44 A Breath from the Veldt 



found the head of it as thorough a gentleman as I ever met in my life. His 

 family were, each and all, as kind and simple in their ways as any Scotch 

 farmers. But before I arrived at this conclusion I must confess I had rather 

 a coarse time of it, as I could not then speak Dutch, and had to make a daily 

 fight against prejudices and suspicions. When they found that I only wished 

 them well and treated them as friends, their attitude entirely changed, and 

 before the end of my stay I felt myself quite one of the family. 



No traveller visiting Johannesburg will be disappointed with what he sees 

 there. It is really one of the sights of the world, and contains many wonderful 

 things which can be seen nowhere but there. Seven years ago the town was 

 not ; but to-day you can walk down Pritchard and Commissioner streets and 

 see plate-glass windows displaying the latest London fashions, splendid buildings, 

 electric light, tramways, music halls, fine hotels, and all that goes to make up 

 the comforts of modern civilisation, which has so suddenly blossomed with the 

 gold discovery. "Jo" has been already described by abler pens than mine, 

 so I will content myself with noting only some of the more salient features 

 of the place that particularly attracted my attention. What strikes one most 

 at first sight is the contrast between past and present that here makes itself felt. 

 New as the town is, there still lingers in it the wild spirit of the interior, 

 which constitutes its greatest charm to a traveller. This is most apparent in 

 the morning market, when the Boers, with their transport waggons and splendid 

 spans of magnificent oxen, come in, to buy, sell, and be hired. There are two 

 of these great market squares in Johannesburg ; and to the student of human 

 nature or the artist they are endless sources of delight. There sits the old 

 Boer on the top of his waggon, solemnly blinking in the sun as he puffs away 

 at his Magaliesburg and watches the manoeuvres of his Natal Zulu driving the 

 dearly-loved span with consummate skill ; for these boys can drive and no 

 mistake, merely using their voices as a scourge, where a less patient and 

 weaker-lunged white man would lose both his temper and his voice. There, 

 too, may be seen Jews selling cheap wares ; black boys waiting to be hired ; 

 Malays hawking bijouterie ; sharp auctioneers yelling forth the manifold 

 attractions of hungry -looking steeds whose beauty no one seems to see but 

 themselves ; hard little Basuto ponies dashing hither and thither, mounted by 

 every class and nationality under the sun ; and amongst the crowd a big 

 smattering of loafers and rascals ever on the look-out for doing a " softy " — 

 desperate men these, as San Francisco knew only too well in the flush of its 

 prosperity — men who refrain from the use of the revolver to-day not from any 



