CHAPTER IV.
THE TRANSVAAL.—PRETORIA.
PRETORIA itself, the capital of our new country, is a little town, lying in a basin on a plateau 4,500 feet above the level of the sea,—lat. 25° 45´, S., long. 28° 49´, E. From its latitude it would be considered to be semitropical, but its altitude above the sea is so great as to make the climate temperate. In regard to heat and cold it is very peculiar,—the changes being more rapid and violent than I have experienced in any other place. I was there during the last days of September, which would answer to the last days of March on our side of the equator. The mornings were very fine, but somewhat chilly,—not so as to make a fire desirable but just to give a little sting to the water. The noon-day was hot,—not too hot for exercise; but the heat seemed to increase towards the afternoon, the level rays of the sun being almost oppressive. Then suddenly there would come an air so cold that the stranger who had not expected the change and who was wearing perhaps his lightest clothes would find that he wanted a great coat and a warm cravat round his neck. It was not till I was about to leave the place that I became alive to its peculiarities. I caught a cold every evening in consequence of my ignorance, becoming quite hoarse and thinking of hot water externally and internally as I went to bed;—but in the morning I was always quite well again. I was assured, however, that the climate of Pretoria was one which required great care from its inhabitants. It is subject to very violent storms, and deaths from lightning are not uncommon. The hailstorms, when they come, are very violent, the stones being so large as not unfrequently to batter the cattle to death. I was glad to find that they were unfrequent, and that my good fortune saved me from experiencing their effects. “What does a man do if he be out in the veld?” I asked when I heard these frightful stories. “Put his saddle over his head,” was the answer, showing much as to the custom of a people who seldom walk to any distance always having horses at command. “But if he have not a saddle?” “Ah, then indeed, he would be badly off.” My informants, for I was told of the hailstorms and the necessary saddles more than once, seemed to think that in such a dilemma there would be no hope for a man who, without a saddle, might chance to be beyond the reach of a roof. I could not, however, learn that people were often killed. I therefore accepted the Pretorian hailstones with a grain of salt.
The first President of the Colony was named Pretorius and hence the name of the town, which became the capital in the time of his son who was the second President. The old man was one of the pioneer farmers who first entered in upon the country under circumstances already described, and the family now is very numerous in the Transvaal, occupying many farms. Potchefstroom,—a hundred miles to the south-west of Pretoria,—was the first capital and is still the bigger town; but President Pretorius the second thought it well to move the seat of Government more to the centre of the large district which the Republic was then claiming, and called the little city Pretoria, after the name of his father.
I am quite unable to say what is the population of the capital, as those of whom I inquired could only guess at it from their own point of view. I should think it might amount to two thousand exclusive of the military. At the time I was there it was of a very shifting nature, and will be so for; some months. It has lately become the seat of a British Government, and people have flocked into it knowing that money will be flying about. Money has flown about very readily, and there are hands of course to receive it. Six hundred British soldiers are stationed there under tents, and soldiers, though their pay is low, are great consumers. A single British soldier will consume as much purchased provender as a whole Boer family. But as people are going in, so are they going out. The place therefore in its present condition is like a caravansary rather than an established town. All menial services are done by a Kafir population,—not permanently resident Kafirs who can be counted, but by a migratory imported set who are caught and used as each master or mistress of a family may find it possible to catch and use them. “They always go when you have taught them anything,” one poor lady said to me. Another assured me that two months of continuous service was considered a great comfort. And yet they have their domestic jealousies. I dined at a house at which one of our British soldiers waited at table, an officer who dined there having kindly brought the much-needed assistance with him. The dinner was cooked by a Kafir who, as the lady of the house told me, was very angry because the soldier was allowed to interfere with the gala arrangements of the day. He did not see why he should not be allowed to show himself among the company after having undergone the heat of the fray. These Kafirs at Pretoria, and through all those parts of the Transvaal which I visited, are an imported population,—the Dutch having made the land too hot to hold them as residents. The Dutch hated them, and they certainly have learned to hate the Dutch in return. Now they will come and settle themselves in Pretoria for a short time and be good-humoured and occasionally serviceable. But till they settle themselves there permanently it is impossible to count them as a resident population.
