A Letter from Johannesburg.

Hastings Standard, Issue 36, 8 June 1896, Page 3

A Letter from Johannesburg.

AS SAFE AS NEW ZEALAND

The following letter from a New Zealander in Johannesburg has appeared in the Christehureli Press : '• Johannesburg. April 19, lsfJG.— We are only just developing the prop. u), itiui uave no mills going as yet, but I am putting up a large air-com-pressor and boilers, and hope to have the rock drills going by the end of the month, and then 1 shall pu-h things ahead : even now our working expenses come to £2OOO a mouth. Pool English public, they don't know what they put their money into in this country ! South Africa simply lives upon England. The thing to do is to stick to a property while the money lasts, and when the working capital is expended move on to another one and repeat the game. The weather here is awfully hot : we are 1000 feet lower than Johannesburg and only l-> 0 miles away. There will be wars throughout South Africa, the niggers have set to in the north in • Rhodes's Country,' and round about Buluwayo : they are killing whites by hundreds. Troops are coming up from the Cape and Natal. The Ho. rs are arming the Transvaal, and people think the Inst trouble we had is not over yet : but I don't fancy it will come to much. They make a lot of talk about nothing. There was a proper scare at the beginning of this year, though. I had to send my wife to the hotel in K so as not to have any women on the mine. I was left in charge, with a saddled pony in the stable, to clear out on if attacked by Boers, but it all ended in smoke. I told the manager so from the first. One Sunday 1 rode into K to see my wife, stayed late, and was riding out about nine o'clock in the dark by myself, when I was stuck up by ten Boers all armed. They took me for a spy, but afterwards let me go on. -Just then all the women were going over the Vaal River into the Orange Free State, but mv wife would not go without me. Anyhow, don't you fear for us. I think we are almost as safe here as in New Zealand, as far as the Boers are concerned. They are too frightened of the English to do much ; but the niggers may rise some day, as they have a frightful set against the Boers, who treat them like brutes.