THE LAND OF QUEER THINGS.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1359, 9 February 1912, Page 6

THE LAND OF QUEER THINGS.

POLICE MOUNTED ON CAMELS. One hardly associates "queer things" with ,a self-governing Dominion of the Hr'iish Empire. Still less does one expect In tind them set mil in the pages of a Llivt eminent lilue-bouk. Yet the summaries of the magisterial reports fi-iiui Hie ilili'oreiit. di.-triels of the I'nion dt South Africa make fascinating reading. 'I'liey throw light upon many au isolated and lorgotleu corner. They reveal the extraordinary diversity of South African life and activities. South Africa (says the "Daily Mail" correspondent) is indeed a Laud of Contrasts. II is at once energetic and slothful, fertile ami sun-scorched, rich and poverty-stricken, highly technical and inconceivably ignorant. The contrast appears in physical features as in social conditions. On (he one, hand is the lx\mtiful green of the Knysna district with its deep ravines lined by dense primeval forest, with waterfalls and vehement rivers and wild elephanls. On tho other hand are the great wastes of the Kalahari, where rain seldom falls, and the police are mounted on camels. ]n ihe far south are woods and vineyards and peaceful homesteads. In the far north one reads of lions in the Zoulpansborg and leopards which "infest the mountains," and spdringboks which are so numerous that the farmers complain their crops are destroyed before they can be gathered in. "A Lethargic Spell." A glance at the mining centres shows bustle and enterprise. Hut away in the scorched anil sandy Covdonia district the magistrate declares (hat "after residence up here for ny length of time people seem to be involved in a lethargic spell, which in many cases becomes chronic." In one area the gold industry produces three million pounds' worth of precious metal every month, and gives employment (o thousands of men. In another— the Ifagenstad district of the Free State— a little colony of poor whites live by pouring brine from a spring on to tarpaulins, and, after evaporation, selling the coarso salt; they secure. Quaint industries survive; old-time labour methods have not died out. On the Cape Coast men live by canning crawfi-ih for Paris—a curious business, for South Africa itself will not buy the products. In the Molteno and Indive coalmines of the Cape women still work as miners. At Oudtshoorn white men labour for black masters at a starvation wage. The big urban districts in South Africa are as well equipped in all that civilisation demands as their prototypes in Kurope. The contrast is afl'orded by Waifisch Bay, "with no town, with no water, with no trade, with no representation in Parliament, with a school in which Hottentot is the only language spoken, wiili no doctor, with no tree-plauti-.ig, with rainfall practically none or a decimal point at tho most," and where the inhabitants have to rely upon sea-water condensed. Some of the dwellers in the Union might still bo back in the South Africa of the seventeenth century. Never Liver in a House, The magistrate in the Calvinia district declares that ho "knows of niM with families growing up who have never lived hi a. house." Tho desire for isolation is accompanied by a suspicion of everything smacking of modernity. In Frascrburg the people of the trek-Boer class include "many who loolc upon education rather as a demoralising than as a civilising agency." Again: "From Kuruman it is reported that a certain class of Europeans still appear to have a rooted objection to the education of their children; that it has happened that where the board has established a school at a centre the parents preferred to sell their farms and move away to avoid educating their children. In other instances parents of the bywoncr class moved awav when a school was started on the farm'. . . . Some wish their children to bo taught to read the Bible and write their names only." One place seems to be more . German Hum British. The report from Eietiontein, in the Gordonia district, remarks that "there is not a person outside tho magistrate's office who has live pounds' worth of English coins. All the money in circulation is N German coinage from across the border in German-South-Wcst Africa. At one town in the Transvaal it is most unusual for anybody to die, aiul evidently no undertaker could exist. The centre which boasts in this wav is Pilgrim's lies!', which has "a mountain oilmate free from disease." Native Socialism. Queer little communities survice in South Africa. In the Port Nolloth. district lies the mysterious Michtersveld, "an immense area occupied by a handful of thriftless Hottentots, some G5 families, or •100 members all told." So thriftless bto they, one reads, that as often as not they cat up the .seed wheat supplied to them by tho Government in seasons af scarcity instead of sowing it. The natural springs at their doors aro not utilised but neglected, and so a more industrious and energetic race of men is shut out and debarred from doing justice to tho land. But they are a Socialistic community. When one kills a sheep or goat all the others Hock around to help him eat it, and this applies to all foodstuffs; hence the native's idleness, He knows that if ho works ho will fare no better than those who do not work, as he will have to share the fruits of his labour. In one part of the Cape tho farmers aro declared to be "acquiring motor-cars." In other districts they can 'hardly make a bare living from the drought and diseasestricken land. In Nnmaqualand you can buy land for a penny an aero. In the Oudtshoorn division of tho Capo it has been known to fetch JMOO an acre—ami that for farming laud. In the ostrich reigns supreme. It is one of the wealthiest towns in the world for its size, and some of the farmers around are believed to make .£-10.009 a year out of feathers. Everything is sacrificed to Ihe ostrich. Though tho district is thoroughly irrigated it produces practically nothing but feathers. It even imports its meat, butter, egirs. vegetables, poultry, ami fruit. Every inch of land is given up to the dominating ostrich. In Natal, there is a landowner who has his wagon drawn by tame zebras. Tho magistrate suggests that zebras should be regularly used for transport purposes, asserting that "'they are as strong; as Ihe ox and as fast as the mule." One more queer thing. Tho Blue Book remarks that the Union commenced with "a hanging year." Fifty-six men wore hanged during the twelve months which ushered in the 1-nion. Two were Europeans, six were Indians, and thirteen wero Chinese. Tho rest were h. E. NEAME.