Chapter IX: Part 9

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.

SATURDAY, MARCH 8.—We spent this day traveling from Durban to Johannesburg. The distance is four hundred and eighty-three miles, and we were twenty-four hours and a half on the way, as we left Durban at 5:50 last night, and arrived here at 6:20 this evening. The distance from New York to Chicago is about a thousand miles, and the best trains on the Pennsylvania and New York Central make it in twenty hours. Formerly they made it in eighteen hours, but the speed was so great that travelers complained. The train on which we traveled today was the Limited, and as good as there is in South Africa. The track is narrow-gauge, and, as seems the rule on all railroads operated by the government, the train was crowded, though we had no cause to complain; we were given a compartment to ourselves, without extra charge. When we arrived at the station last night, we found a placard on the window of a compartment, announcing that it was reserved for “Mr. and Miss Howe.” The compartment would have easily seated four. It was provided with a washstand, and was practically as good as a compartment on a Pullman. At ten o’clock, a white porter appeared with two bundles of bed-clothing, sealed. Breaking the seals, he made up two beds about as they are made up on a Pullman. Then the porter presented me with two tickets, for which I paid sixty cents each. The tickets read: “South African Railways. No. 98029. Bedding ticket. From Durban to Johannesburg. Date, 3-7-13. Train No. 192. Amount paid 2. 6. This ticket must be handed to passenger on payment of charge.”... This is the sleeping-car system in South Africa; two had a compartment in a sleeping-car twenty-four hours and a half for $1.20. The Pullman charge for a service not much better would have been $9, instead of $1.20. There was a dining-car on the train, and the charge for dinner was 75 cents, and for lunch and breakfast, sixty cents each. The meals were good, but the car was always packed at meal-times, and the force of waiters not large enough. Tea was served in our compartment at 7 A. M. and 4 P. M.... I have never enjoyed a railroad ride more than I enjoyed the ride from Durban to Johannesburg. The weather was cool, and there was no dust. We left Durban in a pouring rain, but this morning the rain ceased, and by noon the sun was shining. For hours we passed through a prairie country which greatly resembled eastern Kansas as it was forty or fifty years ago. I saw thousands and thousands of acres of what seemed to be old-fashioned prairie grass, and when there was a cultivated field it was nearly always devoted to corn. I saw a good deal of hay-making in progress, and in every case the hay-rake was pulled by a yoke of oxen. In several places, negro laborers were cutting oats, and the harvester was also pulled by oxen. This was the rule in the early days in eastern Kansas; many of the older farmers will remember when oxen were used almost entirely for farm work. If I were dissatisfied with my present location (which I am not), I should have no hesitancy in locating in South Africa after seeing that part of it lying between Durban and Johannesburg. The country looks like the best portions of the United States, and not one-tenth of it seems to be cultivated. We saw a good many sheep, but not one-hundredth part as many as we saw in Australia and New Zealand, although the grass was much better. Altogether, the impression left on my mind was this: A surprisingly good country, and very little advantage taken of it.... I doubt if I saw a corn-field of fifty acres; the patches were all small, and weedy. In most cases the stalks of the field corn were as small as the stalks of our sweet corn. The farming is mostly done by negroes; either as independent farmers, or as farm laborers. If some of the corn farmers of Illinois, Iowa, Missouri and Kansas had this land, it would produce better crops.... This refers mainly to Natal. The rainfall is less toward Johannesburg: I thought I could notice a difference when we crossed into the Transvaal a little before noon today. Toward Johannesburg, there is more stock-raising; the country looks much like Kansas two hundred miles west of the Missouri river. Still, the Transvaal looks better than the best parts of Australia I saw. But in Australia, the very best is made of everything, while here shiftlessness is the rule. The natives (negroes) live in round, grass-covered huts, and are a shiftless lot. If other portions of Africa are as promising agriculturally as Natal and the Transvaal (and certain parts are said to be better), I can easily believe it has a great future. But it should be remembered that this is the rainy season; in a few months the country will look brown and parched. There is plenty of rain along the coast, but in the interior, people long for rain as they do in Australia.... At one place along the road, we saw a family of Kaffirs going to town in a light wagon to which was attached three yoke of oxen. Goats and donkeys, the live-stock of shiftless men everywhere, were quite numerous along the way.... Near Durban we saw young corn and young bananas growing together. A half-dozen miles from Durban we saw a huge sugar-mill, and surrounding it a Hindu village in which there were several strange temples to strange gods. The foundation of one of these temples had been undermined by rain lasting six days, and was toppling over in the mud.... At many of the stations we saw American agricultural machinery on freight cars or on station platforms.... At one station there was a creamery which looked much like a similar establishment in the United States; at most stations, negro boys sold milk to the passengers at a penny a glass.... The cattle here are queer-looking; they are shorter than ours, and usually have enormous horns. I saw no highly bred cattle, but the native cattle were always fat, and grazing in grass up to their knees. Some of the oxen come from Madagascar, and have great humps on their backs. Oxen are as generally worked on farms here as horses are at home; frequently cows are worked with them, and when a cow works under the yoke, her calf usually travels beside her. In the middle of nearly every string of work-oxen, you see a pair of yearlings or two-year-olds being worked to “break” them. Donkeys are also extensively worked here; no disease attacks the donkey, whereas cattle often die as do our hogs with cholera, and I frequently saw ten to twelve donkeys working to one wagon.... Soon after passing into the Transvaal, I noticed that much of the prairie land seemed somewhat stony. What we call “nigger-heads” were numerous; reddish-looking stones worn into the shape of circular beehives, by long exposure to the weather. These turned out to be ant-hills, so hardened by long exposure to the weather that they will turn a bullet; during the late war, the Boers used them for protection. There are countless billions and trillions of ants here, and you are never out of sight of their hills in the Transvaal. In some places the ant-hills are so large that the natives chase out the ants, and use the hills for houses.... The fences in the prairie country are always of wire, and the posts of iron, and sod houses, most of them tumbling down, are as common as they were in western Kansas thirty years ago.... The Transvaal is that section to which the Boers made their great trek, owing to friction with the English along the coast. In the Transvaal was later discovered the Johannesburg gold mines, and it was the owners of these mines who brought on the Boer war. Should Kansas and Nebraska go to war with England, it would not be a much more remarkable performance than the Transvaal and Orange Free State fighting England, and forcing it to put a quarter of a million men in the field. Early this morning we passed through Ladysmith, famous because of the long siege, and throughout the day we have seen occasional relics of the war; mainly cemeteries wherein were buried English soldiers, and we also saw lone monuments erected in memory of special heroes. Mr. and Mrs. May, the fine old people we saw embark on the “Anchises” at Adelaide, and whom we knew on the long voyage to Durban, had a son killed in the Boer war, as Australia and New Zealand, as well as Canada, sent troops to help the English suppress the terrible Boers. We had heard Mrs. May say her son was buried at Sanderton, and we passed through that town, and saw the cemetery where the young soldier was buried.... The country between Durban and Johannesburg is what Americans call rolling. Small mountains are occasionally seen in the distance, but the general effect is like our prairie country. At one place we crossed a divide by means of a switch-back, and two engines were usually attached to our train.... Two hours before we left Durban, we saw the warship “New Zealand” come into the harbor. Immediately on landing, sixty of the officers and men left for Johannesburg, and were accommodated in three sleepers and a dining-car on our train. Hundreds of people gathered at the stations to see the sailor-men, and Johannesburg will entertain them lavishly.... A gentleman told me today of a farm in South Africa which is eight miles square. Plenty of good land can be bought here at $6 an acre, and the English government, much as it is abused, is as good as any in the world.... At 5 P. M. we had our first glimpse of Johannesburg: small mountains of white rock taken out of the different mines, and which are known as “the Johannesburg Alps.” We stopped at suburbs and switched around for more than an hour before we finally left the train at the greatest gold-mining camp in the world, at 6:20 P. M.

