Side Lights On South Africa

gh the sky is a canopy of stainless blue, the prospect from the hill is obscured by that film of shifting dust which is to Johannesburg what the fog is to London?a veil that she would fain cast away, but cannot. Through its folds one receives the impression of something in the process of being unpacked. The rows of dwarfed houses are carelessly huddled together, like boxes in the custom house of a continental station. Here and there a pretentious pile of red brick rises irrelevantly from the middle or the corner of the crouching street; here and there a few world- weary mimosa trees lift up clusters of soiled blossoms from a tangle of grey leaves that should be green. Eastward of that section of the town consecrated to commercial activity, stretches the suburb of Doornfontein, powdered over with little red and white villas, insub- stantially pretty, tentatively elegant, bearingj as regards architecture, a fiftieth cousinship to Queen Anne. These are the homes of successful financiers who are still intent on working out their commercial salvation. Each house is encircled by that wide verandah which is one of the most characteristic features of African life. The stoep bears about the same relation to the Afrikander as his cafe does to the Frenchman. There he transacts his business, and distracts his leisure: there he smokes, drinks, loves, and sometimes dies. Not even the jerriest builder would dream of dispensing with it, or the frail- looking iron roof tha...