Yankee Girls in Zulu Land Part 2

In the rear were the vaults, in which were many hogsheads full of wine made from the grapes grown on the place. The grapes of Constantia are said by some enthusiastic visitors to be the finest in the world; they are certainly most luscious, and the wine really delicious. They grow on low bushes about two and a half feet high and are similar to our California grapes, though, if possible, even more palatable.

The manufacture of wine is the princ.i.p.al industry of the suburbs of Cape Town. Pontak and Cape Sherry, the native sweet wines are the favourite beverages and within the reach of the purse of all cla.s.ses. In the garden was a beautiful flowering vine, and as we stood admiring it Eva spied what appeared to be a lizard on one of the tendrils; it was about two and a half inches in length, with a long, flexible tail and funny little bulging eyes which seemed to act independently of one another, turning in any direction, up, down, in front or behind. As we watched it, it crawled on to a green leaf, and gradually began to a.s.sume the same tint as the leaf itself; at last the little creature, from being of a light brown hue, became almost invisible, so thoroughly had it a.s.sumed the shade and tone of the surrounding foliage. Suddenly it shot out a long tongue, apparently longer than itself, and "snaked" (the word expresses the action) a fly that had incautiously approached too near.

It was our first introduction to the chameleon, and we watched it with wondering interest during the afternoon.

After remaining three weeks in Cape Town, we found that the changes of temperature caused by the south-easters r.e.t.a.r.ded Frank's recovery, and we hastened our departure for the upland region.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

Pearls and diamonds are words that have a charm in themselves. Not only do they represent exceedingly beautiful things, but the words themselves are pretty. The diamond fields of South Africa, the "ninth wonder of the world," lay within a few days' journey of us in the interior of the country.

We left the Royal Hotel, with its attentive landlord and lady, one hot morning late in December, and boarded the train that would take us up into the country about three hundred miles, where the coach would receive us and carry us on to Kimberley, the diamond fields. The railroad was well constructed, and pa.s.sed over mountains with steep grades, through wild scenery, one thousand feet above the level of the sea.

As we neared "Beaufort" the scenery began to change gradually, and before night the view from the car windows presented a scorched desert-like prairie, with not a particle of vegetation except parched little bushes resembling the sage brush of our Western plains.

The horizon was bounded on all sides by ranges of forbidding mountains, which feature is one marked characteristic of African scenery generally, there being no spot, we believe, in the country where mountains are not seen on every side. Our car was provided with a primitive contrivance for sleeping, consisting of a kind of hammock which was stowed away under the seat during the day and at night was adjusted into slots in the wall of the car; drawing the blinds and shading the lamp at the top of the car with its own little curtain, we laid ourselves down to sleep.

In the morning the same prospect met our view that we had bidden good-night to the evening before, and the prospect continued the same until we reached Beaufort. About nine o'clock we stopped at a way-station for breakfast; then on again all day we journeyed through the same deserted country, which is called the "Karoo." Nothing was growing on it but the monotonous bush, and there was not a house in sight; by midday our eyes ached from looking so long at the same objects. We might have been crossing the Great Sahara Desert. At five o'clock in the evening the train, which had kept up one tantalising "dawdle" all day, began to slacken speed and blow the whistle, and we almost hoped that we were about to have an accident or a break-down, or anything, indeed, to break the dismal monotony. But the locomotive only slackened its speed to a crawl and puffed up with great importance to a low shed with the word "Booking Office" painted over the door. We found we had arrived in Beaufort, which proved to be a pretty village with two or three hotels.

From here our heavy baggage was sent on by ox-wagon, as sixty pounds is allowed to each pa.s.senger on the coach, all over that amount costing thirty-five cents a pound.

The next morning at five o'clock the coach which was to carry us to the fields drew up to the door of the hotel. It proved to be one of the original coaches which had been used to cross our American Continent, and had been pushed by the iron horse from our Western prairies and imported by the enterprising Cobb and Co, well known both there and in Australia. It was found to be admirably adapted for the rough South African roads.