SUNDAY, MARCH 9.—Johannesburg was a pleasant surprise, as was Durban; it is a new, clean city of 237,000 inhabitants, and up-to-date in all respects. The population is about equally divided between whites and blacks. It has department stores as big as Kansas City, and last night the main streets were so crowded that it was almost impossible to get along. Although this is a boom town, something like but greater than our Cripple Creek, prices are not unreasonable. I am staying at the Langham Hotel, which is excellent in every way. The price is $3.60 per day, including three regular meals, and coffee at 7 A. M. and tea at 4 P. M. An orchestra plays in the dining-room during dinner. The waiters are imposing-looking Germans, wearing green coats, brass buttons, and knee-breeches. Altogether it is as satisfactory a hotel as we have encountered; and we were very fond of the Marine at Durban, and of the Grand at Wellington.... Johannesburg is not situated in the mountains, although it has hills something like the bluffs along the Missouri river. The main town is on a flat, and the surrounding hills add an agreeable variety. There is an excellent system of street railway, and the price is three cents per section; the fare to the zoölogical garden is fifteen cents. This garden shows most of the game animals of Africa, in addition to as handsome a display of flowers as one cares to see. A peculiarity of the flowers here is that they are almost without scent. While coming in from the zoo this morning, the conductor, when taking my fare, asked:

