218 THE DIAMOND MINES OF SOUTH AFRICA
whipping-post was necessarily the main dependence for punishment of natives.
Strangest
and most interesting of all features of the camps to a newcomer were
the habits and antics of the marvellous collection of savages,
streaming into the Fields from the heart of Africa. No mining camp on
earth before ever held such a motley swarm of every dusky shade, in
antelope skins and leopard skins and jackal skins and bare skins, —
with girdles and armlets of white ox-tails, and black crane plumes and
gorgeous bird feathers, and dirty loin cloths, and ragged breeches, and
battered hats and tattered coats. With and without the fire of rum they
might dash off at any moment into some wildly whirling reel or savage
dance, gabbling in a hundred dialects, whooping with weird cries, and
chanting plaintive, gay, and passionate strains, now dissonant, now
sweet. Whenever a new party of " raw " natives came in from the
wilderness, weary, grimy, hungry, shy, trailing along sometimes with
bleeding feet and hanging heads, and bodies staggering with faintness,
a howl of jeers was a common greeting, and a pelting with rotten
fruits and stones was likely to follow the scared troop up the street
of the camp, though the natives were not churlish at heart, and might,
afterward, share their last crust with the strangers.
Their
savage habits clung to them long in camp. Some delighted to smoke in
the old native way, by making a little funnel in the wet ground with a
slender stick and sucking the smoke through one end while the tobacco
leaves burned in a hollow at the other. As a rule all the natives from
Delagoa Bay and districts to the north of that part smoked cigars with
the fire end in their mouths. When sheep or bullocks were killed at
market, the natives hung about and returned exulting if the obliging
butchers gave them the entrails to hang in festoons about their necks
and carry off smeared with filth. They fed content day after day on a
few handfuls of mealies or ground maize with an occasional chunk of
refuse meat. They had little use for water except to drink, and they
much preferred Cape brandy. After working all day, and roving about and
