Chinese on the Rand.

Timaru Herald, Volume LXXXI, Issue 12583, 21 January 1905, Page 1 (Supplement)

Chinese on the Rand.

When I stood in the compound of the New Comet Mine in the early moniing, writes a contributor to a .London daily, I could not help being reminded of another sunrise I liad witnessed only.three or four days before. For a whole night we had been rattling "through Natal from Durban oh our way to Johannesburg, in the very excellent through train provided by the Natal "Government Railways—the arrangements of which make the twenty-six hours' journey as comfortable as possible. Just as the day was: breaking we tumbled out of the train at Newcastle for morning coffee. At the end of -the station platform, lies the beautifully-kept cemetery where so many brave fellows lie, who gave .their lives in defence of the Empire. The rays of the sun struck across the veldt and crowned with golden radiance the white marb.e monuments which reverent hands and loving hearts had reared in memory of the honoured dead. In the silence of the African ddwn their graves/.seemedj.almost to warn, the living to make., a-fit use. of .the heritage which their'bravery and devotion to duty had won, / All this came back to my mind as I watched the shambling creatures,\who had been brought from the slums of Canton and Hong Kong at an enormous expense, beinghurried off to. their daily task by the overseers. Was it for this, I asked myself, that the best and bravest blood of the. whole Empire had been spilt? .Was it for this that the sons of. all the Britains had come from the great wheatfields of Canada, from the sunny pastures of New Zealand, from the mines and the bush of Australia ? Were these under-sized and badly-nourished specimens of humanity—aliens in race, -in tongue, in ideas, and- in standards of living—to be the people of the new dominion? Every marble monument, every cairn of stones, every simple cross, which marked the spots where British blood had been spilt and British bravery shown from the Cape Border to Pretoria, and from the> Moo'i River to the Bushveldt, seemed to cry out, "No." ;

No one who lias spent the shortest time ia South Africa can help being impressed with the possibilities of the country. ;Tbey we boundless, illimitable as the rolling veldt which stretches, away league after league until it fades away into the blue haze of the distant hills. Gold 'is there, silver,, and- diamonds, and besides these, iron ore equal to the best Swedish haematite, side by side yith coal in seams twenty feet thick. Copper, tin and zinc are to .be had for the mining. As for . agriculture, it only needs a proper system of irrigation to enable this land of the Golden Fleece to' supply herself with .all the necescaries (except, 'it-may be, wheat) and. most of thp luxuries of life. The climate for nine months: in tlie year is probably the finest in ' the/ world, and the hea£. during fche ; other three- is quite easily bearable. If'ever, there was a white man's country it is this one.' Every kopje, every valley., y-allslaloud for capital, and skill, and above oil, for honest labour, and offers in return wages which make the reward of labour in the older/countries seem meagre indeed. And' Iwhat shall ihe future!- be? Shall there be another great white commonwealth, stretching, from, the Cape 'to the Zambesi, where men shall dwell using the methods of government which a thousand years of English life have gone to build up and to perfect, and where ordered liberty is the precious birthright of every citizen? Or shall tlhis be a ;land where crowds of servile labourers toil foi ever for - a small white caste which if there ■ for gain and nothing else—millionaires rich beyond the dreams avarice at one .end, alien serf labour at the other. Is this to be the dismal 'future of the Transvaal? God-forbid! :