“What part of the country do you come from?”

I told him from the United States.

“I know that,” he replied; “but what section? I am from Georgia.”

This man was James Brady, who served in the Spanish-American war, and came over here to serve in the Boer war in a spirit of adventure. Strange as it may seem, many men like soldiering, and the risk of battle. One can hardly refer to James Brady as a patriot; he was simply a restless young fellow who wanted excitement.... Johannesburg’s principal streets are well paved, and they are brilliantly illuminated at night. I believe the town has a greater number of handsome homes, in proportion to population, than any other city I am familiar with. It startles an American to hear that another country has the “greatest in the world” in anything, but South Africa leads the world in gold production because of Johannesburg. The town is only thirty years old, but there is nothing crude about it. Like all exceedingly prosperous towns, its women are homely; in this respect, it reminds one of Kansas City and Chicago. The handsomest women are always found in dull towns like Quincy, Illinois, and Burlington, Iowa. By-the-way, “Burlington” is a popular word in the English colonies, for some reason. In Wellington and Sydney there are handsome restaurants called “The Burlington;” somewhere else I saw a big arcade of the same name, and in London a monthly magazine is called “The Burlington.”... All printed matter in the Transvaal intended for the public, such as railway time-tables, is printed in German as well as in English. Which is not surprising, since the Boers outnumber the English more than three to one.... An American negro would scream his head off in Johannesburg. The negro here is not allowed to ride on the street-railways, nor is he allowed on the sidewalks. A system of Jim Crow cars was tried when the street-railways were first built, but the blacks wanted to ride with the whites, so they were ordered to keep off the cars altogether. A negro servant may ride on a street-car with his master, but he must sit in a modest place pointed out by the conductor. A negro servant may live in quarters in his master’s yard, but if he has a family, and works for himself, he must live in Blacktown.... The Boers were more strict with the blacks than are the English. On Sundays, the streets are black with natives, as there are more than 100,000 in Johannesburg, but not a great many are seen on week days; in the enormous crowds I saw on the streets last night, I remarked the absence of negroes.... The white men here usually speak highly of the honesty of the blacks. If the blacks find a dishonest one, they promptly report him to the “boss.”... A thing that soon attracts your attention in Johannesburg is the great number of negroes who own bicycles. Being refused admission to the street-cars, they buy bicycles. But the old Boers wouldn’t permit the blacks to ride bicycles.... Although the natives are treated so harshly, I saw the statement in print lately that they possess more than one-third of all the cattle in Cape Colony, one-fourth of the sheep, produce three-fifths of all the corn, and own one-third of all the plows. As they are excellent workers, they are really a valuable asset.... The Hindus are not popular around Johannesburg; everywhere I have been in South Africa, the Hindus are severely criticised.... In the Cape Colony, the negroes can vote, and have many other privileges not accorded them in the Transvaal. There are thousands of mulattoes in Cape Colony, but very few in the Transvaal. In Cape Colony, the negroes have about as many privileges as negroes have in the northern sections of the United States, but in most other portions of South Africa they have fewer privileges than the negroes of Mississippi or Alabama. A white lawyer with whom I lately talked, says the race problem here is really a very serious one. Many university educated negroes are coming to Africa from the United States, and making trouble. The lawyer also said that the African M. E. Church is a source of much trouble, and that there has been serious talk of prohibiting it in the Transvaal.... During my stay in Johannesburg, the papers reported a meeting of the South-African Native National Congress. Fifteen chiefs and 200 other delegates were present. The chairman delivered his address in English, and it was interpreted into several native languages. “Gentlemen,” said the speaker, “this land is ours, inalienable, a God-given birthright. We do not begrudge others a fair share in its treasures, but in so doing we do not propose to suffer our inalienable rights to be encroached upon. More than is adequate and just to our reasonable progress and well-being we do not ask, but that we demand with all the strength of our being.” Continuing, he said that he did not consider the natives were being treated fairly by the government. In some respects they were subjected to “an intolerable state of slavery.” They were denied a voice in the country’s government, even in legislation bearing upon their own life and people. They were fettered by pass laws, while illiterate men who could scarcely writes their names, and whose knowledge of the world’s history was limited “to the bare kopjes of their own backveld,” were entrusted with the power of governing the natives and their land. The government of the land granted to Indians, Chinese, Syrians, and other such races, regardless of character, an unrestricted liberty to travel, to trade, and to purchase land, while they (the natives) were denied all such privileges. (Applause.)