Down many of the streets of the town,—down all of them that are on the slope of the descent,—little rivulets flow, adding much to the fertility of the gardens and to the feeling of salubrity. Nothing seems to add so much to the prettiness and comfort of a town as open running water, though I doubt whether it be in truth the most healthy mode of providing for man the first necessary of life. Let a traveller, however, live for a few days but a quarter of a mile from his water supply and he will learn what is the comfort of a rivulet just at his door-step. Men who have roughed it in the wilderness, as many of our Colonists have had to do before they have settled themselves into townships, have learned this lesson so perfectly that they are inclined, perhaps, to be too fond of a deluge. For purposes of gardening in such a place as Pretoria there can be no doubt about the water. The town gardens are large, fertile, and productive, whereas nothing would grow without irrigation.
The streets are broad and well laid out, with a fine square in the centre, and the one fact that they have no houses in them is the only strong argument against them. To those who know the first struggling efforts of a colonial town,—who are familiar with the appearance of a spot on which men have decided to begin a city but have not as yet progressed far, the place with all its attributes and drawbacks will be manifest enough. To those who have never seen a city thus struggling into birth it is difficult to make it intelligible. The old faults of old towns have been well understood and thoroughly avoided. The old town began with a simple cluster of houses in close contiguity, because no more than that was wanted. As the traffic of the day was small, no provision was made for broad spaces. If a man could pass a man, or a horse a horse,—or at most a cart a cart,—no more was needed. Of sanitary laws nothing was known. Air and water were taken for granted. Then as people added themselves to people, as the grocer came to supply the earlier tanner, the butcher the grocer, the merchant tailor his three forerunners, and as a schoolmaster added himself to them to teach their children, house was adjoined to house and lane to lane, till a town built, itself after its own devise, and such a London and such a Paris grew into existence as we who are old have lived to see pulled down within the period of our own lives. There was no foresight and a great lack of economy in this old way of city building.
But now the founder has all these examples before his eyes, and is grandly courageous in his determination to avoid the evils of which he has heard and perhaps seen so much. Of course he is sanguine. A founder of cities is necessarily a sanguine man, or he would not find himself employed on such a work. He pegs out his streets and his squares bravely, being stopped by no consideration as to the value of land. He clings to parallelograms as being simple, and in a day or two has his chief thoroughfare a mile long, his cross streets all numbered and named, his pleasant airy squares, each with a peg at each corner, out in the wilderness. Here shall be his Belgravia for the grandees, and this his Cheapside and his Lombard Street for the merchants and bankers. We can understand how pleasant may be the occupation and how pile upon pile would rise before the eyes of the projector, how spires and minarets would ascend, how fountains would play in the open places, and pleasant trees would lend their shade to the broad sunny ways.
Then comes the real commencement with some little hovel at the corner of two as yet invisible streets. Other hovels arise always at a distance from each other and the town begins to be a town. Sometimes there will be success, but much more often a failure. Very many failures I have seen, in which all the efforts of the sanguine founder have not produced more than an Inn, a church, half a dozen stores; and twice as many drinking booths. And yet there have been the broad streets,—and the squares if one would take the trouble to make enquiry. Pretoria has not been a failure. Among recent attempts of the kind Pretoria is now likely to be a distinguished success. An English Governor is to live there, and there will be English troops;—I fear, for many years. Balls will be given at Pretoria. Judges will hold their courts there, and a Bishop will live in a Pretorian Bishopstowe. But the Pretoria of to-day has its unknown squares, and its broad ill defined streets about which houses straggle in an apparently formless way, none of which have as yet achieved the honours of a second storey. The brooks flow pleasantly, but sometimes demand an inconvenient amount of jumping. The streets lie in holes, in which when it rains the mud is very deep. In all such towns as these mud assumes the force of a fifth element, and becomes so much a matter of course that it is as necessary to be muddy, as it is to be smoke-begrimed in London. In London there is soap and water, and in Pretoria there are, perhaps, clothes-brushes; but a man to be clean either in one place or the other must always be using his soap or his clothes-brush. There are many gardens in Pretoria,—for much of the vacant spaces is so occupied. The time will come in which the gardens will give place to buildings, but in the mean time they are green and pleasant-looking. Perhaps the most peculiar feature of the place is the roses. There are everywhere hedges of roses, hedges which are all roses,—not wild roses but our roses of the garden though generally less sweet to the smell. And with the roses, there are everywhere weeping willows, mourning gracefully over the hitherto unaccomplished aspirations of the country. This tree, which I believe to have been imported from St. Helena, has become common to the towns and homesteads of the Transvaal. To the eye that is strange to them the roses and weeping willows are very pretty; but, as with everything else in the world, their very profusion and commonness detracts from their value. The people of Pretoria think no more of their roses, than do those of Bermuda of their oleanders.
