08: Durban to Kimberley & DeBeers Diamond Mine

View Larger Map

From Durban I was assigned to labor in Kimberley, the diamond city, with Elder Herman J. Smith of Draper. That city is largely on property owned by DeBeers Mines Consolidated. Two mines were being operated in the town area, but the big Kimberley Mine was idle. They mined soft blue shale stone from volcanic pipes. This was hauled to the direct treatment plant where it was broken up and washed with water from the Vaal River. The heaviest of the mud was put into small mine cars with locked covers and hauled to the pulsater plant. Here the mixture is washed further and run over shaking slopped grease tables. The diamonds stick to the grease. Nearly all rough diamonds have the conventional diamond shape. They are cut in half and additional facets are added. An occasional diamond comes in the flat shape. The riches diamond “blue ground” had about one karat per ton of the shaley material dug out. Material discarded at the pulsater plant is largely small flinty or agate-like stone.

DeBeers Work Shops

Kimberley

June 1931

Elder Herman J Smith (l)

Brother Thomas Wilson

Elder Clarence E. Randall in the Pulsator

(Separates diamonds by shaking, flotation, etc.)

Kimberley, July 1931

The following are unidentified photos, but are all probably the diamond mines/area.

All the workers around diamond mines either were white bosses or native convicts or contracted labor. The blacks are kept locked up on the premises. Diamonds are cut on small turntables which revolve. The diamond itself is held in plastic against the turntable, with water and diamond dust applied to the revolving surface to serve as cutting agent. DeBeers Co. with additional mines near Pretoria, monopolizes the diamond market. With large reserves, they could flood the market at any time and break the prices. All ground in the Kimberley area is washed and treated by pulsater as it may be excavated. Illicit diamond burying is forbidden by law but is a common crime. Broken glass is scattered indiscriminately to discourage looking for diamonds. It is forbidden by law to possess an uncut diamond without a permit for digging.

Hart going over.  Match between America and Griqua's.

Kimberley
[There are two similar pictures, one states "Hart going up" another, "Troup clearing the pole."]

07: Veterinary Research Laboratory, May 1931

Afrikander Bull

Onderstepoort, Tvl.

Vet. Research Laboratory

May 1931 

Government  research man at Onderstepoort Transvaal explaining to Elder Herman J. Smith about the ticks of South Africa.

Veterinary Research Laboratory

May 8, 1931

06: Robertson to Durban, 1930

View Larger Map
Next Monday morning doors were slammed in our faces. We found Dutch Reformed Church clergy were walking down the streets ahead of us and warning the people to beware of us.

Brother Herbst was told that Reverend Snyman had preached a hell-raiser against us in his beautiful church Sunday. He had told them that we were trying to kidnap their daughters.

So we left Robertson (A) for the homeward trip. We spent the first night at the Visser cottage where we were welcomed heartily. We were able to catch a lift on a pickup truck over steep Bain’s Kloof (B). We spent the next night in the home of the foster parents of Brothers Alvin and Walter Park at Stikland (C), and reached Mowbray (D) that evening.

Perhaps church members at a church function?  Women with banners.

Back of picture reads:

Dolly Green, Minnie Fouche, Nellie Fouche, Nellie Bolleurs (VIRTUE?), Maud Grotique (LOVE), Myrtle Clark, Dolly Bolleurs, Sr. Fouche (MOTHERHOOD), Lily Clark, Sr. Brummer, Mrs. Green

April 1930 or soon after

The Visser boys wrote to me regularly. They wanted an air rifle so I sent them a good pellet gun.

Soon after, President Dalton assigned me to open up the Durban District again. There were only about 14 missionaries in South Africa and less than 1,000 members.

I rode with him by railway to Port Elizabeth (E) where we stayed a day or two. Here I met Elder Clare B. Christensen of American Fork, whose sister I later met and married. Here the wind only blew once a year - all the time!

We also stopped at East London (F). Natives would come out to sell fruit and to beg at each train stop. One day President Dalton was catching up on his journal and asked to borrow mine to help fill in. I replied, “If you can stand it I can!”

One night at Mowbray (G) he had decided to give the ten minute talk on church history requested by the General Authorities. I recorded in my journal: “President Dalton gives one hour and 50 minute harangue on church history for ten minute talk scheduled.” Years later I noticed an addition written in the margin: “President Widtsoe (London, European Mission), says ‘Do not curb the spirit.’ I wish you would remember this, Elder Barker.”

Elder A. Kay Berry

recovering from a burn

Durban - 74 Cromwell Rd.