MONDAY, MARCH 10.—Johannesburg is possibly the most prosperous town in the world. There are six or seven thousand English and American miners employed on the Rand, or gold reef, which is fifty miles long and one mile wide. Johannesburg is the centre of this great gold district, and the white miners make big wages; they are all either foremen or mine contractors, and some of them make $500 a month; $350 a month pay to a white miner is not at all unusual. The real work is done by the negro miners, who are brought here from all over Africa under what amounts to indenture. More than a hundred thousand of these are employed in the mines, and they receive an average of sixty cents a day, and board. They live at the mines, in great boarding-houses which accommodate, in many cases, two thousand. No women are allowed in these compounds, and the miners themselves may only leave the compounds with special permits. By law, the negroes cannot be worked more than eight hours a day in the mines, and none are accepted as workmen who do not agree to remain at least six months. The white bosses have “stand around” jobs; they do no actual labor. The best white miners in the world are found here, because of the high pay. The gold-bearing rock is hoisted to the surface from a depth, in some cases, of four thousand feet. It is then run through stamp-mills, and crushed, and the gold extracted by the cyanide process. The mountains of lime-rock seen all along the Rand are composed of the gold-bearing rock after the gold has been extracted; in some cases, these dumps are being worked over, the old process of extracting gold having been wasteful. This broken rock is used for concrete work and for street paving, and the mine-owners will pay to have it hauled off their premises.... On the streets this morning I again met James Brady, the Atlanta, Georgia, man whom I met yesterday while he was working as a street-car conductor. As this is his lay-off day, he spent considerable time with us. He says conductors and motormen average about $100 a month. He complained a good deal of the high cost of living in Johannesburg, but it developed that prices are not much higher here than in Atchison.

“Think of it,” he said, “a good porterhouse steak costs a shilling a pound here.”

Investigation will reveal that the best steaks cost twenty-four cents a pound in Atchison. The best bacon costs thirty cents a pound here; that is the price in Atchison, next door to eight or nine packing-houses. Mr. Brady has not been in Atlanta, Georgia, for fourteen years, and said to me:

“In Atlanta, we could buy good butter for fifteen cents a pound.”