In such towns the smallness of the houses is not the characteristic which chiefly produces the air of meanness which certainly strikes the visitor, nor is it their distance from each other, nor their poverty; but a certain flavour of untidiness which is common to all new towns and which is, I fear, unavoidable. Brandy bottles and sardine boxes meet the eye everywhere. Tins in which pickled good things have been conveyed accumulate themselves at the corners. The straw receptacles in which wine is nowadays conveyed meet the eye constantly, as do paper shirt-collars, rags, old boots, and fragments of wooden cases. There are no dust holes and no scavengers, and all the unseemly relics of a hungry and thirsty race of pioneers are left open to inspection.
And yet in spite of the mud, in spite of the brandy bottles, in spite of the ubiquitous rags Pretoria is both picturesque and promising. The efforts are being made in the right direction, and the cottages which look lowly enough from without have an air of comfort within. I was taken by a gentleman to call on his wife,—an officer of our army who is interested in the gold fields of the Transvaal,—and I found that they had managed to gather round them within a very small space all the comforts of civilized life. There was no front door and no hall; but I never entered a room in which I felt myself more inclined to “rest and be thankful.” I made various calls, and always with similar results. I found internal prettinesses, with roses and weeping willows outside which reconciled me to sardine boxes, paper collars, and straw liquor-guards.
In the middle of Pretoria is a square, round which are congregated the public offices, the banks, hotels, and some of the chief stores, or shops of the place, and in which are depastured the horses of such travellers as choose to use the grass for the purpose. Ours, I hope, were duly fed within their stables; but I used to see them wandering about, trying to pick a bit of grass in the main square. And here stands the Dutch Reformed Church,—in the centre,—a large building, and as ugly as any building could possibly be made. Its clergyman, quite a young man, called upon me while I was in Pretoria, and told me that his congregation was spread over an area forty miles round. The people of the town are regular attendants; for the Dutchman is almost always a religious father of a family, thinking much of all such services as were reverenced by his fathers before him. But the real congregation consists of the people from the country who flock into the Nichtmaal, or Lord’s Supper, once in three months, who encamp or live in their waggons in the square round the Church, who take the occasion to make their town purchases and to perform their religious services at the same time. The number attending is much too large to enter the church at once, so that on the appointed Sunday one service succeeds another. The sacrament is given, and sermons are preached, and friends meet each other, amid the throng of the waggons. The clergyman pressed me to stay and see it;—but at this time my heart had begun to turn homewards very strongly. I had come out to see Pretoria, and, having seen it, was intent upon seeing London once again.
There are various other churches,—all of them small edifices,—in the place, among which there is a place of worship for the Church of England. And there is a resident English clergyman, a University man, who if he live long enough and continue to exercise his functions at Pretoria will probably become the “clergyman of the place.” For such is the nature of Englishmen. Now that the Transvaal is an English Colony there can be no doubt but that the English clergyman will become the “clergyman of the place.”
