up in South African life. The discovery of vast stores of mineral wealth in South Africa, more especially gold, has attracted suddenly to its shores a large population which is not and cannot, at least at once, be South African. This body is known under the name of the Uitlanders (literally “Foreigners”).
Through a misfortune, and by no[48] fault of its own, the mass of this gold has been discovered mainly along the Witwatersrand, within the territory of the Transvaal Republic, and more especially at the spot where the great mining camp of Johannesburg now stands, thus throwing upon the little Republic the main pressure of the new arrivals.
To those who know the great mining camps of Klondike and Western America, it is perhaps not necessary to describe Johannesburg. Here are found that diverse and many-shaded body of humans, who appear wherever in the world gold is discovered. The Chinaman with his pigtail, the Indian Coolie, the manly Kafir, and the Half-caste; all forms of dark and colored folk are here, and outnumber considerably the white. Nor is the white population less multifarious and complex. On first[49] walking the streets, one has a strange sense of having left South Africa, and being merely in some cosmopolitan center, which might be anywhere where all nations and colors gather round the yellow king. Russian Jews and Poles are here by thousands, seeking in South Africa the freedom from oppression that was denied that much-wronged race of men in their own birth-land; Cornish and Northumberland miners; working men from all parts of the earth; French, German and English tradesmen; while on the Stock Exchange men of every European nationality are found, though the Jew predominates. The American strangers are not large in number, but are represented by perhaps the most cultured and enlightened class in the camp, the mining engineer and large importers of[50] mining machinery being often of that race; our lawyers and doctors are of all nationalities, while in addition to all foreigners, there is a certain admixture of English and Dutch South Africans. In the course of a day one is brought into contact with men of every species. Your household servant may be a Kafir, your washerwoman is a Half-caste, your butcher is a Hungarian, your baker English, the man who soles your boots a German, you buy your vegetables and fruit from an Indian Coolie, your coals from the Chinaman round the corner, your grocer is a Russian Jew, your dearest friend an American. This is an actual, and not an imaginary, description. Here are found the most noted prostitutes of Chicago; and that sad sisterhood created by the dislocation of our yet uncoordinated civilization,[51] and known in Johannesburg under the name of continental women, have thronged here in hundreds from Paris and the rest of Europe. Gambling, as in all mining camps, is rife; not merely men but even women put their money into the totalisator, and
A LOW FEVER OF ANXIETY
for chance wealth feeds on us. Crimes of violence are not unknown; but, if one may speak with authority who has known only one other great mining center in its early condition, and whose information on this matter has therefore been gathered largely from books, Johannesburg compares favorably, and very favorably, with other large mining camps in the same stage of their existence. The life of culture and impersonal thought is largely and of necessity among a new and nomadic population absent; art and science are of necessity unrepresented; but a general alertness and keenness characterizes our population. In the bulk of our miners and working men, of our young men in banks and houses of business, we have a large mass of solid, intelligent, and invaluable social material which counter-balances that large mass of human flotsam and jetsam found in this, as in all other mining camps; while among our professional men and mining officials is found a large amount of the highest professional knowledge and efficiency. Happy would it be for the gallant little Transvaal Republic, and well for South Africa as a whole, if the bulk of this little human nature could become ours forever, if they were here to stay with us, drink out of our cup and sup out of our platter. But in most cases this is not so. The bulk of the population, and especially its most valuable and cultured elements, are here temporarily; as persons who go to Italy or the south of France for health or sunshine, who, even when they go year after year, or buy villas and settle there for a time, yet go to seek merely health and sunshine, not strike root there; and as men go to Italy for health and sunshine, the bulk of us here come to seek gold or a temporary livelihood, and for nothing more. Even our miners and working men in Johannesburg, the most stable and possibly permanent element in our population, have, in many instances, their wives and families in Cornwall or elsewhere; and when they have them here they still think of the return home for good in after years; while with the wealthier classes this is practically universal. Not only have our leading mining engineers and the great speculators not the slightest intention of staying in Johannesburg permanently; most have their wives and families in England, America, or on the Continent, and project as soon as possible a retirement from business, and return to the fashionable circles of Europe or America. Even among South African-born men the large majority of us intend returning to our own more lovely birthplaces and homes in the Colony sooner or later; and the only element which will probably form any integral part of the South African nation of the future and become subject to the Transvaal Republic is the poorer, which, from the larger advantages for labor here, will be unable to return to its natural home.
The nomadic population of Johannesburg undoubtedly consists of men who are brave and loyal citizens in their own States and nations. To-morrow,
IF AMERICA WERE IN DANGER,
probably almost every American citizen would troop back to her bosom, and spend not only life, but the wealth he had gained in South Africa from South African soil, in defending her. Every German would go home to the Fatherland; every Englishman, every Frenchman, would, as all brave men in the world’s history have done, when the cry arises, “The birth-land in danger!” The few Spaniards here trooped back to Spain as soon as the news of war arrived.
One of the most brilliant and able of[56] English journalists (a man whose opinion on any subject touching his own land we would receive almost with the reverence accruing to the man who speaks of a subject he knows well and has studied with superior abilities; but who had been only a few months in our land, and, therefore, had not full grasp of either our people or our problems, which from their complexity and many-sidedness are subjects for a life’s devotion) that man, three and a half years ago, when brave little Jameson—brave, however mistaken—was sent in to capture the mines of Johannesburg for his master, and when the great mixed population of Johannesburg, Germans and French, English and Jews, Arabs and Chinamen, refused to arise and go to aid him, and when hundreds of Englishmen, Cornishmen and others fled[57] from Johannesburg, fearing that Jameson might arrive and cause a disturbance—said that Johannesburg would be known forever in history by the name of Judasburg! and that the Cornish and other Englishmen who fled from the place were poltroons and cowards. But he was mistaken.
JOHANNESBURG IS NOT JUDASBURG,