a month, having become an expert. Abel lives with the other servants
in a detached house in the yard, and each receives the following
rations: A half-loaf of bread per day; one can condensed milk per week;
one quarter-pound of tea per week; two pounds of sugar per week;
two pounds of corn-meal per week; fresh meat once a week. This meat
consists of a shilling’s worth of “boy’s meat,” probably a pound and a
half of beef, which is boiled with vegetables, usually carrots, which
the Zulus love. The black servants here are known as “boys,” and the
butchers sell a special kind of meat for them, which is called “boy’s
meat.” Mrs. Cary serves out the servants’ rations once a week, and
her grocer puts up the tea in quarter-pound packages, the sugar in
two-pound packages, etc. The food is cooked in Mrs. Cary’s kitchen,
but eaten in the detached house where the servants live.... While
we were at the dinner table I expressed a desire to see Abel, the
cook, and Mrs. Cary sent for him by Sampson, the waiter. Abel came,
bowing and smiling, into the room, remained a few moments, and then
disappeared in confusion. He is a single man, about thirty years old,
and is now saving up his money to get married.... Sampson, the
waiter, is a black man of about the same age, and has been married
some time. He gave fifteen cows for his wife. She lives somewhere in
Zululand, and Sampson sees her only once a year. Among the Zulus, a
family of girls is valuable, as the father can always sell them at a
good price. Sampson is one of the most capable waiters I have ever seen
at a private dinner, or at a dinner of any other kind. He is very quiet
in his movements, and, when he offers anything to the guests, he stands
at a very respectful distance. While idle, and standing behind his
mistress, he looks so respectful, and so concerned about the dinner,
that all guests must admire him as much as I did. When I saw him,
he wore a suit of white duck, made in American fashion. In addition
to waiting on the table, Sampson does the washing and ironing, and
assists the garden boy in caring for the flowers, the vegetables and
the chickens. At the usual private dinner, you observe the lady of the
house keeping a sharp eye on the waiter, although apparently engaging
freely in conversation, but Sampson was so capable that Mrs. Cary was
not at all nervous. When I am a guest at a private dinner, it makes
me feel more natural and at home to see things go wrong occasionally,
but Abel and Sampson did such excellent team work that there was not
the slightest friction to comfort me.... The Cary servants are kept
busy constantly, and they will cheerfully work until eleven o’clock at
night, if necessary. They are entitled to a vacation of ten days every
year, but Abel, the cook, has been away but once in six years. Every
time they leave the house they must have a pass, certifying that they
are good boys, regularly employed, etc. Every negro you see on the
streets of Johannesburg has a pass; otherwise he is liable to arrest.
The blacks pay two shillings a month to the government for this pass
privilege, and when a white man employs a new servant from the country,
he must have him registered at the office of the police. Mrs. Cary says
her negro boys particularly dislike nagging; and I think this is a
characteristic of every human male, white, black, red or yellow, that
ever drew the breath of life.... Mr. Cary has in his employ a negro
man who has six wives. This man works in Mr. Cary’s office down-town,
but lives with the other servants at the Cary home. He says he often
whips his wives, on general principles. He cheerfully takes orders
from Mr. Cary, but it humiliates him to take orders from Mrs. Cary;
having six wives of his own, it irritates him to be ordered around by
a woman.... Sampson, the waiter, does the sweeping and scrubbing
in the Cary home, but the beds are made and looked after by a white
maid. Mrs. Cary has a very handsome flower garden, and a special boy
is regularly employed to look after it. As it is in bloom summer and
winter, he is kept very busy, even with the occasional assistance of
Sampson. The Carys have an automobile, but the driver is a white man;
blacks are not allowed to run automobiles here.... It is related
that the negroes were once greatly excited in Johannesburg over a rumor
of a Kaffir uprising. One woman said to her black boy:
“You wouldn’t kill your missus, would you?”
“Oh, no,” the boy replied; “boy next door kill you, and I kill his
missus.”
The affair, it seemed, had all been arranged, and very delicately at
that. This boy’s name was “Machinery.” The blacks take any name they
hear used among the whites, and “Machinery” is a very common name in
Johannesburg.... At the Cary home, when I was there, domestic ducks,
baked, were a part of the dinner. A considerable quantity was left
after all had been served.