I told him he could not do it now, and he was greatly surprised to hear of the manner in which prices have advanced all over the United States.... We took a street-car ride, and the price was fifteen cents each going out, and fifteen cents each coming back, or ninety cents out and back for three of us. It was the longest street-car ride possible in Johannesburg; five sections, at three cents a section.... Last Fourth of July, Brady put an American flag on his trolley-pole, and it remained there peacefully from 6:30 in the morning until noon. At that hour an inspector ordered it down. Brady refused to take it down, and was suspended for three days. There is another American on the line, a motorman, and he tongue-lashed the inspector, and was also suspended for three days.... Brady’s father was Captain in a Georgia company in the rebellion; five of his sons were killed in the battle of Manassas. Of the one hundred men who originally composed the elder Brady’s company, five returned safe and sound at the end of the war. The others were killed, crippled, or died from illness.... You perhaps imagine that because the English whipped the Boers, the English control the Transvaal. As a matter of fact, the present local government, elected by the people, is Boer. The Boers in politics are called Nationalists; the English are called Unionists, and at the recent election the Nationalists won. There is a Labor party here, also, but it is not as strong as it is in Australia, New Zealand, or England itself. The Boer members of parliament are in a big row among themselves. One leader believes in reconciling the differences between the Boers and English, while the other is a fire-eater. The conservative man is much more popular among the Boers, apparently, than the fire-eater.... The Boers frequently quarrel among themselves. There are two branches of the Dutch Reformed Church, and several years ago the warring factions armed, and almost engaged in civil war, over the interpretation of a passage of scripture.... Johannesburg has recently opened a new and very handsome public market on the site of the old Coolie village. The plague broke out among the Coolies, so their village was burned, and now the blacks live in a section further out. Hindus, negroes, Chinese and Malays live there; no white resident is permitted in the village, nor is a Hindu or other black permitted to live in any other section of Johannesburg. Dr. Gregory, a Hindu who was educated in Edinburgh and who married a Scotch wife, had a large practice among the whites, but when the order came segregating the blacks, he was compelled to move from his handsome house down-town to the dirty Coolie village. There are ten to fifteen thousand blacks in this village, and many of the Hindus are rich; but they are not allowed to ride on the street-cars which pass their doors. In Durban, many of the Hindus are gardeners; here, they buy fruit and vegetables, and peddle them in various parts of town, from small carts.... There is a Jew market in Johannesburg which is very peculiar. It is an open field, on valuable ground owned by the city, and everything in the way of household goods, clothing, etc., is displayed in the open air. Nearly everything offered is second-hand, and is bought by negroes. The market occupies an entire block, and I found it very interesting.... At the markets here, eggs that are guaranteed fresh, sell at three shillings, or 72 cents, per dozen, while “farm eggs” are sold at forty-two cents. Penguin eggs are collected in large numbers from the islands around the coast, and their consumption in Cape Town in certain seasons exceeds that of the domestic fowl. The penguin eggs are palatable, nutritious, and easily digestible; the “white” is of a sea-green color, the egg is twice the size of the usual hen’s egg, and must be boiled twenty minutes. These eggs are sent all over South Africa, and to London. Speaking of eggs, one morning at the Langham Hotel I saw a guest bring two eggs to the dining-room, call a waiter, and give orders as to how the eggs should be cooked. In a few minutes the man came in to breakfast, and the eggs were brought in from the kitchen.... Today I passed a place called an “American restaurant.” This sign was displayed: “A complete meal, including a glass of beer, one shilling.”... Another peculiarity of the English: When they drive, they turn to the left, on meeting another driver; but on the sidewalk, when they meet another pedestrian, they turn to the right.

