Ch. 14: The Workers in the Mines

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	80 THE DIAMOND MINES OF SOUTH AFRICA one or the other has won all. The spectators usually offer advice to the players. There is some running, jumping, and wrestling in halting imitation of English athletic sports; and on special holidays, like Christmas, they have obstacle races, sack races, walking the greased pole, which lies horizontally over the swimming bath, and other comical features for the general amusement of the native and white spectators. But the workers in the mines are rarely nimble enough to figure with any distinction in these sports, and the only English games that can be called popular in the compounds are the counterfeit of cricket and football. The native wickets are made of empty paraffin tins, and the fine points of the game are not in evidence; but there is plenty of hard swiping and sharp bowling, to the delight of the native players and the spectators. Christmas is the great holiday of the year for all, for everybody in the compound then receives for his Christmas box a loaf of bread, a bottle of ginger beer, and a piece of meat, and sports of various kinds are specially provided for

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