Eight handsome horses were inspanned, and two Malay drivers, one to handle the long whip, were seated on the box; our luggage was fastened on behind with reins. When the fifteen pa.s.sengers, including ourselves, were seated, with a wild eldritch shriek from the driver, a yell from his a.s.sistant and a crack of his whip, which sounded like a rifle shot, the Kafir boy who held the leaders sprang aside, the eight horses leaped forward into the air, then tore away, plunging to this side and then the other, shaving the corner with the hind wheel which made the crazy old coach lurch like a ship in a gale, and broke into a wild gallop, soon leaving Beaufort West far behind.

For some time after leaving the town our way lay over a long level plain reaching on all sides far into the distance; the curtains were soon lowered to keep us from being stifled by the penetrating, choking, powdery sand.

The horses had started off as if fully determined to make Kimberley before nightfall, but had now settled down into a good swinging trot, jolting us from side to side, one moment banging our heads against the sides of the coach, the next throwing us violently against our neighbours, until attempts to get into a comfortable position were given up as hopeless. The journey up country was a gradual ascent, for the interior of South Africa is a succession of elevated plateaus, rising from the sea in terraces, marked by mountain chains, until the plateaus culminate in the vast plains of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal, which are some 6,000 feet above the sea. In climbing a steep hill the male pa.s.sengers were often unceremoniously ordered out of the vehicle by the half-caste driver and compelled to walk to the summit.

Our experience of farmhouse meals, which were taken _en route_, was anything but agreeable, but it taught the lesson never to travel through such a country again, no matter how short the journey, without carrying a hamper, even if it cost a shilling a pound for extra luggage.

At one of these resting-places where we changed horses, we paid one dollar for a cup of coffee and a sour sandwich. At times there was absolutely nothing to eat; then again a palatable dinner would be ready, but on such dirty linen and served with gravy so full of flies that it was impossible to eat it.

None of the other pa.s.sengers seemed to have learned the lesson of bringing hampers of food with them, although most of them had pa.s.sed over the same road many times. With all the discomforts of travelling the people of Africa are great travellers, two or three hundred miles by coach or cart being considered no great journey.

Very little life or attempt at cultivation was to be seen on the road Occasionally we came across a herd of cattle grazing, and the sheep seemed to have learned to eat stones, so little of anything else was there for them to feed upon. The open country is universally designated by the Dutch word "_Veldt_" translatable as "open field," which it is in the best or the worst sense of the term.

At seven in the evening we arrived at a farmhouse, completely tired out with the continual b.u.mping and jolting we had been subjected to all day, and felt strongly tempted to remain there for the next coach to pa.s.s through, but finding we should have to remain a week, preferred to take the jolting to remaining seven long, hot days in that spot. At daybreak next morning the loud banging at the door, and the notes of the driver's bugle outside, warned us that the coach was ready to start; it seemed that five minutes had not elapsed since we fell asleep, we were so tired.

Climbing sleepily into the coach and yawning in chorus with our fellow-pa.s.sengers, the driver shouted "right," the boys let go the heads of the leaders, and off we went to the shrill notes of the driver's horn in the still, cold, morning air. We slumbered uneasily for an hour after our start, waking up with a painful start as some one's elbow would insinuate itself into his neighbour's side, at any extra jolt of the coach. We really did not care if we never reached Kimberley, provided the coach would only stop for two or three hours to let us finish our sleep. The sun came out and warmed up the flies that had left us in the first half hours of our journey. These completed what the jolting had commenced and everybody was soon wide awake. Late in the day we stopped to change horses at a farmhouse, the owner of which was a typical Dutch woman weighing three hundred pounds. She sat in her chair from morning until night, everything she needed being brought to her; her daughter a.s.sisted her from her chair to her bed, which was the only exercise she had all day. She was not the sole representative of her kind that we saw in the country.