TUESDAY, MARCH 11.—At the meat shops in Johannesburg, pickled beef feet are sold as pickled pigs’ feet are sold in America.... The morning newspapers of Johannesburg sell at six cents each. The best newspapers of New York and Chicago sell at one cent. The Transvaal _Leader_ of this morning says the rain at Durban continues, and that the storm is the worst since 1858. When I was there, it was said at first that the storm was the worst in two years; then it was said it was the worst in ten years, and now the statement is telegraphed broadcast that the storm at Durban is the worst in fifty-five years. It is wonderful what the Atchison hoodoo can do in the way of disturbing nature. The weather in Johannesburg is fine. The days are somewhat warm, but the nights are quite cool. Except a light shower this afternoon, which was agreeable, there has been no rain since our arrival.... The Transvaal _Leader_ has one department I have never seen in any other newspaper. Every morning it prints a list of the loaded railway cars received in Johannesburg the day before. Imagine a Chicago paper printing something like the following: “Yesterday there were received in Chicago the following loaded freight cars: Illinois Central, Nos. 100282, 287689, 159867, 829217,” etc., followed by two dozen or more railways represented in the city. Such a list would take up as much space as the baseball scores.... We have cantaloupes every day at the hotel, and they are surprisingly good. The varieties are new to us. We also have roasting-ears, and the proprietor tells me they cost six to eight cents a dozen, in quantities.... Four of the guests at this hotel we knew as passengers on the “Anchises.”... Warned by the example of Australia, South Africa has prohibited the importation of rabbits, except that they are permitted in one small island near the coast.... The fire department made an exhibition run today to amuse the sailors from the warship “New Zealand,” a favorite trick in all American country towns. The apparatus here is motor-driven, new, and of the best.... All the street and railway laborers, and laborers generally, are negroes, and they receive an average of $22 a month. A negro laborer in the United States receives more than twice that. The Georgia man I met on Sunday says the South-African negroes are no better laborers than the negroes of the South. If the South-African government should decide that the prosperity of the country depended upon the negroes working for a shilling a day, such a law would be passed, without regard to the Rights of Man. Chinese labor was tried in the Johannesburg mines, and at one time there were more than 50,000 Chinese in the country. The Chinese gradually demanded more wages, and as a result they were ordered to leave South Africa, a fate which is now overtaking the Hindus. Many employers of labor favor inviting the Chinese to come back. I saw a statement in a newspaper today that if American miners’ wages were paid along the Rand, the mines would show a loss instead of a profit.... The Transvaal _Advertiser_ of this morning printed a table showing that the gold output of the Rand for February was 734,122 ounces, worth a little more than fifteen and a half million dollars. The same table shows that the average profits of the Rand gold mines amount to $170,000 per day. In South Africa, 184,000 men are employed in the gold mines, 8,000 in the coal mines, and 35,000 in the diamond mines. Practically all these miners are native negroes, so that the negroes are the source of the country’s prosperity. The negroes are compelled to work for whatever the whites decide is necessary to keep the country’s industries flourishing. In many places here, the blacks outnumber the whites fifty to one, but the blacks must work for whatever wages the whites are willing to pay. If they do not, the whites say the blacks are in rebellion again, and send for British soldiers.... The Transvaal _Leader_, the paper I buy every morning for six cents, prints a summary of the news in every issue, and I often remark how little real news there is, considering that the _Leader_ devotes twelve nine-column pages to it. As a matter of fact, there isn’t a great deal of real news; the best the newspaper men can do is to make gossip interesting.... The passion for England here is very marked; the bulk of the reading matter in the _Leader_ seems to be telegrams or correspondence from London. An Englishman will locate in the United States, and at once become an American, but in South Africa, New Zealand or Australia, he is more English than he was in England.... When the new market-house was built in Johannesburg, it was so far out of the way that people wouldn’t patronize it, although it was a magnificent structure 668x230 feet. Thereupon the street-railway company went to the rescue, built a line past the new market-house, and gave free transfers to and from it on all lines. These were the first transfers ever issued in Johannesburg, and the people are already inquiring: “Why can’t transfers be issued in other cases?” I predict that this enterprise on the part of the street-railway company will result in grumbling and agitation that will finally force free transfers generally. The street-railway receipts here now amount to more than an average of $100 per car daily, but with the entering-wedge referred to above, look out for a howl for lower fares. The people here have never experienced the joy of fighting the street-railway, and, when they get at it, they will like it as much as do people in American towns.... All the people in foreign countries have, I think, an exaggerated notion of the prosperity prevailing in the United States. Most of the young men I meet are anxious to emigrate, and they believe conditions in the United States are better than they really are. Ours is a great country, but hard work and poverty are not unknown in the best parts of it.... This morning we called at an office building to see a number of Americans who have been exiled in South Africa many years. An ex-American took us around and introduced us to ex-Americans in the various offices. We looked so “raw” that our conductor was immensely amused. He said to another ex-American, the manager of a bank:

“And yet they are surprised that people everywhere know they are Americans!”

I suppose we are called “raw Yankees” here, as we at home call new arrivals from the old country “raw Dutch.” Our conductor in the office building told us later that the elevator man said to him, after our departure:

“Excuse me, sir, but were those people Americans?”

“No,” the ex-American replied, “they were Russians. Why do you ask if they were Americans?”

“Because, sir,” the elevator man replied, “I couldn’t understand them when they inquired for you.”

When people talk to us, they talk slowly, and use a good many signs, as we do at home when talking to foreigners.... But so far as looks go, I think I have solved the problem. Today I bought a London hat, and wear it with the rim turned down in the back, instead of turned down in front. I imagine that people now say of us:

“The man looks all right, but who is the frowzy-looking woman with him?”