June 1930

I caught a British Union Castle ship (a beauty) from East London to Durban (H). I rented a room in the Berea district at a place on Cromwell Road that had huge avocado trees in the front yard. Elder A. Kay Berry joined me soon. I met a George Canning and was able to baptize him later. Durban was terribly hot in the summer, with no air conditioning. In those days each elder tracted separately, usually across the street from his companion, so we could get to more places. We had no prepared lesson system. We baptized a Knicklebein family.

Start of the July Handicap

Durban

July 1930

266 Frere Rd.

Durban, Natal

George C. Canning

Durban Beach

Dec. 1930

I would rewrite the newsletters and mail them back to Mowbray for Cumorah’s Southern Cross.

03: Australia to South Africa

In early June I boarded the "Themistocles," an Aberdeen-White Star British freighter, about twice as big as the “Lurline,” which burned coal rather than the oil used to power the “Lurline.”

Image:  Google Images

The ship stopped at Melbourne (A) and Adelaide (B), at each of which places I went inland to visit with the elders and see the small branch chapels. Then we headed across the great Australian Bight through some very rough seas to Perth (C).

I had many gospel conversations with Australian and British passengers, but made no converts. I read B. H. Roberts New Witnesses for God, and Joseph F. Smith’s Gospel Doctrine.

Crossing the Indian Ocean again we had some very rough weather, so rough that they had to put up guard rails on the tables to prevent the plates from sliding off. We evidently had some kind of radio beacon because the ship headed right into Durban (D) harbor through pouring rain and heavy clouds. No sun had shone for several days.

After clearing customs I was greeted by a blue uniformed fellow who said he had come to arrest me. It was a put-up job, however, since he told me he was a Mormon, Henry J. Trestrail. Elder Bertram J. Cutforth from Moreland, Idaho also met me.

View Larger Map

02: American Samoa to Australia

View Larger Map

Next stop was American Samoa (A), port of Pago Pago, with mountains nearby where more than 365 inches of rain fall each year. Jungle all around. Visited our mission home and chapel there. Very hot and humid climate. Saw native houses.

Next Suva, Fiji Islands (B). We were told that the thick-lipped, curly headed natives were Negroid—we had no mission there. Later President David O. McKay said, "Who says they are Negro?” And we have been baptizing them since. We walked into the interior, enjoyed bananas and coconut milk, saw native grass shacks.

After heavy storm which really shook up our 5,000 ton steamship, Matson Lines "Lurline," we landed at Sydney, sailing up a long inlet to that wonderful natural harbor. I was the only one of the four elders who did not get sea sick during that bad storm.

Sydney (C) was a big city with Victorian style buildings. Big harbor bridges were then under construction, although these were not completed for many years. There was rather a small congregation at Enmore, mission headquarters, a section of Sydney. President Clarence H. Tingey, after I had found that I could not catch a ship for South Africa until June, assigned me to a suburb, Bankstown, where I labored with Elder Lowell Brown of Lehi for two months. Homes there had water pipes on the outside since there were no real freezes. Stores wrapped a loaf of bread at convenience of a customer in a sheet of newspaper. You bought milk in a pitcher you took with you to the store. Homes were without heating other than a fireplace sometimes and sometimes a tiny coal kitchen range, usually in an alcove. It was cold.

With Elder Brown I lived in a small apartment behind the Ranks town Branch chapel which had been built of lumber by members. There was good bus and electric train service. The railroad employees were government employees and therefore not polite nor overly helpful to the public.

Questions/Comments:

• Apparently there have been several ships named the Lurline.
• It was interesting reading of the conditions in Sydney -- that bread was wrapped in a newspaper and you had to bring your own pitcher for milk.

05: Knoppie and Other People

View Larger Map
After some bad tire trouble which a bicycle repairman kindly helped us solve, we went up Bain’s Kloof (canyon) for a steep shortcut to the road to Robertson. It was tough pushing up that road in the heat. At a small hotel at the top we ran into a convention of Dutch Reformed Church ministers. They invited us to sit down and have some grapes and listened to us briefly. I told them that we had the restored Gospel including authority from God. They said they believed that if what they preached and taught made people live good lives that this was sufficient. Shortly before the Dutch Reformed Church at Stellenbosch had tried a Dr. DuPlessis, one of their teachers at their school for clergymen, for heresy. He was telling them that (too) much of the Bible was figurative, including Jonah and the big fish. This story had rated headlines in the newspapers.

We were fed supper and given a good bed by a Boer family at Brede River. They had us take a swim in the shallow river, which was very welcome.

