Hardly any of them had taken out a permit, and therefore their leader Mr Quinn was warned to appear along with the Indians. For some time at any rate Mr Quinn put in very useful work.
I would like to introduce to the reader one out of the several leading Indians who constituted the first batch of prisoners, Shri Thambi Naidoo. Thambi Naidoo was a Tamilian born in Mauritius where his parents had migrated from Madras State. He was an ordinary trader. He had practically received no scholastic education whatever. But a wide experience had been his schoolmaster. He spoke and wrote English very well, although his grammar was not perhaps free from faults. In the same way he had acquired a knowledge of Tamil. He understood and spoke Hindustani fairly well and he had some knowledge of Telugu too, though he did not know the alphabets of these languages. Again, he had a very good knowledge of the Creole dialect current in Mauritius which is a sort of corrupt French, and he knew of course the language of the Negroes. A working knowledge of so many languages was not a rare accomplishment among the Indians of South Africa, hundreds of whom could claim a general acquaintance with all these languages. These men become such good linguists almost without effort. And that is because their brains are not fatigued by education received through the medium of a foreign tongue, their memory is sharp, and they acquire these different languages simply by talking with people who speak them and by observation. This does not involve any considerable strain on their brains but on the other hand the easy mental exercise leads to a natural development of their intellect. Such was the case with Thambi Naidoo. He had a very keen intelligence and could grasp new subjects very quickly. His ever-ready wit was astonishing. He had never seen India. Yet his love for the homeland knew no bounds. Patriotism ran through his very veins. His firmness was pictured on his face. He was very strongly built and he possessed tireless energy. He shone equally whether he had to take the chair at meetings and lead
