two years; today it is said to be the worst in ten years. In spite
of the pouring rain, we hired covered rickshas this morning and
went out to the beach, where we found the angry waves destroying
the beautiful place. The storm had attracted an enormous crowd, the
people coming by street-railway, and all of them were soaked, while
we were dry and warm in our covered rickshas, with oilcloth aprons
in front. The restaurants, curio shops, moving-picture shows, etc.,
were under water, and some of them were being torn to pieces. Every
little while a string of bath-houses went into the sea. The great
board walk along the beach was smashed into kindling-wood, and holes
were dug in the asphalt street in front of it. Great boulders from the
breakwater were rolled up on the beach, and deposited on the floors
of the restaurants. Coolies were running about in droves, trying to
lash down some of the smaller buildings, under the direction of white
men, but the coolies were afraid, and the mad excitement everywhere
reminded me of the lack of order at a fire. Not far offshore, the big
White Star ship “Medic” was anchored, unable to get into the harbor.
This ship left Australia a few days after we did, and we know some
of the passengers. We could plainly see the ship pitch and roll, and
swing ‘round its anchor. Further down were a number of other ships
unable to land their passengers, and to the right, inside the harbor,
we could see the blue funnels of the “Anchises.” And all this loss,
disturbance and inconvenience to thousands simply to keep the Atchison
hoodoo indoors four days in succession.... We watched the angry sea
for an hour, the water occasionally washing under our rickshas, and
were so dry and comfortable in spite of the rain that we determined to
visit the Hindu market, down-town. The Hindu population of Durban is
greater than the total population of Atchison, and certain sections
of the city are devoted to them. There are certainly twice as many
Hindu stores in Durban as there are stores of all kinds in Atchison.
We saw large wholesale establishments owned and operated by Hindus,
and devoted entirely to Hindu trade. There were dozens of jewelers’
shops, where were displayed beautiful things made of gold, silver,
ivory, brass, etc., and in all of these shops we saw Indian artisans
at work. They squat in front of a pot of charcoal, and manufacture
beautiful ornaments with tools of the most primitive kind. Hindu women
wear beautiful jewelry; everything an Indian woman owns she wears in
her nose, on her wrists, in her ears, and on her ankles, in the form
of exquisitely made jewelry of gold and silver. One woman we saw had
a silver bracelet on each wrist, and the bracelets were certainly four
inches wide. On the front porches of the poorest houses sat workers in
gold and silver, and all of them were very skillful. When there was
a brief let-up in the rain, we left the rickshas, and entered these
interesting workshops and stores.... Then we went to the Hindu
market where vegetables, fruits, meat, etc., are sold. The market is
an enormous place, occupying the greater part of a block. In addition
to food, jewelry and fancy goods are also sold at this market, and
we saw one stall devoted to the sale of Hindu books; copies of the
Indian paper printed in Durban were also displayed. We were the only
whites in the place; all the others in the crowd were natives of
India. The vegetables were small, and many of the fruits we did not
recognize. The stall-keepers knew we were visitors, and not buyers,
and were very polite.... Adjoining the Hindu market, and almost
as large, was the native or negro market. Two-thirds of this place
was devoted to an enormous negro restaurant. The negroes did not seem
to have much for sale, except rice and curry, and this was sold in
the restaurant, at so much per bowl. I am certain I saw four or five
hundred men eating in this native restaurant; and how they talked
and laughed! We frequently stopped and listened to the roar, which
reminded us of a women’s reception, magnified twenty or thirty times.
The white market-master told me that the blacks had acquired the habit
of buying their supplies of the Hindus, and that the Hindus next door
occasionally repaid the favor by buying meals in the negro restaurant.
But I saw no negroes in the Indian market, and no Indians in the negro
restaurant. The Hindus were very quiet, serious and busy, but the
negroes were very idle and noisy. The native or negro market made me
think of a negro church festival. In the negro market we saw thirty
native doctors. These men sold roots and herbs said to be good for
various ailments; with every purchase, they gave medical advice free.