Proceeding south through barren windy country we saw about a dozen wild ostriches. Late in the afternoon as we were pedaling along we saw twin farmer boys about 13 years old. They were very eager and invited us to their home. They had a big Boer-Dutch (Afrikaans) speaking mother who welcomed us, fed us and prepared cots for us. After eating we read from the Bible and then prayed.

Then she started to pray (we were all kneeling) and she was soon shouting her prayers. They were Apostolic (I think we call them Jehovah’s Witnesses). It rained that night and in the morning the boys hitched up a donkey cart and hauled clay to bolster their adobe brick home. It had earth floors and thatched roof but it was kept clean as a pin. We rode into Robertson comfortably after leaving the Berend and Henry Visser (boys’) home in the morning.

Brother and Sister John Herbst and their four daughters welcomed us and fed us royally as well as providing a comfortable bed. The third eldest girl, Alma, was re-headed, curious, smart, and lovable. We called her Knoppie (Red Top). She would have had us talking Afrikaans with her if we had stayed more than a week with them. We tracted the town quite thoroughly, at first getting good response and being invited in about every home. We called on the Dutch Reformed Church predikaant (preacher), a Reverend Snyman. He was very polite and cordial to us and explained that we were there for only a few days. His people, he said, were friendly and hospitable as long as he told them to be, and he promised, he would say nothing bad about us.

Alma "Knoppie" Herbst

Robertson, C.P.

January 1930 

04: In South Africa

View Larger Map I was astonished at the thousands of natives dressed in castoff clothing and even gunny sacks. They heaved the coal and did the dock work. Ashore there were gaudily dressed native rickshaw boys, some with great horns on headdresses. The latter were for posing for photographs.

I stayed overnight and tracted the next morning, working with Elder Rex C. Ellsworth, from Safford, Arizona, who later owned the racehorse "Swaps" which won a big prize. Elder Evan P. Wright, then back in Utah, sent Rex a wire offering him a get rich quick scheme selling brassieres to the natives of South Africa.

Durban has a beautiful beach, natural harbor and beautiful green hills, called the Berea area, above the flatlands. It also had a big native market where you could buy bananas for less than 12 cents a dozen, and a large East Indian section. Mahatma Ghandi was born in Durban.

There were electric two-decker tramways. Once when I later labored in Durban, Elder A. Kay Berry and I rode the tram and inadvertently left our two tennis rackets in the car. They were held by the tram company until we picked them up. Youngsters in South Africa received very British education and were honest. No European would smoke a pipe, because the natives smoked pipes.

Left to Right: Clarence, Elder Thomas Y. Wilson, Pres. Don Mack Dalton, George Maus

I next went by the same ship around Cape of Good Hope to Capetown, mission headquarters. President Don Mack Dalton (he was a lawyer with a wife and two sons they adopted) had me labor at mission headquarters several months. I was commissarion and news editor of Cumorah’s Southern Cross. I rewrote the news letters sent in by each district and wrote other copy for the monthly.

President Dalton was strong on selling Books of Mormon. One Elder, Wells L. Evans, from Bountiful, was a high power salesman for first contact, but not much good on follow-ups. He made lecture tours of the mission showing lantern slides and lecturing on Book of Mormon archaeology. He used S.O.A. after his named (student of archaeology). Once he sold Books of Mormon at 50 cents a piece to about 15 nuns following his lecture at a convent. They did not know the title of the book they were burying. I mailed the books to the convent from Mowbray. Elder Evans later married in South Africa dn did not win an honorable release.

I made a three week trip by bicycle without purse or script with Elder Kenneth Sutherland, a little Scotsman who had qualified as an engraver in Aberdeen, and come to Capetown, to Robertson.

Our first night about 20 miles outside Capetown, we spent with a man and his East Indian wife, who was very hospitable.

The next night was at Wellington, a beautiful town in a rich fruit growing area along the Berg River. It was not far from Paarl (Pearl) named from a huge granite hill around which the hane poot grapes grew in great profusion. We did not have a bit of luck finding anyone who would let us stay with them overnight until about 11:15 p.m. when a hospitable woman with a native servant invited us to sleep on cots on her front porch. We were delighted.

On top of Table Mountain

January 1930 

Cape Town

Table Mountain: Wikipedia

Devil's Peak

from dormitory window, "Cumorah",

Cape Town

January 1931

Devil's Peak: Wikipedia

The Paarl Rock (granite)

Paarl, C.P.

Elder Kenneth Sutherland & push bikes

January 1930

Paarl: Wikipedia