It has been estimated on good authority that fully twenty million pounds' worth of diamonds has been exported from these fields since the first discoveries. As a pound in English money is equal to very nearly five dollars of our money, we can estimate what the revenue of these mines has been.
It is believed that gems of many million pounds' value lie yet undiscovered in the unexplored portions of the diamond region. Statistics show that about two million pounds' worth of the gems is unearthed annually.
Naturally, the great mineral wealth of this region has attracted thousands to the neighborhood of Kimberley. Formerly, the country was roamed over by Griqua Kaffirs, numbering but a few thousands. Now, the region has become peopled "in spots." Many of the settlements have assumed the importance of towns of considerable size. It is estimated that not only some thirteen thousand whites, but upwards of thirty-three thousand blacks, from all sections of South Africa, have flocked to found such settlements as Kimberley, Bult-fontein, and Du Toit's Pan.
Griqualand West is about one-half as large as Scotland. The country has nothing attractive in its physical features. Indeed, it would be difficult to conceive of a dryer, uglier, drearier, more depressing region than the Diamond Fields. These conditions are intensified when no rain has fallen for months and the thermometer notes a steady increase of temperature day after day, till it reaches 90° in the shade.
The great novelist, Anthony Trollope, visited the Diamond Fields when not a blade of grass could be seen growing on the thirsty ground, and when, as he expressed it, he "seemed to breathe dust rather than air."
His impressions of the Diamond Fields may be judged best from his description: "An atmosphere composed of flies and dust cannot be pleasant,—of dust so thick that the sufferer fears to remove it lest the raising of it may aggravate the evil, and of flies so numerous that one hardly dares to slaughter them by the ordinary means lest their dead bodies should be noisome.
"When a gust of wind would bring the dust in a cloud, hiding everything,—a cloud so thick that it seemed that the solid surface of the earth had risen diluted into the air,—and when flies had rendered occupation altogether impossible, I could be told, when complaining, that I ought to be there in December or February—at some other time of the year than that then present—if I really wanted to see what flies and dust could do. I sometimes thought that the people of Kimberley were proud of their flies and their dust."
Bare and uninviting as this portion of Griqualand West is known to be, there are exceptional tracts along the banks of the Vaal and Orange Rivers, for they are well wooded and not lacking in picturesque beauty of scenery.
Diamond fields have been discovered not only on both sides of the Vaal River, but also in the Orange Free State. At several places in this state the "dry diggings," as they are called, have been very productive; for they may be said to be literally sown with the precious stones.
The early scenes about the diamond diggings cannot have been unsimilar to those witnessed during the mining fever in California, when the hope of securing fabulous amounts of gold drew all sorts and conditions of men to the grounds.