The thirty doctors sat together, squatted on the floor in front of the
roots and herbs they were offering, and seemed more intelligent than
those around them.... In the Indian market, the thing that attracted
my particular attention was that sheep heads were displayed at all the
meat stalls, and every head was bloody and dirty, just as it came from
the butcher’s hands. Sheep feet, equally dirty, were also displayed. In
India the traveler sees a great many shops devoted to the sale of cheap
candy, cut in square, triangular and round pieces. All of it is highly
colored; pink, green, blue, brown, etc., and seems to be of the nature
of our “fudge.” The same shops are seen in the Hindu section of Durban,
as the Hindus are constantly eating sweets; this is their dissipation,
instead of drinking intoxicants. Nearly everything I saw of unusual
interest in India, I saw repeated in the Hindu quarter of Durban,
but the Hindus here seem much more prosperous than the same class in
India.... I speak of all the Indians in Durban as Hindus, but as a
matter of fact many of them are Mohammedans; my waiter at the Marine
Hotel is a Mohammedan, but my chamber-man is a Hindu. There is not much
difference between them racially, but the Mohammedans always seem
quicker and brighter.... We also visited a Kaffir brewery, where is
manufactured the beer of which Kaffirs are so fond. The head-man is an
Englishman, and Kaffir beer is manufactured under public control, to
prevent the blacks drinking the white man’s fire-water.... While
visiting the Hindu stores, we noted that the keepers had borrowed one
idea from the whites: they had signs out announcing “Specially low
prices for a few days only;” “Great clearing-out sale now in progress,”
etc.... Durban has an excellent system of street-railways, and
the suburban lines do an express business. At almost every stop the
motorman gives a package to a negro servant who seems to be expecting
it, and, if no servant appears, the conductor carries the package into
a house. The charge is two cents per package. If you buy tickets, you
can ride on the Durban street-cars for three cents a section; some
long street-car rides we took cost us twelve cents each.... This is
our fifth day in Durban. The first day was bright, but a storm of rain
and wind began Sunday night, and has continued ever since. As I write
this in my room, water is dropping from the ceiling; probably every
roof in town is leaking. I have just placed a washbowl on the bed to
keep the bed dry for tonight; in case the rain lets up. (P. S.—Since
writing the above, two white maids and two Indian men have moved me
into another room.) If the rain would only cease, we should probably
find South Africa very much more interesting than Australia or New
Zealand.... The policemen of Durban are negroes, and they have the
most serious and important expressions I have ever seen on the faces
of men. And a serious, important expression on the face of a barefoot
man always amuses me. Anyone with grave duties to perform should, it
seems to me, wear shoes.... There is a ricksha stand near the hotel,
and every ricksha man carries a cow-bell, which he rings while on the
road to warn pedestrians to get out of the way. These bells tinkle half
the night, and remind me of a pasture wherein every cow is a bell-cow,
and all of them vigorously fighting flies.... A good many American
manufacturers seem to be establishing branches in London. I bought a
bottle of Pond’s Extract in Durban, and found that it was manufactured
by the Pond’s Extract Co., 65 Great Russell street, London. I bought a
set of auto-strop razor blades, and found that they, also, came from
London. Still, at the stores I find a great many familiar articles
with only good old U. S. A. on them.... The charge here for an
ordinary ricksha ride is six cents. If I am compelled to go up-town
on an errand, the ricksha man waits, and when I return to the hotel,
I pay him a sixpence, or twelve cents. In coming back from town this
afternoon, I faced a terrific head-wind, with beating rain, and the
ricksha man was almost stalled. But the price was only six cents each
way.... I cannot recall having seen a single mulatto in this town;
all the negroes seem to be of pure blood. Whatever else may be said of
Englishmen, they seem to be particular in their social relations....
At seven o’clock this evening, the storm was worse than it has been at
any time since Monday morning. The evening paper says the “Anchises”
got away at 4 o’clock this afternoon, and at this writing is probably
doing a dance off the coast that the passengers will remember as long
as they live. The wind has been blowing a gale four days, and the sea
must be a thing to be dreaded by this time.
FRIDAY, MARCH 7.—The destruction being wrought by the waves at the
beach has attracted crowds daily, but a good many did not get to see it
until this morning, when the storm had considerably abated. Those who
went to the beach today were disappointed because no great destruction
was taking place, and abused the street-railway, which had charged
them three cents for the ride out. I predict that at the next meeting
of the town council, several additional measures will be introduced to
Make It Hot for the street-railway, which had no great show to offer at
the beach this morning. People have already forgotten the magnificent
sight the company offered them at the beach on Tuesday, Wednesday and
Thursday, for a charge of only three cents, including the ride out.
I rode out today and was satisfied; I always get along with
street-railways, as it seems to me they offer a good service at a very low
price.... The captain and gunner of the whaling-ship on which I
agreed to make a trip today, called on me at the hotel, and said it
would be impossible to catch a whale even if one should be sighted,
owing to rough seas, therefore they would not go out. I took the two
sailor-men down to the fine smoking-room of the Marine Hotel, and they
seemed ill at ease while smoking the cigars and drinking the beverages
I provided. They are rough men, but two better fellows I have not met
during the trip. I don’t suppose I ever had any actual intention of
going out with them, but they thought I had, and came up to the hotel
to tell me the ship could not go out today.... I regret to notice
that in the papers today are references to three attempted assaults on
white women by negroes. A Mr. Maurice Evans lectured in Durban last
night on a recent visit to the United States, and we intended going,
but were prevented by a heavy rain. Mr. Evans traveled through our
Southern states, and made a special study of the negro question. He
says our failure to solve the race problem is due to attempts in the
North to make the negro an equal, whereas the negro is not the equal of
the white man, and cannot be made such. Mr. Evans thinks our Southern
whites would solve the race problem if the Northern whites would let
them alone. The papers quote him as saying that an examination of a
thousand, or ten thousand, average negro skulls will show that the
negro is deficient in brain-power, and that he must be treated as an
inferior; kindly and fairly, but always as an inferior, and subject to
strict regulations. The South-African system of treating the negro is
paternal; he is regarded as a ward. And in the papers of a few days
ago, I saw a statement that a law was being urged which would provide
a heavy fine for any white man who leased land to a negro, or gave
him possession of land in any other way; by gift, purchase, lease,
or renting arrangement. Wherever you find whites and blacks living
in the same community, there is a race problem. One of the papers of
this date, speaking of Mr. Evans’s lecture, says: “It is impossible
not to be struck with the sadness and feeling of something approaching
despair which seem to have been the chief impressions left on Mr. Evans
by his experiences in the southern portion of the United States.”...