The second night we were climbing into the upland region, where the nights grew colder, requiring heavy, warm wraps, the stars shone like fiery gems, and threw a white, weird light over the country, in which not a sound could be heard but the rumble of our wheels and the cries of our Jehus. Frank bore the journey as well as any of the rest of us, and her condition of health spoke volumes for the climate.

The third night the coach rumbled quickly over a pine bridge spanning the Orange River, the river being about half a mile wide at this point; when once across we were in Griqua Land West, the land of diamonds!--but still one hundred miles away from Kimberley.

One more day and night on the road through very heavy sand, and we reached the Medder or Mud River, a considerable stream with very deep and precipitous bank's, down and through which we rumbled with much difficulty, giving the wielder of the "whip" plenty of work to get us over. Toward the afternoon we began to see unmistakable signs of our nearing a large settlement.

We pa.s.sed some two hundred wagons with their long teams of labouring oxen, while wayside stores became more plentiful and closer together.

At four o'clock we drove up to the Queen's Hotel, where we alighted, tired and travel-stained, heartily glad to get to the end of our journey.

CHAPTER NINE.

I can hardly hope to give any idea of our first impression of Kimberley.

The town consists entirely of stores and dwelling-houses, covered sometimes with coa.r.s.e canvas, but more generally with corrugated iron.

One cannot help being very much astonished when one considers that every sc.r.a.p of wood, canvas, and iron has been imported from England or America, and brought six hundred miles in an ox-wagon through a country little removed from a desert.

The "Queen's Hotel" was the resort of most of the better cla.s.s of diggers and diamond merchants in the camp. A noisy crowd of fine-looking men usually filled the long, low dining-room at meal-times, a large number bearing the unmistakable stamp of the Jewish race, nearly all of them being representatives of the diamond trade in London and on the Continent. On the evening of our arrival several acquaintances we had made on board the steamer coming out to the Cape called on us, and they seemed like the faces of old friends; through them we were made acquainted with the Kimberleyites.

For the first few days we could do nothing but wonder at the extraordinary energy and resource that men's brains can display when incited thereto by the hope of wealth. The town is unlike any other place in the world, and looked at first sight as though it had been built in a night, being more like a huge encampment than a town. It is usually spoken of by the residents as "the camp," and they use the expression of going "up camp" or "down camp" just as we would say "up town" or "down town." The day after our arrival we paid a visit to the mine, and were rewarded by a sight of the very biggest hole in the world, covering between twenty-five and thirty acres, shaped like a huge bowl, and over four hundred feet deep.

The first diamond in South Africa was found in 1867 by one of the children of a Dutch farmer named Jacobs, who had it in his possession for months, in perfect ignorance of its value, before the accidental calling of a traveller, Mr Van Nierkirk. Mr Van Nierkirk sent it at once to an eminent geologist, Dr Atherstone, of Grahamstown, who discovered the fact that indeed it was a diamond.

Natives and Europeans began to search, and the result was that several other diamonds were very soon found, and the hopes of the Cape Colony, which at that time was in a bankrupt condition, began to revive.

The first diamonds were found in the boulders and under the Vaal River, so that it was not until 1872 that the diggings at Dutoitspar and Kimberley attracted any attention. But they very soon eclipsed the old diggings, and the present town sprang up around the claim. For some time the claims were kept distinct from one another, but as they dug lower and lower, it was found impossible to retain the roads separating the claims, so the whole was thrown into one large mine.

The diamondiferous soil is quarried out below by Kafirs and deposited in great iron buckets which run on standing wire ropes, and are hauled up by steam to the receiving boxes on the brink of the mine. Everywhere is activity and bustle, and a loud hum comes up out of that vast hole from three or four thousand human beings engaged at work below.

The men themselves look like so many flies as they dig away at the blue soil, and the thousands of wire ropes extending from every claim to the depositing boxes round the edge have the appearance of a huge spider's web, while the buckets perpetually descending empty and ascending full might well represent the giant spiders.

The mine having recently been worked by companies owning large blocks of ground, there could still be traced the individual claims of the original diggers, some carried down to a great depth and others left standing like square turrets with the ground all dug away round them.