“Will you get what is left over?” I asked Mrs. Cary.
“You bet I will,” she laughingly replied, using an American expression
to amuse the American guests. With our black servants at home, they
always get what is left over from a dinner, but in a South-African
home, the servants get only what is served out to them at the
beginning of every week.... Everywhere in America, women believe
that there is nothing better for a salad than a whole tomato on lettuce
leaves, and Durkee’s yellow dressing poured over the tomato. Mrs. Cary
had it, except that Abel made the dressing. We also had apple pie, and
Abel’s crust, made of beef suet and butter, would have done credit to
any cook.... Mrs. Cary says that when she announced her engagement
to a man in South Africa, all her friends inquired:
“Is he a missionary?”
People at home have a vague notion that all the whites in South Africa
are missionaries, but I have seen none, and heard little of their
operations.... We went to the Cary home in a rain-storm, and it was
still raining when we returned to the hotel at 10 o’clock at night.
Four years ago, rain fell here forty-two days and nights, according to
citizens of Johannesburg. This, it seems to me, breaks the record by
two days. The rain here is very erratic, and usually falls at the wrong
time. The rainfall for the past twenty years has averaged twenty-six
inches, but the rainfall is nine inches short this season.... The
rain continues at Durban, and when the warship “New Zealand” left for
Australia late this afternoon, there was a downpour of rain, and the
crowd on the docks was therefore small.... Four years ago, on the
17th of August, ten inches of snow, the first ever seen here, fell in
Johannesburg, and all business was suspended while the people engaged
in snowballing.
SUNDAY, MARCH 16.—This afternoon I attended a baseball game in
Johannesburg; a deciding game between clubs which had won six games
each. The players were nearly all miners from California and Colorado.
There were probably seven hundred spectators present, and although most
of them were Americans, only one of them wore an American hat. I was
the one exception, and some were disposed to guy that when I passed
in front of the grandstand. The hat generally worn by the men here
is a fuzzy affair made in London, and many of them are of a greenish
color. The hat can be wrapped up and put in a traveling-bag, and is
generally worn with the brim turned down all the way ‘round. A great
many caps are also worn.... The game was exactly like a very good
amateur game in the United States, except that several of the players
were elderly. One player, a doctor, was as old and fat as I am, and
I’m in no condition to play baseball. I was told that this doctor is
the enthusiast who keeps the game going in Johannesburg. Two of the
grayheads were about the best players in the game; one of them was
a man named Wilson, and he was a noted base-stealer. One player was
called “Denver.” “Come to life, Denver,” a spectator cried, when he
went to bat, and “Denver” didn’t do a thing but smash the ball on the
nose for a home run. Another player was called “C. C.,” and I found
that his nickname was “Cripple Creek,” the name of the American mining
camp he came from. One of the pitchers was called “Texas,” and he won
the game, 6 to 4. American baseball slang was constantly coming from
the spectators, and I could have easily imagined myself in an American
town had the men present worn different hats. I looked over the
audience a good many times, and it seemed that every man present had in
some way lost a little of his American identity. In the chaffing from
the grandstand, English pronunciations could be detected, though every
man around me was probably an American.... An unusual feature of the
game was that almost no boys were present. When a foul went over the
fence, some one would remark: “Another boy in,” but the only baseball
enthusiasts here are grown men who have played the game, or seen fine
exhibitions of it, in the United States. No admission was charged, but
a man took up a collection to pay expenses, just as is done at games
in the smaller country towns of the United States.... We ate lunch
today with an American family, and they told us that the most famous
girls’ school in South Africa is at Wellington, Cape Colony. It is run
by two American women, and most of the better class girls in South
Africa are educated there. All the teachers are American women, and
the result is that all the students acquire many American ways, habits
and pronunciations. It is generally said here that this Wellington
school is doing more to Americanize South Africa than any other single
influence.... American life insurance men stand very high all over
the world. A South-African life insurance man told me today that every
new feature of foreign companies is borrowed from America....
Possibly you will remember that years ago, Prince Napoleon, a son of
the Empress Eugenie, was killed by savages. This occurred in Natal, of
which Durban is the seaport. The young prince came out here with an
English regiment, in a spirit of adventure. The Zulus cut this regiment
to pieces; the catastrophe was almost as complete as was the Custer
massacre on the Little Big Horn river, in Montana, in 1876....