I would fain give as far as it may be possible an idea to any intending emigrant of what may be the cost of living in Pretoria. Houses are very dear,—if hired; cheap enough if bought. When I was there in September, 1877, the annexation being then four months old, a decent cottage might be bought for seven or eight hundred pounds, for which a rental of seven or eight pounds a month would be demanded. A good four-roomed house with kitchen &c. might be built, land included, for a thousand pounds, the rent demanded for which would be from £150 to £175 a year. Meat was about 6d. a pound, beef being cheaper and I think better than mutton. Butter, quite uneatable, was 2s. a pound. Eggs a shilling a dozen. Fowls 1s. 6d. each. Turkeys, very good, 7s. 6d. to 9s. 6d. each. Coals 10s. a half hundredweight,—and wood for fuel about £2 for a load of two and a half tons. These prices for fuel would add considerably to the cost of living were it not that fires are rarely necessary except for the purpose of cooking. Bread is quoted at 1s. a loaf of two pounds, but was I think cheaper when I was there. Potatoes were very dear indeed, the price depending altogether on the period of the year and on the season. I doubt whether other vegetables were to be bought in the market, unless it might be pumpkins. Potatoes and green vegetables the inhabitant of Pretoria should grow for himself. And he should be prepared to live without butter. Why the butter of South Africa should be almost always uneatable, culminating into an acme of filth at Pretoria, I cannot say;—but such was my experience. After all men and women can live without butter if other things be in plenty.
Then comes that difficult question of domestic service. All that the inhabitant of Pretoria will get in this respect will cost him very much less than in Europe, very much less indeed than in England, infinitely less than in London. With us at home the cost of domestic service has become out of proportion to our expenditure in other respects, partly because it has become to be thought derogatory to do anything for ourselves, and partly because our servants have been taught by their masters and mistresses to live in idle luxury. Probably no man earning his bread eats so much meat in proportion to the work he does as the ordinary London footman. This is an evil to those who live in London from which the inhabitant of Pretoria will find himself free. He will get a “boy” or perhaps two boys about the house,—never a girl let the mistress of the family coming out to the Transvaal remember,—to whom he will pay perhaps 10s. a month and whom he will feed upon mealies. The “boy’s” wages and diet will cost perhaps £12 per annum. But indeed they will not cost him so much, for the “boy” will go away, and he will not be able to get another just when he wants one. These boys he will find to be useful, good humoured, and trustworthy,—if only he could keep them. They will nurse his baby, cook his dinner, look after his house, make his bed, and dig his garden. That is they will half do all these things,—with the exception of nursing the baby, whom the Kafir is never known to neglect or injure. The baby perhaps may serve to keep him a whole twelvemonth, for he is very fond of a white baby. The wife of the British gentleman who thus settles himself at Pretoria will, at first, be struck with horror at the appearance of the Kafir, who will probably wear an old soldier’s jacket with a ragged shirt under it and no other article of clothing; and she will not at first suffer the Savage to touch her darling. But she will soon become reconciled to her inmate and the darling will take as naturally to the Kafir man as though he were some tendered, best instructed old English nurse out of a thoroughly well-to-do British family. And very soon she will only regret the reckless departure of the jet black dependant who had struck her at first with unmingled disgust.
Gradually I suppose these people will learn to cling to their work with some better constancy. I, as a stranger, was tempted to say that better diet, better usage, and better wages would allure them. But I was assured that I was wrong in this, and that any attempts in that direction only spoilt “the Native.” No doubt if you teach a Native to understand that he is indispensable to your comfort you raise his own estimation of himself, and may do so in such a manner as to make him absurdly fastidious. He is still irrational, still a Savage. He has to be brought by degrees to bend his neck to the yoke of labour and to learn that continued wages are desirable. That the thing will be done by degrees I do not at all doubt, and do not think that there is just cause of dissatisfaction at the rate of the present progress. The new comer to Pretoria to whom I am addressing myself will doubtless do something towards perfecting the work. In the meantime his domestic servants will cost him very much less than they have done in England.
A man with a wife and family and £500 a year would I think live with more comfort, certainly with more plenty in Pretoria, than in England. The inhabitants of Pretoria will demur to this, for it is a matter of pride to the denizens of every place to think that the necessaries of life are dearer there than elsewhere. But the cheapness of a place is not to be reckoned only by what people pay for the articles they use. The ways of the country, the requirements which fashion makes, the pitch to which the grandeur of Mrs. Smith has aroused the ambition of Mrs. Jones, the propensities of a community to broadcloth or to fustian,—these are the causes of expensive or of economical living. A gentleman in Pretoria may invite his friends to dinner with no greater establishment than a Kafir boy to cook the dinner and another to hand the plates, whereas he does not dare to do so in London without paying 10s. for the assistance of the greengrocer.