The effect is weird in the extreme, and it does not require any very great stretch of fancy to imagine these isolated claims to be the battlemented castles of the gnomes who inhabit the underground regions.

As we were gazing down the mine, the whistles from the engine-houses began simultaneously to shriek out the signal that it was time for men to cease working and come up from the mine for dinner.

The buckets ascended for the last time and stood still; the tiny ants at work below threw down their picks and shovels and began to toil up the sides of the hole. Gradually they grew larger and larger till the ants became moles, till the moles looked like rabbits, then larger till the rabbits became boys, and finally emerged full-grown men.

They were princ.i.p.ally Kafirs, with very little clothing beyond a cloth round their loins; some sported old red military jackets, and the appearance of their bare black legs beneath was comical in the extreme.

Every thirteen or fourteen Kafirs at work in the mine have a white overseer, to prevent as much as possible that wholesale robbery which goes on amongst them.

One would think they would find it rather hard to steal, and still more difficult to conceal a diamond on their naked persons under the eye of the overseer; but, despite all precautions, they do steal a vast number of stones, picking them up and carrying them away in their mouths or between their toes.

The largest diamonds are usually unearthed in the mines before the stuff is washed, and an overseer must keep his eyes well open, for he cannot be sure of the honesty of any one of his "boys."

CHAPTER TEN.

Diamonds are mostly found in a hard, bluish-green rock which has to be blasted, the safest time for doing this being the noon or midnight hour.

The noise of it sounds like an enemy bombarding the camp. We stood on the edge of the mine and saw a solitary man down below, who looked as big as a rabbit, light a fuse and then run from it for his life, when, with a report like a thousand cannons, the earth rose two hundred feet in the air and then fell to ground again, probably dropping a Koh-i-noor on a neighbouring claim.

There are somewhat poorer and smaller mines at Dutortspan, Bulfontein, and old de Boers, all comprised within a radius of three and a half miles, and the cab-carts plying for hire in the streets have no lack of custom in carrying people from mine to mine.

Most of the property in the mines is now owned by companies, individual claim-holders finding that it paid them better to consolidate than struggle with the immense working expenses of a single claim, surrounded by blocks owned by wealthy companies. When the companies first formed, there was some wild speculation with the stock, and several fortunes were made and lost in a few days by amateur stock speculators. We were invited to inspect the washing-ground of one of the large companies, and very interesting we found it. The blue ground is taken as it comes up from the mine to a plot of ground rented for the purpose, called a depositing floor, and, after being dumped down in heaps, is spread out on the ground in large, coa.r.s.e lumps, just as it leaves the pick and shovel of the miner. Water is then liberally poured over it and it is left for two or three days to the action of the atmosphere; at the end of that time it loses its rock-like appearance and shows itself to be a conglomerate of pebbles, ironstone, and carbon.

It is then thrown against coa.r.s.e sieves to separate the larger stones, which are flung aside, and is afterward taken to the washing-machine.

This consists of a circular iron tub, rather shallow and some ten or twelve feet in diameter, in which are fixed from the centre six or eight rakes, with long teeth six inches apart, which are kept perpetually revolving by a small steam-engine, or by a whim worked by horses or mules.

Water is kept flowing into the tub through one opening, as the diamondiferous soil is worked in through another. The revolution of the rakes causes a thorough disintegration of the stuff, the lighter portion of which is forced over the upper edge, carried away by the engine, and thrown on the refuse heap. After sixty or eighty loads have been pa.s.sed through the machine, the rakes are lifted up and the contents of the box carefully taken out. It will be at once understood that only the heaviest portions of the precious soil, and therefore the diamonds, if there are any, have been left in the machine, the lighter parts having been washed over the upper edge of the box.

When taken out, the residue, which consists of nothing but heavy ironstone and carbon in a pure state and crystals of various hues, is carefully sifted through sieves of different degrees of fineness, sometimes placed one under the other in a cradle and thoroughly rocked.