The blocks of houses, three and four stories high, are called 'buildings'; often several of them belong to the same owner or to the same society, and bear their names: Ægis Building, Commissioner Street; S.A. Mutual Building; Standard Building; Heritier Building.
The houses are not numbered, but this does not inconvenience the postmen, for they do not exist. Each inhabitant pays a small sum for his own box at the post-office, and goes to fetch his correspondence when he likes.
Johannesburg has a very well organized fire-brigade, with engines, ladders and fire-escapes of the latest pattern. The captain, who is, I believe, an Englishman, served for a time in Paris, London, and New York, and wears the honorary medal of our Paris brigade. The men wear the same uniform as English firemen.
The hosiers, tailors, French milliners, dressmakers, saddlers, and music-sellers of the town are on a par with the best European specialists. Life is very expensive, and all luxuries command tremendous prices. Cabs, dirty and ill-harnessed, drawn by two miserable horses and very badly driven, cost 7s. an hour. Little light cabriolets drawn by negroes are therefore generally used for locomotion. These are much cheaper and fairly rapid, for the negroes--Kaffirs or Zulus--are in excellent training, and can go extraordinary distances at the double.
The currency was for a long time English, but in 1892 the Transvaal struck her first coins (pounds and shillings) with the effigy of President Kruger.
The Free State has no coinage of her own, and uses English or Transvaalian money.
Bronze money, of which the President only allowed a few specimens to be struck, is not current; the monetary unit is the 'ticket,' a small silver coin worth 3d.[#]
[#] Some English officers, it seems, saw for the first time at Elandsfontein a Kruger's penny, and bought it for £2. The current price of a Kruger's penny is from two to three shillings.
The Johannesburg journals, the Standard and Diggers' News and the Wolkstrem, the official organ, therefore cost 3d.
At Johannesburg much more than at Pretoria, because the town is more English, the houses in the centre of the town are mainly offices, for all the inhabitants who are comfortably off live in the suburbs, either on the height beyond the fort, or at the end of Main Street, in the great park of Belgravia.