Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/329

 All of this immense territory belongs to and is administered by a British company, and is not a member of the South-African union. In Rhodesia there are 25,000 Europeans and a million natives. The head of every native family is compelled to pay the British company an annual tax of $5, with $2 extra for each additional wife. Many of the native men who work in the mines in Johannesburg and Kimberley came from the poor villages we are seeing today. The villages are all alike: the houses are straw-covered huts, and the inhabitants seem to be as poor as people can be. The native men only work as a means of buying wives When Abel and Sampson return home, they probably return to wretched villages such as we are seeing today. Abel and Sampson are the servants at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Mark Cary, in Johannesburg. Abel has a sweetheart, and is saving money to buy her of her father. She is probably a fourteen or fifteen-year-old girl living in a village such as we are seeing today Since leaving Sydney, Australia, six weeks ago, we haven't seen an American traveler. They seem to be very scarce in this part of the world. At one of the diamond mines we visited in Kimberley, there was a book in which all visitors registered. We looked through twenty or more pages without finding a visitor registered from the United States I have seen only two bunches of ostriches on the trip; the second this morning near Mafeking. This town was conspicuous during the Boer war, because of the operations of General Baden-Powell. It is a pretty and important place, and has railroad shops, as the Johannesburg branch joins the