As, however, men with £500 a year will not emigrate in great numbers to Pretoria it would be more important to say how the labouring man might live in the Transvaal. With him his condition of life does not depend so much on what he will have to pay for what he consumes as on the wages which he may receive. I found that an artizan can generally earn from 10s. to 12s. a day at almost any trade,—if the work of the special trade be required. But I am far from saying that amidst so small a community all artizans would find an opening. At the present moment bricklayers and carpenters are in demand at Pretoria,—and can live in great plenty on their wages.
As to workmen, who are not artizans but agricultural labourers, I hardly think that there is any opening for them in the Transvaal. Though the farmers all complain that they cannot plough their lands because there is no labour, yet they will not pay for work. And though the Kafir is lazy and indifferent, yet he does work sufficiently to prevent the white man from working. As I have said before the white men will not work along with the Kafir at the same labour. If there be but a couple of black men with him he presumes that it is his business to superintend and not to work. This is so completely the case in the Transvaal that it is impossible to name any rate of wages as applicable to white rural labour. Sons work for their fathers or brothers may work together;—but wages are not paid. The Dutchman has a great dislike to paying wages.
The capital of the Transvaal is all alive with soldiers. There are 600 redcoats there, besides artillery, engineers and staff. These men live under canvas at present, and are therefore very visible. Barracks however are being built, with officers’ quarters and all the appurtenances of a regular military station. It was odd enough to me to see a world of British tents in the middle of a region hazily spoken of at home six months ago as the South African Republic; but how much stranger must it be to the Dutch Boers who certainly anticipated no such advent. I had the honour of being invited to dine at the mess, and found myself as well entertained as though I had been at Aldershott. When I was sitting with the officers in their uniform around me it seemed as though a little block of England had been cut out and transported to the centre of South Africa.
It may be as well to say a few words here as elsewhere as to the state of education in our new Colony. The law on this matter as it stood under the Republic is the law still. Now, as I write, it is hardly more than six months since the annexation and there has not been time for changes. On no subject was the late President with his Cabinet more alive to the necessity of care and energy, on no subject were there more precise enactments, and on no subject were the legislative enactments more pretentious and inefficacious. There are three classes of schools,—the High Schools, the District Schools, and the Ward Schools, the whole being under the inspection of a Superintendent General of Education. The curriculum at the High Schools is very high indeed, including Dutch, English, French, German, Latin, Greek, geometry, algebra, and all the ologies, together with logic, music, drawing, and astronomy. The law enacts that the principal master at a High School shall receive £400 a year, and the Assistant Masters £250 each;—but even at these salaries teachers sufficiently instructed could not be found, and when the Superintendent made his last return there was but one High School in the Transvaal, and at that school there were but five pupils. At the High School, the pupils paid 30s. a month, which, presuming there to be two months of holydays in the year, would give £15 per annum. There would be therefore £75 towards maintaining a school of which the Head Master received £400. But the reality of the failure was worse even than this. The law required that all boys and girls should pay the regular fees, but in order to keep up the number of pupils gratuitous instruction was offered. Three months after annexation the five High School pupils had dwindled down to two, and then the school was closed by order of the British Governor. The education no doubt was far too advanced for the public wants; and as it was given by means of the Dutch language only it did not meet the needs of those who were most likely to make use of it. For, even while the Transvaal was a Dutch Republic, the English language was contending for ascendancy with that of the people. In this contention the President with his Government did his best to make Dutch, and Dutch only, the language of the country. For this we cannot blame him. It was naturally his object to maintain the declining nationality of his country. But the parents and pupils who were likely to profit by such a school as I have described were chiefly English.
