary for
stone buildings have been temporarily wanting; and I think I have seen
the studios of photographers made of the same material. It is probably
the most hideous that has yet come to man’s hands;--but it is the most
portable and therefore in many localities the cheapest,--in some
localities the only material possible. It is difficult to conceive the
existence of a town in which every plank used has had to be dragged five
hundred miles by oxen; but such has been the case at Kimberley. Nor can
bricks be made which will stand the weather because bricks require to be
burned and cannot well be burned without fuel. Fuel at Kimberley is so
expensive a luxury that two thoughts have to be given to the boiling of
a kettle. Sun-burned bricks are used and form the walls of which the
corrugated iron is the inside casing; but sun-burned bricks will not
stand the weather and can only be used when they are cased. Lath and
plaster for ceilings there is little or none. The rooms are generally
covered with canvas which can be easily carried. But a canvas ceiling
does not remain long clean, or even rectilinear. The invincible dust
settles upon it and bulges it, and the stain of the dust comes through
it. Wooden floors are absolutely necessary for comfort and cleanliness;
but at Kimberley it will cost £40 to floor a moderate room. The
consequence is that even people who are doing well with their diamonds
live in comfortless houses, always meaning to pack up and run after this
year, or next year, or perhaps the year after next. But if they have
done ill with their diamonds they remain till they may do better; and
if they have done well then there falls upon them the Auri sacra fames.
When £30,000 have been so easily heaped together why not have
£60,000;--and when £60,000 why not £100,000? And then why spend money
largely in this state of trial, in a condition which is not intended to
be prolonged,--but which is prolonged from year to year by the desire
for more? Why try to enjoy life here, this wretched life, when so soon
there is a life coming which is to be so infinitely better? Such is
often the theory of the enthusiastic Christian,--not however often
carried out to its logical conclusions. At such a place as Kimberley the
theory becomes more lively; but the good time is postponed till the
capacity for enjoying it is too probably lost.
The town of Kimberley is chiefly notable for a large square,--as large
perhaps as Russell Square. One or two of the inhabitants asked me
whether I was not impressed by the grandeur of its dimensions so as to
feel that there was something of sublimity attached to it! “I thought it
very ugly at first,” said one lady who had been brought out from England
to make her residence among the diamonds;--“but I have looked at it now
till I have to own its magnificence.” I could not but say that
corrugated iron would never become magnificent in my eyes. In Kimberley
there are two buildings with a storey above the ground, and one of these
is in the square. This is its only magnificence. There is no pavement.
The roadway is all dust and holes. There is a market place in the midst
which certainly is not magnificent. Around are the corrugated iron shops
of the ordinary dealers in provisions. An uglier place I do not know
how to imagine. When I was called upon to admire it, I was lost in
wonder; but acknowledged that it was well that necessity should produce
such results.
I think that none of the diamond dealers live in the square. The various
diamond shops to which I was taken were near the mine, or in the streets
leading down from the mine to the square. These were little counting
houses in which the dealers would sit, generally two together, loosely
handling property worth many thousands of pounds. I was taken to them to
see diamonds, and saw diamonds without stint. It seemed that one partner
would buy while another would sort and pack. Parcel after parcel was
opened for me with almost as little reserve as was exhibited when
Lothair asked for pearls. Lothair was an expected purchaser; while the
diamond dealer knew that nothing was to be made by me. I could not but
think how easy it would be to put just one big one into my pocket. The
dealers, probably, were careful that I did nothing of the kind. The
stones were packed in paper parcels, each parcel containing perhaps from
fifty to two hundred according to their size. Then four or five of these
parcels would be fitted into a paper box,--which would again be enclosed
in a paper envelope. Without other safeguard than this the parcels are
registered and sent by post, to London, Paris, or Amsterdam as the case
may be. By far the greater number go to London. The mails containing
these diamonds then travel for six days and six nights on mail carts to
Capetown,--for four-fifths of the way without any guard, and very
frequently with no one on the mail cart except the black boy who drives
it. The cart travels day and night along desolate roads and is often
many miles distant from the nearest habitation. Why the mails are not
robbed I cannot tell. The diamond dealers say that the robber could not
get away with his plunder, and would find no market for it were he to do
