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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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