At the District and Ward schools the nature of the instruction proposed to be given is lower. The District schools are held in the chief towns,—such as they are,—and the Ward schools in sub-divisions of the Districts. They too have failed for the same reasons. They are too expensive and pretentious. The Salaries,—i.e. the lowest salaries permitted by law,—are £200 and £100 for head masters at the two classes of schools, and £125 and £30 for assistant masters. According to the last return there were 236 pupils at the District schools, and 65 at the Ward schools. The pupils pay varying fees, averaging 7s. a month or about £3 10s. per annum each. There are six District schools and two Ward schools, at which the masters’ salaries alone would amount to £1,700 per annum,—presuming there to be no assistant masters,—while the total of fees would be about £1,050 per annum. As the Government had been for many months penniless, it need hardly be explained further that the schools must have been in a poor condition. The nominal cost to the State during the last years of the Republic was about £3,500, being more than £11 per year for each pupil over and above the fees. What was still due under the head had of course to be paid out of British taxes when the country was annexed.
But all this does not show the extent of the evil. The white population of the country is supposed to be 45,000, of which about a tenth or 4,500 ought to be at school. The public schools at present show 300. There are some private schools as to which I could obtain no trustworthy information; but the pupils educated at them are few in number.
The average Boer is generally satisfied in regard to education if his children can be made to read the Bible. To this must be added such a knowledge of the ritual of the religion of the Dutch Reformed Church as will enable the children to pass the examination necessary for confirmation. Until this ceremony has been completed they cannot marry. So much, by hook or by crook, is attained, and thus the outermost darkness of ignorance is avoided. But the present law as to education does not provide for even this moderate amount of religious instruction, and is therefore, and has been, most unpopular with the Boers. It must be understood that on all religious matters the late Government was at loggerheads with the bulk of the population, the President being an advocate of free-thinking and absolute secularism,—of an education from which religion should be as far as possible removed; whereas the Boer is as fanatic, as conservative, and as firmly wedded to the creed of his fathers as an Irish Roman Catholic Coadjutor. It may, on this account, be the easier for the Colonial Government to reconcile the population to some change in the law.
A few of the better class of farmers, in the difficulty which at present exists, maintain a schoolmaster in their houses for a year or two, paying a small salary and entertaining the teachers at their tables. I have met more than one such a schoolmaster in a Boer’s house. In the course of my travels I found an Englishman in the family of a Dutchman who could not speak a word of English,—and was astonished to find so much instructed intelligence in such a position. Formerly there existed a class of itinerant schoolmasters in the Transvaal, who went from house to house carrying with them some rudiments of education, and returning now and again on their tract to see how the seed had prospered. These were supported by the Government of the day, but the late Government in its ambitious desire to effect great things, discontinued this allowance. It is not improbable that the renewal of some such scheme may be suggested.
It will be imperative on the Colonial Government to do something as the law now existing has certainly failed altogether. But there are great difficulties. It is not so much that education has to be provided for the children of a people numbering 45,000;—but that it has to be done for children dispersed over an area as big as Great Britain and Ireland. The families live so far apart, owing to the absurdly large size of the farms, that it is impossible to congregate them in schools.
When I was at Pretoria I rode out with four companions to see a wonderful spot called the “Zoutpan” or saltpan. It is 28 miles from the town and the journey required that we should take out a tent and food, and that we should sleep in the veld. I was mounted on an excellent horse who was always trying to run away with me. This tired me much, and the ground was very hard. While turning myself about upon the ground I could not but think how comfortable the beds are in London. The saltpan, however, was worth the visit. That it had been a volcanic crater there could be no doubt, but unlike all other volcanic craters that I have seen it was not an aperture on the apex of a mountain. We went north from Pretoria and crossing through the spurs of the Magaliesberg range of hills found ourselves upon a plain which after a while became studded with scrub or thorn bushes. Close to the saltpan, and still on the plain, we came to the residence of a Boer who gave us water,—the dirtiest that ever was given me to drink,—with a stable for our horses and sold us mealies for our animals. As one of our party was a doctor and as the Boer’s wife was ill, his hospitality was not ill repaid. A gentle rise of about 200 feet from the house took us to the edge of the pan, which then lay about 300 feet below us,—so as to look as though the earthwork around the valley had been merely thrown out of it as eart