The leading ladies’ tailor in Kansas City is a German named Mendelsohn. If Mendelsohn could hear the criticism his suits attract in South Africa, he would go crazy.... Speaking of the English habit of turning the hat-brim down behind, instead of down in front, as American men wear their soft hats, some Englishmen in Africa go to an extreme, and wear the brim of their hats turned down all the way ’round.... At home, I have noticed the quiet amusement with which a German-American regards a raw Dutchman who has just landed. I think the Americans we meet here regard us in the same way. They are polite, and glad to see us, but they are undoubtedly amused at our appearance, our ways and our talk.... A peculiarity of Johannesburg is that coal mines are operated within sight of the gold mines; and in no other gold camp is fuel so convenient.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 12.—The first Americans we met in Johannesburg are interested in banking, life insurance and real-estate, and occupy a fine building of their own on a down-town corner. One of them is T. W. Schlessinger, formerly of New York. Eight years ago he was a life insurance solicitor. Today he is the controlling power in five different important companies, and we hear it said that within two or three years he may be the leading man of Johannesburg. I. F. Atterbury, manager of the African Realty Trust, is not only an American, but he comes from St. Joseph, Missouri, which we can see from Potato Hill Farm. And what still further endeared him to us is the fact that his wife also comes from St. Joseph. Nineteen years ago Mr. Atterbury was a real-estate agent in St. Joseph, and, as the town was dull at that time, he was greatly interested in the prosperity reports that came in every little while from Johannesburg, South Africa. After his arrival here, he made money, but lost it during the business panic following the Boer war. During a part of the war, he was acting United States consul at Pretoria. When the war closed, he again engaged in the real-estate business in Johannesburg, and has long been a part of the “American influence” that undoubtedly exists here.... Soon after we met Mr. Atterbury, we all started out in an automobile to call on his wife. But we found her out; she had gone to call on an American friend, Mrs. Mark Cary, in one of the suburbs. So we went out there, on the way passing through many of the most wonderful sections of this wonderful town. Mrs. Atterbury and Mrs. Cary had gone down-town, we found, on arriving at the Cary home, so we sat down on the veranda and waited for them. Both Mr. and Mrs. Cary are from California, and their home is one of the show places of Johannesburg; because of its lavish display of flowers, for one reason. The maid served tea on the veranda, and the time passed pleasantly and rapidly in listening to Mr. Atterbury talk of South Africa. He looks like a typical American, in spite of his nineteen years’ continuous residence here.... Presently Mrs. Cary and Mrs. Atterbury arrived from down-town, and Mrs. Atterbury said to us:

“I haven’t lost my American accent, have I?”

And she hadn’t; nor had Mrs. Cary, which is not surprising, since she visited her home in California last year. But poor Mrs. Atterbury has been here nineteen years.

“Isham,” she said to her husband, with genuine American enthusiasm, “I’m going home with them. May I?” When I took a kodak picture of the party, Mrs. Atterbury wondered that she “didn’t break the camera,” which no one will dispute is the genuine American language. Over here, people use the term “You see,” a good deal, which is equivalent to our “Don’t you know?” An Englishman says, “We can’t have the ocean in London, you see,” while an American says, “He was the smarter man, and had it all his own way, don’t you know?” Mr. Atterbury used the expression “You see” a few times, but otherwise we talked only the Kansas-Missouri-California language. At 1 P. M. we left for town, the driver nearly running over everybody on the way.

“The only trouble with this man,” Mr. Atterbury said, “is that he runs too fast, and I can do nothing with him.”