so. They, however, secure themselves by some system of insurance. I
cannot but think that the insurers, or underwriters, will some day find
themselves subjected to a heavy loss. A great robbery might be effected
by two persons, and the goods which would be so stolen are of all
property the most portable. Thieves with a capital,--and thieves in
these days do have capital,--might afford to wait, and diamonds in the
rough can not be traced. I should have thought that property of such
immense value would have paid for an armed escort. The gold in
Australia, which is much less portable, is always accompanied by an
escort.[9]
I was soon sick of looking at diamonds though the idea of holding ten or
twenty thousand pounds lightly between my fingers did not quite lose its
charm. I was however disgusted at the terms of reproach with which most
of the diamonds were described by their owners. Many of them were “off
colours,” stones of a yellowish hue and therefore of comparatively
little value, or stones with a flaw, stones which would split in the
cutting, stones which could not be cut to any advantage. There were
very many evil stones to one that was good, so that nature after all did
not appear to have been as generous as she might have been. And these
dealers when the stones are brought to them for purchase, have no
certain standard of value by which to regulate their transactions with
their customers. The man behind the counter will take the stones, one by
one, examine them, weigh them, and then make his offer for the parcel.
Dealing in horses is precarious work,--when there is often little to
shew whether an animal be worth £50, or £100, or £150. But with diamonds
it must be much more so. A dealer offers £500 when the buyer has perhaps
expected £2,000! And yet the dealer is probably nearest to the mark. The
diamonds at any rate are bought and sold, and are sent away by post at
the rate of about £2,000,000 in the year. In 1876 the registered export
of diamonds from Kimberley amounted in value to £1,414,590, and reached
773 pounds avoirdupois in weight. But it is computed that not above
three quarters of what are sent from the place are recorded in the
accounts that are kept. There is no law to make such record necessary.
Any one who has become legally possessed of a diamond may legally take
it or send it away as he pleases.
The diamond dealers whom I saw were the honest men, who keep their heads
well above water, and live in the odour of diamond sanctity, dealing
only with licensed diggers and loving the law. But there are diamond
dealers who buy from the Kafirs,--or from intermediate rogues who
instigate the Kafirs to steal. These are regarded as the curse of the
place, and, as may be understood, their existence is most injurious to
the interests of all who traffic honestly in this article. The law is
very severe on them, imprisoning them, and subjecting them to lashes if
in any case it can be proved that a delinquent has instigated a Kafir to
steal. One such dealer I saw in the Kimberley gaol, a good-looking young
man who had to pass I think two years in durance among black thieves and
white thieves because he had bought dishonestly. I pitied him because he
was clean. But I ought to have pitied him the less because having been
brought up to be clean he, nevertheless, had become a rogue.
Next to diamond dealing the selling of guns used to be the great trade
in Kimberley, the purchasers being Kafirs who thus disposed of their
surplus wages. But when I was there the trade seemed to have come to an
end, the Kafirs, I trust, having found that they could do better with
their money than buy guns,--which they seldom use with much precision
when they have them. There was once a whole street devoted to this
dealing in guns, but the gun shops had been converted to other purposes
when I was there. Great complaint had been made against the Government
of Griqualand West for permitting the unreserved sale of guns to the
Kafirs, and attempts have been made by the two Republics--of the
Transvaal and the Orange Free State--to stop the return of men when so
armed. The guns were taken away from those who had not a pass, and such
passes were rarely given. Now they may travel through the Transvaal with
any number of guns, as the British authorities do not stop them. Why it
has come to pass that the purchases are no longer made I do not
understand. Whether the trade should or should not have been stopped I
am not prepared to say. We have not hesitated to prevent the possession
of arms in Ireland when we have thought that the peace of the country
might be endangered by them. I do not think that the peace of South
Africa has been endangered by the guns which the Kafirs have owned, or
that guns in the hands of Kafirs have been very fatal to us in the still
existing disturbance. But yet the Kafirs are very numerous and the white
men are comparatively but a handful! I would have a Kafir as free to
shoot a buck as a white man. And yet I feel that the Kafir must be kept
in subjection. The evil, if it be an evil, has now been done, for guns
are very numerous among the Kafirs.