The original Dutch who settled in South Africa were the same sort of
people who settled in New York, and called the place New Amsterdam.
The settlement of the Dutch in Cape Colony and in New York occurred
at about the same time.... The word “Boer” means farmer, but it
is applied to all descendants of the old Dutch stock.... American
residents here greatly regret the exaggerated scandals constantly
appearing in American papers. In America, a decent man is often abused
unjustly and untruthfully, whereas in England the great scandals
with plenty of foundation, are usually hushed up. The newspapers and
magazines of England and its colonies are not as independent as the
American press, and more generally owned by “the interests.” This
statement will, I believe, be generally admitted by the English. The
American press is not only free; it often carries freedom too far,
and prints unjust and untruthful criticisms. These publications are
read by Englishmen, and Americans living abroad never hear the last of
them.... The tea habit being general in the English colonies, there
are a great many tea-rooms. One was raided in Johannesburg last night,
and a large number of arrests made. Think of a tea-room being raided by
the police!... But here is something still more unusual: An Episcopal
rector in Capetown attempted to introduce High Mass into his services,
and the controversy has reached the newspapers. The vestrymen are
against High Mass, but the pastor stands firm, and says he is within
his rights.
MONDAY, MARCH 17.—We have spent this day in the old Dutch town of
Bloemfontein, capital of the Orange Free State in the days before the
Boer war. It has thirty thousand inhabitants, a little more than half
of them negroes. Polly’s Hotel Cecil, where we are staying, is very
comfortable, and the price is only $3 a day. I came to the Hotel Cecil
on the recommendation of a Boer lawyer I met on the train. He lives
somewhere in the interior, and is here to attend a sitting of the
supreme court. The lawyer is the first Boer I have become acquainted
with; he was a Boer soldier during the war, and, being taken prisoner,
was sent to India, where he remained eighteen months. The Orange Free
State had no grievance against the English, but went to war because
it had a defensive alliance with the Transvaal. Although Oom Paul is
a famous figure in history, he was quarrelsome and unreasonable; he
made many demands of the English that a proud people could not decently
grant. But when the war began, the Orange Free State became the centre
of hostilities, and all the men between the ages of seventeen and
seventy were drafted. The English couldn’t afford to lose, and they
burned houses and destroyed fields as ruthlessly as did Sheridan in
the Shenandoah valley. It was a terrible affair, but Oom Paul, with
his excess of piety and patriotism, undoubtedly dragged an unwilling
people to the slaughter. President Steyn was not as well known as
President Krueger, but he was a better man, and better balanced. Steyn,
who is still living here, but in ill-health, is a highly educated
man, whereas Krueger could barely write his own name.... Owing to
Easter, the railroads are now selling tickets at half-fare, so that
we traveled here for two cents a mile each. This is the regular fare
in Kansas, where we are not blessed, or cursed, with government-owned
railways.... The Orange Free State, formerly a republic, is now
a state in the South-African union. It has seventeen members of
parliament, and sixteen of them are Boers. The seventeenth is a Boer,
but a supporter of all English measures. Some of the sixteen Boer
members are sons of English fathers, so that it will be seen that
politics makes strange bedfellows in South Africa, too.... A Boer
farmer does not pay his negro farm hand to exceed $2.50 a month. In
addition, the farm hand receives enough corn-meal to keep him, and such
other food as he can pick up. Corn-meal is the staple food on the farms
here, for Boers as well as negroes. The Boers are always expressing
indignation because the English are spoiling the negroes by paying
them big wages. The Englishman who drove us about this morning in a
Ford automobile, at $2.50 an hour, pays a negro man $10 a month, and
the negro boards himself. Such liberality as this greatly irritates
the Boers. And this town negro has almost nothing to do; he only cares
for six horses, two carriages and an automobile. The Englishman who
drove the automobile talked all the time, and his talk was mainly
abuse of the Boers.... I have frequently remarked that the English
are very unreliable in their pronunciations. Some of them refer to a
horse as a ’orse, while others pronounce the word as we do. In London,
there is a famous place, the Hotel Cecil. It is universally called the
Hotel Sessil in London, but in Bloemfontein, the capital of an English
colony, there is a hotel of the same name, and it is called Hotel
Cecil; the word pronounced as it is spelled.... I don’t know how
it is generally, but on Monday, March 17, 1913, Bloemfontein, Orange
Free State, South Africa, was the dullest town I have ever visited.
