JOHANNESBURG AND ITS WAYS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 10085, 21 March 1896, Page 2 (Supplement)

JOHANNESBURG AND ITS WAYS.

[chambers' JOURNAL] Thk railway journey from Capetown to j Johannesburg of about three days is through a seemingly endless, sandy country, with range succeeding range of distant mountains, nil alike, and strikes a greater sonso of vast ness and desolation than any expanse of naked ocean itself. First and second class liuvo sleeping accommodation, the third being kept for blacks and the lowest class Dutch. Well, we reach Johannesburg, which has not oven yet, with all its wealth, a covered-in railway station ; whilst by way of contrast in tho progress of tho place, just across tho road is a huge club, with tennis, cricket, football, and cycling grounds, gymnasium, military band, halls for dancing, operas, and oratorios, etc., which will bear comparison with any you please. Its members are millionaires and clerks, lodgers and their lodging-house koepers, all equal there; for we have left behind caste, cliques, and cathedral cities, and are cosmopolitan, or, in a word, colonial. An institution like this gives us the state of society there in a nutshell, for, as wages are very high, anyone in anything like lucrative employment can belong to it ; and the grades in society are determined by money, and money only. Johannesburg, the London of South Africa, which was nine yoars ago barren veldt, eight years ago a miners' camp, is now the centre of some one hundred thousand inhabitants, and increasing about as fast as bricks and mortar can be obtained, lb is situatod directly on top of tho gold, and 011 looking down from the high ground above, it looks to an English eye like a hnge, long-drawn-out mass of tin sheds, with its painted iron mine-chimneys running in a straight line all along the quartz gold-reef as far as you can see in either direction. The largest or main reef run 3 for thirty miles uninterruptedly, goldbearing and honoycombed with mines throughout. This, even were ib alono, could speak for the stability and continued prosperity of the Transvaal gold trade. As we enter the town we find fine and wellplanned streets, crossed at places with deep gutters—gullies ruthor—to carry off the wator, which is often in the heavy summer rains deeper than your knees. Crossing these at fast trot, the driver never drawing rein, the novice is shot about, in bis whitecovered, two-wheeled cab with its large springs, like a pea in a bladder. There are lofty and handsome shops, with most costly contents, which can vie with London or Paris.

Lob us watch from the high-raised stop outside the Post Office, looking down over tho huge market square. What strikes us first are tho two-wheeled two-horsed cabs with white hoods, recklessly driven by Malays in the inseparable red fez, and those with the fast-trotting mule or horse-wag-gons show the pace ab which business or pleasure is followed. As a contrast comes the luuiboring ox-waggon with ten or twelve span of oxen, a little Kaffir boy dragging and directing the leading couple by a thong round tho horns, and the unamiable Dutch farmer revolving around, swearing, and using his 15-foot whip to keep the concern in motion at all. Then passes a body of some two hundred prisoners, Kaffirs, and a few whites leading, marched in fours by some dozen white-helmeted police and four or five mounted men, all paraded through the main streets, innocent and guilty alike, to tho court-liouie, and many escaping en route as occasion offers. Long bofore daylight the square is full of ox-waggons, gome from distances occupying days to traverse; and tho buyers of forage, oats, corn, mealiemeul, firewood, poultry, eggs, etc., are busy as soon as they can see. Here the middleman makes a good profit, often riding far out) on the roods to get at the illiterate Dutch farmer before the latter reaches the market. Here is an amusing instance of a bargain recently overheard on the square. An English trader purchased a waggon-load of stuff from a Boer, and by means of a few figures and calculations easily tossed, off, and with many flourishes, makes out that the amounb he has to pay the Dutchman is about half of what it ought to be, if cor« rectly reckoned up at the price agreed. " Oom Paul" cannot reckon much, but h&i a Ready Reckoner, and points to and wants the larger amount. "What's that?" says the other. "Let's look at it." Then, " Why, that's last year's Ready Reckoner 1 Look here, man, it's marked 1894. It's no good now." " Allaimchta I" says the Boer, "I did not notice that;" and plods off home, waggon and all, content with the lesser sum. Johannesburg business morality is certainly not London business morality; and leading business men at tho former place will tell you themselves that honesty is not expected there.