There can hardly be a doubt that Kimberley and the diamond fields have
been of great service to the black men who obtain work. No doubt they
are thieves,--as regards the diamonds,--but their thievery will
gradually be got under by the usual processes. To argue against
providing work for a Kafir because a Kafir may steal is the same as to
say that housemaids should not be taught to write lest they should learn
to forge. That argument has been used, but does not now require
refutation. And there can be as little doubt that the finding of
diamonds has in a commercial point of view been the salvation of South
Africa. The Orange Free State, of which “The Fields” at first formed a
part, and which is closely adjacent to them, has been so strengthened by
the trade thus created as to be now capable of a successful and
permanent existence,--a condition of things which I think no observer
of South African affairs would have considered to be possible had not
Kimberley with its eighteen thousand much-consuming mouths been
established on its border. As regards the Cape Colony generally, if
quite the same thing need not be said, it must be acknowledged that its
present comparative success is due almost entirely to the diamonds,--or
rather to the commercial prosperity caused by the consumption in which
diamond finders and their satellites have been enabled to indulge. The
Custom duties of the Cape Colony in 1869, before the diamond industry
existed, were less than £300,000.[10] In 1875 that sum had been very
much more than doubled. And it must be remembered that this rapid
increase did not come from any great increase of numbers. The
diamond-digging brought in a few white men no doubt, but only a few in
comparison with the increase in revenue. There are but 8,000 Europeans
in the diamond fields altogether. Had they all been new comers this
would have been no great increase to a population which now exceeds
700,000 persons. The sudden influx of national wealth has come from the
capability for consumption created by the new industry. White men
looking for diamonds can drink champagne. Black men looking for diamonds
can buy clothes and guns and food. It is not the wealth found which
directly enriches the nation, but the trade created by the finding. It
was the same with the gold in Australia. Of the national benefit arising
from the diamonds there can be no doubt. Whether they have been equally
beneficial to those who have searched for them and found them may be a
matter of question.
What fortunes have been made in this pursuit no one can tell. If they
have been great I have not heard of them. There can be no doubt that
many have ruined themselves by fruitless labours, and that others who
have suddenly enriched themselves have been unable to bear their
prosperity with equanimity. The effect of a valuable diamond upon a
digger who had been working perhaps a month for nothing was in the early
days almost maddening. Now, as with gold in Australia, the pursuit has
settled itself down to a fixed industry. Companies have been formed.
Individuals are not suddenly enriched by the sudden finding of a stone.
Dividends are divided monthly and there is something approaching to a
fixed rate of finding from this claim or from that, from this side of
the mine or from the other. There is less of excitement and consequently
less of evil. Men are no longer prone to the gambler’s condition of mind
which induces an individual to think that he,--he specially,--will win
in opposition to all established odds and chances, and prompts him to
anticipate his winning by lavish expenditure,--to waste it when it does
come by such puerile recourses as shoeing a horse with gold or drinking
champagne out of a bucket. The searching for gold and diamonds has
always had this danger attached to it,--that the money when it has come
has too frequently not been endeared to the finder by hard continuous
work. It has been “easy come and easy gone.” This to some degree is
still the case. There is at Kimberley much more of gambling, much more
of champagne, much more of the rowdy exhilaration coming from sudden
money, than at older towns of the same or much greater population, or of
the same or much greater wealth. But the trade of Kimberley is now a
settled industry and as such may be presumed to be beneficent to those
who exercise it.
Nevertheless there is a stain sticking to the diamonds,--such a stain as
sticks to gold, which tempts one to repeat the poet’s caution:--
Aurum irrepertum, et sio melius situm
Cum terra celat, spernere fortior,
Quam cogere humanos in usus.