The handsome stores were empty, and I wondered that the merchants did
not close up. In dull towns, pretty women are always numerous, and we
saw more pretty women in Bloemfontein than in any other town in South
Africa.... I believe I have frequently remarked in these letters
that South Africa is the laziest country in the world for white people.
Today I saw a negro driving a public carriage. Beside him sat a white
man, who collected the fares, and managed things; but the white man
would not consent to do the actual work of driving. When a white
mechanic accepts a job here, he asks, “Where are the boys?” meaning,
“Where are the negroes to do the work under my direction?” The labor
problem has solved itself in South Africa. When a tolerably good man
will work for thirty-seven cents a day, and board himself, an employer
really has no room for complaint.... In Bloemfontein, negro women
are employed as chambermaids at our hotel; elsewhere we have seen only
chamber-men, who worked under the direction of white maids. The negro
men are more industrious in South Africa than the women, now that
they are civilized, but in the old days of savagery, the women did
most of the work.... Near Bloemfontein is a fort large enough to
accommodate four thousand English soldiers, but the place is almost
deserted; England no longer fears war in South Africa.... The window
in my room looks into an open-air theatre; I can see everything that
goes on on the stage, and hear everything that is said. I went to bed
tonight before the show was half over. Educational films of great
value may be had, but manufacturers of films say the people prefer
the foolish melodramas with which you are all familiar in connection
with moving-picture shows. Sometimes I fear that the general run of
the people have wretchedly poor taste. The main show tonight was built
around a woman tight-rope walker. This woman was a society queen, but
her father met with reverses, and she became a tight-rope walker in a
circus, refusing to marry a high-born and wealthy lover because of the
change in her fortunes. The high-born and wealthy lover was entrusted
with an important mission; to carry certain valuable papers, and a girl
clerk of an opposition concern was employed to follow him and secure
the papers. The girl clerk fell in love with the man, and refused to
rob him, but became a fury when he met his former sweetheart, the
tight-rope walker, in a circus. The girl clerk caused the high-born
man to be kidnapped, and locked in a top room in a fourteen-story
building, but the tight-rope walker rescued him by rigging up a rope
to the building opposite, and carrying him on her back. It was an
idiotic performance an hour and a half long, but the people in the
audience greatly enjoyed it.... My friend, the Boer lawyer, says
the Orange Free State is much more prosperous now than before the war,
although for two years afterwards it seemed hopelessly wrecked. But the
British government loaned the people money, and they soon recovered.
The Boer lawyer made another statement that surprised me; he said that
taxes are lower now than when the Orange Free State was a republic,
and that every citizen has as many liberties as he had then, and more
opportunities to prosper. This is rather an unusual statement for a
captured subject of a republic to make about a government headed by
a king.... I never knew until the Boer lawyer told me that a good
many Boers—possibly forty—have been given titles by the English king.
The chief justice of the South-African supreme court, which meets at
Bloemfontein, is a “Lord,” and there are many inferior titles, such
as “Sir.”... The negroes of Bloemfontein are compelled to live in
what the English call “locations;” that is, in villages where there
are no whites. We visited one of these today, and found the blacks
had all kinds of shops, restaurants, hotels, etc. In front of one of
the grocery stores was about the biggest pile of watermelons I have
ever seen.... The vegetable market of Bloemfontein is in the public
square of the town, and the vegetables are hauled in with ox teams.
Negro women pick up the droppings of the cattle, and take the stuff
home in baskets and pans carried on their heads. Reaching home, they
plaster it against the sides of their houses to dry, and afterwards
use it for fuel. Every negro woman I saw engaged in this unusual
occupation carried a baby on her back. The negroes breed like rabbits,
but the infant mortality among them is large.
TUESDAY, MARCH 18.—This morning at 9 o’clock we left Bloemfontein
by train for Kimberley. The hotel porter carried our baggage into a
compartment for four, and said:
“You are to have this to yourselves all day. I have arranged it.”
