OCR Rendition - approximate

Relations between Civilized and Savage Life. 341 times happens with probably even worse results he gets wet through, and lets his thick woollen clothes dry on him. The subject of a pattern of decent clothing which shall be better suited to native customs than our close fitting garments has engaged the serious attention of more than one energetic missionary in South Africa as a matter closely connected with the health of his flock ; and on every ground, aesthetic as well as sanitary, we may wish success to the efforts of those who would devise for the Christianized or civilized natives of Africa a decent African costume, instead of a travesty of our most unbecoming and generally unsuitable European garments. The effects of a regular and sufficient supply of good food, and of a diet less exclusively of animal food, than the best-fed people were accustomed to in their own kraals, are manifested in various ways in different parts of South Africa, but nowhere in more marked a degree than in the labourers who resort to the diamond fields. They come from great distances, often more than 600 or 700 miles from Kimberley, and in such great numbers, that on any of the great roads leading to Kimberley, as, for instance, that from Pretoria, the stream of labourers going or returning is so constant and so great that a group of " diamond-field darkies " is seldom out of sight as the traveller watches his road, which is generally visible for some miles in advance. The wages they get at the diamond fields are very liberal, and the food far more regular and ample than any but rich people receive in their native kraals. The result is a very marked improvement in physique during their stay at " the fields "-so great and so marked that the two lines of men, the one going, the other returning, are, practically, the one lean and ill-favoured, the other fat and well-looking ; and it is generally easy as one passes a group of them sitting by the wayside to tell from their condition whether they are going to or from the diamond fields. There is probably no place in South Africa where the advantages to the native population of contact with Europeans are more evident than on the roads, especially those leading northwards and eastwards from the diamond fields to the distant regions whence the supply of labour at the Kimberley mine is chiefly drawn. Would that the results of such contact were always equally beneficial to the native population ! But a very serious increase of syphilitic disease, and its introduction into districts where it was previously unknown, are also results clearly traceable to the resort of native labourers to the diamond fields ; and on the, evil consequences to the population generally there is no occasion now to dwell. 2 k