It would be untrue to say that he who works to ornament the world is
necessarily less noble than the other workman who supplies it with what
is simply useful. The designer of a room-paper ranks above the man who
hangs it,--and the artist whose picture decorates the wall is much above
the designer of the paper. Why therefore should not the man who finds
diamonds be above the man who finds bread? And yet I feel sure that he
is not. It is not only the thing procured but the manner of procuring it
that makes or mars the nobility of the work. If there be an employment
in which the labourer has actually to grovel in the earth it is this
search for diamonds. There is much of it in gold-seeking, but in the
search after diamonds it is all grovelling. Let the man rise as high as
he may in the calling, be the head of the biggest firm at Kimberley,
still he stands by and sees the grit turned,--still he picks out the
diamonds from the other dirt with his own fingers, and carries his
produce about with him in his own pocket. If a man be working a coal
mine, though he be himself the hardest worked as well as the head
workman in the business, he is removed from actual contact with the
coal. But here, at Kimberley, sharp prying eyes are wanted, rather than
an intelligence fitted for calculations, and patience in manipulating
dirt than skill in managing men or figures.
And the feeling engendered,--the constant recollection that a diamond
may always be found,--is carried so far that the mind never rests from
business. The diamond-seeker cannot get out of his task and take himself
calmly to his literature at 4 P.M. or 5 or 6. This feeling runs through
even to his wife and children, teaching them that dirt thrice turned may
yet be turned a fourth time with some hope of profit. Consequently
ladies, and children, do turn dirt instead of making pretty needle-work
or wholesome mud pies. When I heard of so much a dozen being given to
young bairns for the smallest specks of diamonds, specks which their
young eyes might possibly discover, my heart was bitterly grieved. How
shall a child shake off a stain which has been so early incurred? And
when ladies have told me, as ladies did tell me,--pretty clever
well-dressed women,--of hours so passed, of day after day spent in the
turning of dust by their own fingers because there might still be
diamonds among the dust, I thought that I could almost sooner have seen
my own wife or my own girl with a broom at a street crossing.
There is not so much of this now as there was, and as years roll on,--if
the diamonds still be to be found,--there will be less and less. If the
diamonds still be there in twenty years’ time,--as to which I altogether
decline to give my opinion,--a railway will have been carried on to
Kimberley, and planks will have been carried up, and perhaps bricks from
some more favoured locality, and possibly paving stones, so that the
town shall be made to look less rowdy and less abominable. And pipes
will be laid on from the Vaal river, and there will be water carts. And
with the dust the flies will go into abeyance. And trees will have been
planted. And fresh butter will be made. And there will be a library and
men will have books. And houses will have become pleasant, so that a
merchant may love to sit at home in his own verandah,--which he will
then afford to have broad and cool and floored. And as the nice things
come the nasty habits will sink. The ladies will live far away from the
grit, and small diamonds will have become too common to make it worth
the parents’ while to endanger their children’s eyes. Some mode of
checking the Kafir thieves will perhaps have been found,--and the
industry will have sunk into the usual grooves. Nothing, however, will
tend so much to this as the lessening of the value of diamonds. The
stone is at present so precious that a man’s mind cannot bear to think
that one should escape him.
I should be doing injustice to Kimberley and to those who have managed
Kimberley if I did not say that very great struggles have been made to
provide it with those institutions which are peculiarly needed for the
welfare of an assembled population. Churches are provided
plentifully,--at one of which, at any rate, sermons are to be heard much
in advance of those which I may call the sermon at sermon par. I could
have wished however that the clergymen who preached them had not worn a
green ribbon. And there are hospitals, which have caused infinite labour
and are now successful;--especially one which is nearly self-supporting
and is managed exquisitely by one of those ladies who go out into the
world to do good wherever good may be done. I felt as I spoke to her
that I was speaking to one of the sweet ones of the earth. To bind up a
man’s wounds, or to search for diamonds among the dirt! There is a wide
difference there certainly.
I could have wished that the prison had been better,--that is more
prisonly,--with separate rooms for instance for those awaiting trial and
those committed. But all this will be done within those twenty next
coming years. And I know well how difficult it is to get money to set
such things afloat in a young community.
THE ORANGE FREE STATE.