and
a sprinkling of nearly every other tribe in South Africa. Many travel
hundreds of miles, and some more than a thousand miles, in order to
reach the Diamond Fields, and many of these arrive half starved, and so
weak and emaciated that they are almost worthless as laborers for weeks
afterward. The natives, as a rule, are generally muscular, sinewy men,
but not fleshy. Their feet are broad and flat, but their legs and arms
are commonly well rounded, and their thigh and shoulder muscles are
large. The living skeletons who come in from the far interior districts
of Africa gain flesh, as rapidly as lean cattle do in green pastures,
when they reach a field flowing with meat and porridge. In the early
years of the mines, the raw recruits were hooted at and sometimes
pelted with stones by their kinsmen at the mines, as before noted, but
of late years this rough greeting and hazing has very largely passed
away.
For
the lodging and feeding of this great force of native Africans, special
provision is made by the erection of large walled enclosures, called
compounds, at the mines and on depositing floors. There are seventeen
of these compounds on the Diamond Fields, twelve of which are owned by
the De Beers Company. The largest of all is the one at De Beers mine,
and the description of this will serve for all, as they are essentially
alike, except in size.
Fully
four acres are enclosed by the walls of De Beers Compound, giving
ample space for the housing of its three thousand inmates, with an open
central ground for exercise and sports. The fences are of corrugated
iron, rising ten feet above the ground, and there is an open space of
ten feet between the fence and the buildings. At the northern end of
the compound there is an entrance gate. Iron cabins fringe the inner
sides of the enclosure, divided into rooms 25 feet by 30 feet, which
are lighted by electricity. In each room twenty to twenty-five natives
are lodged. The beds supplied are ordinary wooden bunks, and the bed
clothing is usually composed of blankets which the natives bring with
them, or buy at the stores in the compound, where there is a supply of
articles to meet the sim-