Was there ever a man who could control his automobile driver?... South Africa is the paradise of the lover of flowers. At a recent flower show in Pretoria, one hundred and seventy different varieties of roses were exhibited. But all flowers here are almost without scent, which is true of all countries where flowers are particularly abundant and grown without trouble.... Grass-seed is not sown broadcast here, but is drilled in, in rows. If well watered, it spreads and covers the ground. The grass-seed most generally used comes from Florida, or of a variety which originated in Florida.... The “American influence” has been very marked in Johannesburg. Indeed, had it not been for an American, probably the Rand (pronounced “Rond”) would be abandoned today, instead of producing a daily profit of nearly $200,000. In 1885 the mines apparently “played out,” and it was John Hays Hammond, an American engineer, who encouraged mine-owners to dig deep, and strike the vein further down. The Johannesburg ore is of low grade, much of it averaging only $4 per ton, while a little of it is worth $25. The ore from the great Homestake mine at Lead City, South Dakota, is worth only half as much, yet many fortunes have been taken from this mine. The Homestake mine at Lead City is the real source of the Hearst magazines and newspapers.... A good many years ago, three thousand American mining engineers were employed along the Rand, and a few of the best ones received from fifty to seventy-five thousand dollars a year, but now the number employed does not exceed four hundred. I have heard it hinted that as soon as the Americans taught the English how to mine and extract the gold from the Rand ores, there were bickerings over salaries, and the Americans went elsewhere. The American mining engineers are highly regarded for many reasons, but especially because of their quickness and cleverness in meeting difficulties. I have also heard it hinted that the existence of the Kimberley diamond mines is due to an American. Johannesburg is more like an American town than any other we have seen. This is another result of the “American influence;” the business methods here are snappy, after the American fashion.... Mr. Atterbury says that the raw native, taken from the farm and trained, makes a very efficient and faithful servant, but that the missionary negro is no account. Mr. Atterbury says that a bishop of the Methodist Church who had done much work in Africa, once said to him:

“I don’t know that I have ever actually converted a native to a better life. The natives so easily forget my teaching that I am sometimes troubled with the fear that all my work has been in vain.”

Wherever I go, I hear grave doubts expressed as to the missionary experiment.... Most of the Americans I meet here were originally in sympathy with the English, so far as the Boer war was concerned, but ended by being in sympathy with the Boers.... There is a man here named Sir Abe Bailey. It seems to me that a man with a title should not be called “Abe,” but “Sir Cecil,” or “Sir Chauncey,” or something else equally euphonious.... Natives are publicly whipped here, when they do not behave. And when a native is killed in the mines or elsewhere, the papers do not print his name; they refer to him simply as a “native.”... This evening we dined with Mr. and Mrs. Atterbury and their young gentleman son, Manfred, at the Grand National Hotel, where they live. Manfred Atterbury was born in Maysville, Missouri, but came here as a baby, and has never been back to the country of his birth. He is exactly like an American boy, except that he occasionally uses the expression, “You see,” which is used so much over here that I am contracting the habit myself. He has attended English and Boer schools, and, like the Texas congressman, doesn’t know where he is at. His mother, who took charge of her son’s education, as good mothers do, tells some amusing stories about it. One day the boy was sent to the foot of his class for pronouncing “Chicago” as it is pronounced everywhere in the United States. The teacher said the correct pronunciation was “Chic-a-go.” The young man also got in trouble because he pronounced “Ohio” as he had heard his father and mother pronounce it: the teacher said the correct pronunciation is “O-e-o.” The teacher was an Oxford man, and the English school books in use named only four American seaports—none at all on the Pacific. The history in use devoted only seven lines to the American Revolution, treating it as a trifling affair in which the English _gave_ the Americans their independence.... (When Americans abuse the English, it is customary for them to say, “Of course the English are, in many respects, a great people.” Mr. Atterbury said it at this stage of the conversation.)... Probably you know that in England and its colonies, the song, “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow,” is sung very frequently, particularly at banquets and other places where grog is passed around. Mrs. Atterbury says that once an equal suffrage meeting was held in the banqueting-room of the Grand National. Only women attended, and they frequently sang, “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.” An equal suffrage meeting was being held in the banqueting-room of the Grand National the night I was there, but, greatly to our surprise, no windows were smashed. Several stout ladies appeared who, I thought, certainly had rocks under their aprons, but the meeting was quiet, and the noticeable protuberances turned out to be the middle-age spread instead of rocks.... The American party finally broke up at 10:20 P. M., with a statement from Mrs. Atterbury that an English paper here lately referred to an incident as happening in America in “the state of Cincinnati.”... We handled the English rather roughly, but I venture to say they get even; indeed, taking one roast with another, no doubt they are far ahead of us. I intend to have an American party at my hotel on Friday evening, and Mark Cary will have another on Saturday, when we will again attempt to catch up with the English. When the English roast us, I hope they are as fair as we are, and frequently say:

“Of course, in some respects the Americans are a remarkable people. No one will care to deny that.”