III
With this economic setting for the whole South African picture and a visualization of the Cape-to-Cairo Route let us start on the long journey that eventually took me to the heart of equatorial Africa. The immediate objectives, so far as this chapter is concerned, are Kimberley, Johannesburg and Pretoria, names and towns that are synonymous with thrilling chapters in the development of Africa and more especially the Union.
CECIL RHODES — Photograph Copyright by W. & D. Downey
You depart from Capetown in the morning and for hours you remain in the friendly company of the mountains. Table Mountain has hovered over you during the whole stay at the capital and you regretfully watch this "Gray Father" fade away in the distance. In the evening you pass through the Hex River country where the canyon is reminiscent of Colorado. Soon there bursts upon you the famous Karoo country, so familiar to all readers of South African novels and more especially those of Olive Schreiner, Richard Dehan and Sir Percy Fitz Patrick. It is an almost treeless plain dotted here and there with Boer homesteads. Their isolation suggests battle with element and soil. The country immediately around Capetown is a paradise of fruit and flowers, but as you travel northward the whole character changes. There is less green and more brown. After the Karoo comes the equally famous veldt, studded with the kopjes that became a part of the world vocabulary with the Boer War. Behind these low, long hills,—they suggest flat, rocky hummocks—the South African burghers made many a desperate stand against the English.
When you see the kopjes you can readily understand why it took so long to conquer the Boers. The Dutch knew every inch of the land and every man was a crack shot from boyhood. In these hills a handful could hold a small army at bay. All through this region you encounter places that have become part of history. You pass the ruins of Kitchener's blockhouses,—they really ended the Boer War—and almost before you realize it, you cross the Modder River, where British military prestige got a bloody repulse. Instinctively there come to mind the struggles of Cronje, DeWet, Joubert, and the rest of those Boer leaders who made this region a small Valhalla.
Late in the afternoon of the second day you suddenly get a "feel" of industry. The veldt becomes populated and before long huge smokestacks loom against the sky. You are at Kimberly. The average man associates this place with a famous siege in the Boer War and the equally famous diamond mines. But it is much more for it is packed with romance and reality. Here came Cecil Rhodes in his early manhood and pulled off the biggest business deal of his life; here you find the first milepost that the American mining engineer set up in the mineral development of Africa: here is produced in greater quantities than in any other place in the world the glittering jewel that vanity and avarice set their heart upon.
Kimberley is one of the most unique of all the treasure cities. It is practically built on a diamond mine in the same way that Johannesburg rests upon a gold excavation. When the great diamond rush of the seventies overwhelmed the Vaal and Orange River regions, what is now the Kimberley section was a rocky plain with a few Boer farms. The influx of fortune-hunters dotted the area with tents and diggings. Today a thriving city covers it and the wealth produced—the diamond output is ninety per cent of the world supply—exceeds in value that of a big manufacturing community in the United States.
At Kimberley you touch the intimate life of Rhodes. He arrived in 1872 from Natal, where he had gone to retrieve his health on a farm. The moment he staked out a claim he began a remarkable career. In his early Kimberley days he did a characteristic thing. He left his claims each year to attend lectures at Oxford where he got his degree in 1881, after almost continuous commuting between England and Africa. Hence the Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford created by his remarkable will. History contains no more striking contrast perhaps than the spectacle of this tall curly-haired boy with the Caesar-like face studying a Greek book while he managed a diamond-washing machine with his foot.