I thought it was simply the talk of a somewhat fresh but obliging hotel
porter; but he didn’t do a thing but deliver the goods. And, what is
more, the train conductor frequently came into our compartment, and
pointed out the sights of interest.... I have known railroad men
all my life, and been familiar with their practice of buying butter
and eggs on the line, where they are cheaper, and carrying them home.
The railroad men of South Africa do the same thing; the conductor told
me that he buys eggs along the line at thirty cents a dozen when they
are frequently 75 cents at the division point where he lives. He also
buys his meat out in the country; a dressed sheep weighing eighty
pounds costs him $4.80, so that he gets his meat at six cents a pound.
Sometimes potatoes sell in South Africa at $11.50 for a sack of 165
pounds, and poor people pay three cents for every potato they buy in
small quantities. On this run the conductor makes a round trip of 210
miles a day, which occupies him eleven hours. He says he earns about
$120 a month, but in order to do this, he is compelled to get in forty
days in a month. The engineer makes $5 for a day’s work of eleven
hours.... On the way we passed a flock of thirty or forty ostriches
grazing in a field, like cattle, but this isn’t considered a very good
ostrich country. We also passed through the Paardeburg battle-field,
on the Modder river, where General Cronje surrendered 4,000 men to a
superior force of British. There are two cemeteries on the field, in
which are buried the English and Boer soldiers who were killed in the
battle. The Modder river battle-field does not look unlike the Custer
battle-field on the Little Big Horn river in Montana. Indeed, the
country between Bloemfontein and Kimberley does not look unlike the
dry country in Montana.... We saw almost no cultivated fields on
the way, but a great many cattle, and a few sheep. There is not a town
between Bloemfontein and Kimberley: it is a frontier country, and the
railroad has been in operation only four or five years. A man I met on
the train says that in his section of the Orange Free State the soil
is black and rich, and that fine crops of corn are raised; but I have
seen no such country. He lives in a country town of 800 people, off the
railroad, and says he pays only fourteen cents a pound for the best
beef, while butter sells at 24 cents, and eggs at from 18 to 30 cents.
In his country, the Boer women do their own cooking, but hire negroes
to wait on them, and do the rough work. An ordinary negro house servant
receives $4 a month; a particularly good one, $1.25 per week....
Kimberley, as you approach it by railroad, looks like Johannesburg,
though it is much smaller. You see the same mountains around the
mines, but at Kimberley the mountains are composed of blue mud that
has been taken from the mines, washed for diamonds, and then piled up
in waste heaps. The country is not unlike that around Johannesburg:
large hills in every direction, and a rolling desolate country between
them. Kimberley has warmer weather than Johannesburg, and we struck
it on a tremendously hot day.... The first thing you notice at
Kimberley is the great number of mulattoes, whereas there are almost
none at Johannesburg or Durban.... I was told at Johannesburg that
the hotels at Kimberley were abominable; they were so generally abused
that I hoped to find them better than their reputation, but the Royal
Palace, which I was told was the best, is the worst hotel I have ever
patronized. And in an advertisement, I read that the Royal Palace was
the “Hotel de luxe” of Kimberley. I am writing this in my room by the
light of a tallow candle, as the electric light refuses to work. The
hall servants (negro women) are the most slovenly creatures I have ever
seen, and there does not seem to be any head to the place; I don’t
know who runs it, but whoever he is, he doesn’t give much time to his
job.... There are probably a half-dozen really excellent hotels at
Bloemfontein; some of them only half patronized. Will some one please
tell me why one of the good hotels at Bloemfontein, an insignificant
country town, was not built at busy, hustling, prosperous
Kimberley?... Johannesburg is a modern, beautiful city; Kimberley is
a mining camp, with narrow, irregular streets. It has many good shops,
but many of the people said to me:
“No one lives in Kimberley because he likes the town; we only remain
here to make money.”
Johannesburg people are proud of their town, and they have reason to
be, but Kimberley people are always apologetic. The population is
thirty thousand, a large number of the inhabitants being negroes and
Hindus. The rich mine-owners have race-tracks, clubs and resorts,
but cannot be very comfortable, owing to the dust and the heat. The
few Americans I have seen here are tanned until they are as brown as
Indians, and they do not say much in praise of the town except that it
is the greatest diamond camp in existence.