In South Africa a dentist does not call himself a “doctor.” I saw this
sign today: “Mr. Alfred Geary, surgeon dentist.”... I don’t suppose
any white family in South Africa is so poor that it cannot afford a
negro servant. Negro men are almost universally employed as house
servants, and not negro women. Many boys are employed to take care of
children. Most of the negroes who come to Durban from the interior have
two or more wives. These they leave at home, to work in the fields.
The English residents say it is best not to teach the negro servants
the English language; that a better plan is for employers to learn
Kaffir. An English-speaking negro servant demands more wages than one
who speaks only Kaffir, and usually drifts to Johannesburg, the boom
town of the Transvaal. A capable, all-around man servant gets $2 a
week, and he is able to cook well, and do all sorts of housework. The
servants become fond of their employers, and frequently remain with
them for years. The negroes are said to be more honest than the Hindus;
all the whites I have talked with have referred to the Hindus as
thieves. But any visitor may see that the Indians are a more important
class than the negroes. The Indians own many big business houses, and
at the Hindu market I saw great quantities of fruits and vegetables;
but almost nothing in the negro market, next door, except tobacco,
which the negroes raise because they are fond of it. Although the
English say one Kaffir is worth ten Indians, they admit that Indians
are employed almost exclusively on the big sugar and tea plantations,
where the workmen must be painstaking and reliable. My impression is
that the whites are a little jealous of the Indians, and find the
negroes more easily controlled.... Early this morning the skies
brightened, and we expected a return of pleasant weather, but while we
were at breakfast, the downpour of rain began for the fifth successive
day. Since Sunday night the rainfall has amounted to nearly seventeen
inches.... Natal, of which Durban is the largest town, is one of the
states of the South-African federation. It is not so large as Kansas,
being 350 miles one way, and 150 the other. Natal has 1,200 miles of
railway, and corn, which is the easiest grown of all the cereals, is
the staple crop. Sugar-cane, tea, alfalfa, ostriches, sheep, turkeys,
nearly all the tropical fruits, and hogs, cattle and horses, are also
produced. The planting season for corn lasts three months, instead of
about eighteen days, as with us. The rainfall is 42 inches per year.
The bulk of the farms are of 200 to 1,000 acres, and many stock farms
are much larger. Land in Natal is worth from four dollars an acre up.
Natal farm laborers receive $4 a month, and Indians about the same. It
is expected that hail will destroy everything in the way of crops every
fourth or fifth year. It is asserted that the European death-rate in
Durban in 1910 was less than seven per thousand, as compared with a
death-rate of fourteen per thousand in England and Wales in 1908....
The Dutch settled in the vicinity of Capetown in 1652, but the
English claimed they ran up the British flag on the site of that town
in 1620. There has always been friction between the Dutch (or Boers)
and English. This culminated in the war of 1899‒1902, which cost the
English 25,000 lives and a billion and a quarter dollars. The Boers had
possibly 40,000 soldiers in the field, while the English had near a
quarter of a million. The Boers were hardy pioneers, and the fight they
put up is still regarded as one of the wonders of the world. Only the
Transvaal, and later the Orange Free State, fought the English during
the Boer war; Natal and Cape Colony were loyal to the British....
The English have also been compelled to fight the Zulus for possession
of South Africa. The present peace with the Boers and natives will
probably prove lasting, although I occasionally hear predictions to
the contrary.... Six years before Columbus discovered America, a
bold adventurer named Diaz rounded the Cape of Good Hope, but means
of communication were slow in those days, and Diaz’s discovery of a
water route to India was not known until several years after the death
and disgrace of Columbus.... All South Africa is now in an amicable
federation, except Rhodesia, and this will probably come in before
many years. Other parts of Africa are controlled by the Germans, the
British, the Belgians, the French, the Italians, the Portuguese, etc.
Africa is an enormous country; almost as large as all of North America,
and, in its remotest sections, civilization is getting a hold. More
pioneering is being done in Africa today than in any other country,
and, for many years to come, Africa will occupy a prominent place in
the world’s news.... I can remember very distinctly when Stanley
“discovered” Dr. Livingstone in the country I shall visit shortly in
comfortable railway trains, and the railway has now been built four
hundred miles beyond Victoria Falls. Stanley’s first expedition into
Africa was a newspaper sensation, financed by the New York _Herald_,
as Dr. Livingstone was not lost, and, when Stanley “found” him, was
engaged quietly in making maps of the interior.