Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 June 1884 — LIFE IN SOUTH AFRICA. [ARTICLE]

LIFE IN SOUTH AFRICA.

Experiences In Cape Town—The *l>:amond Melds—How the People Live. A Brooklyn, N. Y., traveler thus details his experiences during a three years’ residence in South Africa : “I landed at Cape Town,” he said., “This is a place of 40,000 inhabitants, threefourths of whom are blacks or h Malays. The Malays have seven wives apiece; that is the most interesting and unfor tunate thing that can be said about them.- The other quarter of the population is European. A small cottage there containing four or five rooms will cost $45 a month; a good-sized,, dwelling will cost three times that sum. Coal is sls a ton; meat, from 15 to 25 cents a pound; whisky is 20 cents a drink; imported ale $1 a bottle. At the restaurant a good meal can be had for 25 cents, consisting of such things as roast beef, mutton chops, soup, bread, butter, coffee, rolls, etc. In October, November and December there are terrific gales that sweep over the town. The drivers of vehicles wear green spectacles on account of the dust, and the women, at the approach of the hurricane, sit down promptly for fear of sailing skyward like so many balloons. “I went to South Africa as a trader, speculator, and spent much of my time—in fact, the best part of —in the back country. Of course, I visited the diamond fields. They are in the hands of the two companies, English and French, who have from the Government the privilege of working the mines. They are not doing much in them at the present time on account of the prevailing dullness in the diamond market. The mines are worked by blacks, and I suppose there are about 2.000 at work at the present time, about a quarter the numder that could be found there when times were good. The superintendents and better class of workers live in houses made of sheet-iron; the common delvers in small brushwood houses. Some of the houses have three rooms and a kitchen; some have only sleeping places or bunks. The Zulu Kaffirs live in the meanest kind of huts. They only work long enough to earn some money with which to buy guns; then they go back to their country, four hundred miles away, and engage in warfare with some of the branches of their tribe. There are twenty-one tribes in Zulu Kaffirs. The workmen have few chances to steal diamonds themselves, but they have been known to slip one of the valuables into the pocket of some visitor in the hope of seeing him later and arranging with him as to its sale, and the visitor has had the diamond found on him by some of the officers and been promptly sent off to the western coast, there to work from ten to twenty years on the breakwater they, are building in that section. The workmen were once paid $1 a day; now they do not get so much. The officers wild oversee them used to get from $25 to SSO a week ’ now they get from sls to $25. “I rode into the back country on a cart, keeping the west coast and endeavoring to trade with the natives for skins, ostrich feathers, and other goods, which I would dispose of to the arriving vessels at Cape Town. The country is dry and barren; there are plenty of stones, but no trees; the tallest bushes are not over four feet high. At the numerous rivers, w here they cross the roads, you will now and then find a tree or two standing together near the banks. You will often meet wild animals, tigers, leopards, hyenas, jackals, monkeys, and elephants, but they will not molest you unless you attack them ; on the contrary, they are afraid of a human being, and will, unless ravenously hungry, run away from you. There are plenty of poisonous snakes there six feet long, which jump at you and bite you quickly, if you are not on the lookout for them. The natives eat the meat of the buffalo and the buck, and hunt-the wild animals for the sake of their skins, tiger skins tanned being about $9. “It is very hot there in the summer season, and in some parts there is a great scarcity of water. Witbin one hundred miles of Cape Town you will find a nice country and water enough, but beyond that it is very dry. In the winter time, when the rains come and swell up the rivers like a flash, as you might say, you would think yon would be drowned. The water comes quickly, and at the moment wipes away everything within its immediate reach; but the country is as dry as ever within a few hours. In the hottest season it is 126 to 130 Fahrenheit; in the shade—that is, such shade as there is where the sun’s rays strike directly it is from 150 to 154. Ihe moment the sun rises it is hot; the moment it sets it is cool. People cannot, of course, work all day in such weather; they stay in the house from 10 to 3, but of course the heat does not affect them so much as it does a newly-arrived foreigner, and after awhile, if he is strong and healthy, can stand it pretty well. “The country is sparsely populated, mostly by the Dutch and Germans. The Dutchmen do not till the soil, but confine their attention to the raising of sheep, oxen and ostriches, making it a special business. “If a farmer is rich the children get their schooling "from a private tutor he hires to live on the place. Of course there are no public schools, and the farmers are generally many miles apart —at a distance say of half a day or a day’s walk.”