The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-02-18
THE BiaGNsr GROUND noLE.
It Is the Abandoned Diamond Mine in
 Kimberley.
(Irom tho San Francisco Chrouicle.l


 Kimberley.
 (Irom the San Francisco Chronicle./
 Johannesburg, Dec. l5.--I left Cape Town on the 10th of December, late at night, in wild storm of sleet and wind and rain, with the temperature low enough to warrant the wearing of ones heaviest winter clothes, and woke the next morning to find the train rolling over a baked and sun-cracked desert in the midst of mirages, sand spouts, os- triches and things. It was the Karoo, the vast table lying between Cape Town and Kimberley.
 Barring the ostriches and sand spouts, the Karoo is wonderfully like the country about ogden. There is the same dry, red earth, the same low hills with their outcrop of reef and dyke, the same sparse growth of gray bush the same burnt-out blue of a cloudless sky growing white toward the horizon; the same rare towns, which In South Africa are built of mud, but which are precisely like the adobe houses of the west. Thus far the resemblance goes. If one saw only the earth and sky, the gray bush, and the clay-built towns, one might easily fancy ones self in Utah or in western Colorado, But eve ny now and then the progress of the train (and an exasperatingly slow pro- gress it isl brings to view the sight of things unmistakably African; herd of ostriches trotting away from the track Lat, aI h01 n wings, focks Of Iong-eared sheep, feed ing on heaven knows what, and, above all sand spouts, wevering pillars of red cloud with funnel-shaped bases and capitals. You reach Kimberley the forenoon of the next day.
 Kimberley is dead town. I think this impression of abandonment of incl pient decay, is one of the strongest im- pressions I have retained of the town itself. That, and it's abject forlornness, itsmournful, God-forgotten air, it's un- speakable hideousness, a rampant shrieking defornity, an uglinesss be- yond words. It is a town built upon the open plain; treeless, dusty. The combination of abnormally wide streets and abnormally low houses gives a marvellous impression of f1atness. It is built entirely of tin. Tin, in South Af- rica, means galvanized, corrugated sheet iron. With the exception of the De Beers office and the government Buildings I cannot remember a single house in Kimberley that was not made of this abominable stuff. The railroad station is tin, the hotels are tin, you buy your clothes, your groceries, your boots, in tin stores, you play billiards in tin club you mail your letters in a tin post-office, and you--yes, you do you even worship in a tin church. lm- agine the heart from all this mass of tin when the thermometer is at one hundred and twenty degrees. Imagine, if you can, the gay, diversified aspects that the streets present, with never even a sidewalk to break the harrow ing monotony of the view, with never Q tree, never a vine, never so much as geranium growing in a tomato can 70 hide the staring ugliness.
 You begin to see the natives here, the real pure-blooded stock-Kaffirs, Basu- tos, Shan gans--not the mongrel-blood- ed Hottentot- t-Dutch-Malay of the Cape, and splendid-looking fellows they are, lOO. IOu pCc LAiClll III etii uSeot SNi2 SA ibarbarianism, from the compound Ba- suto of the mine, gambling furiously at a curious and savage variation of the game of checkers, and kept practical prisoner during the period of his con- tract, to the little pickaninny of the later generation on his way to school wllistling Daisy Bell" and carrying his books, his geography, slate, &c., on his head.
 It is a cosmopolitan place. It has not grown it has been built. All the extremes of civilization have been dumped down together upon this last corner in the vast Karoo, and they have not as yet blended to form any distinctive feature, anything character istic or typical, except that this want of anything characteristic is, perhaps the best characteristic of all. For in stance, in ones hotel bedroom one sees the printed announcement that '"Tiffin' is at such and such an hour, while at the same time ones washstand is deco rated with blue tiles representing the birthplace of Oliver Wendell Holmes The Englishman has brought over his polo ponies and his trap, and in the market square, III lue Ctutcl oL tiie town, they are jostled against and crowded by the clumsy bullock wagons of the Kaffirs from the surrounding country.
 The bullock wagons, by the way, are features of South Africa. One meets with them continually, crawling along xhe old trade route by the side of the railroad or crowded into the market squares of all the larger towns. They are immense wagons of English make half their length covered by a hood Of canvas and drawn by no less thar eighteen lean, muscular oxen, with horns of enormous length; at the side walks the driver, a. Kaffir, with long whip on the end of bamboo pole while a second called the forelopel leads the first pair. Just what purpose is served by these huge carts is no easily discoverable, for as yet I have never seen them carry so much as Q wiap Of hay. When three of these carts get together in a market place Ii
 DnTIEHoN RATe