South Africa, vol. II.

by Anthony Trollope

You are told that the pit has a surface area of 9 acres;—but for your purposes as you will care little for diamondiferous or non-diamondiferous soil, the aperture really occupies 12 acres. The slope of the reef around the diamond soil has forced itself back over an increased surface as the mine has become deeper. The diamond claims cover 9 acres.

You stand upon the marge and there, suddenly, beneath your feet lies the entirety of the Kimberley mine, so open, so manifest, and so uncovered that if your eyes were good enough you might examine the separate operations of each of the three or four thousand human beings who are at work there. It looks to be so steep down that there can be no way to the bottom other than the aerial contrivances which I will presently endeavour to explain. It is as though you were looking into a vast bowl, the sides of which are smooth as should be the sides of a bowl, while round the bottom are various marvellous incrustations among which ants are working with all the usual energy of the ant-tribe. And these incrustations are not simply at the bottom, but come up the curves and slopes of the bowl irregularly,—half-way up perhaps in one place, while on another side they are confined quite to the lower deep. The pit is 230 feet deep, nearly circular, though after awhile the eye becomes aware of the fact that it is oblong. At the top the diameter is about 300 yards of which 250 cover what is technically called “blue,”—meaning diamondiferous soil. Near the surface and for some way down, the sides are light brown, and as blue is the recognised diamond colour you will at first suppose that no diamonds were found near the surface;—but the light brown has been in all respects the same as the blue, the colour of the soil to a certain depth having been affected by a mixture of iron. Below this everything is blue, all the constructions in the pit having been made out of some blue matter which at first sight would seem to have been carried down for the purpose. But there are other colours on the wall which give a peculiar picturesqueness to the mines. The top edge as you look at it with your back to the setting sun is red with the gravel of the upper reef, while below, in places, the beating of rain and running of water has produced peculiar hues, all of which are a delight to the eye.

As you stand at the edge you will find large high-raised boxes at your right hand and at your left, and you will see all round the margin crowds of such erections, each box being as big as a little house and higher than most of the houses in Kimberley. These are the first recipients for the stuff that is brought up out of the mine. And behind these, so that you will often find that you have walked between them, are the whims by means of which the stuff is raised, each whim being worked by two horses. Originally the operation was done by hand-windlasses which were turned by Kafirs,—and the practice is continued at some of the smaller enterprises;—but the horse whims are now so general that there is a world of them round the claim. The stuff is raised on aerial tramways,—and the method of an aerial tramway is as follows. Wires are stretched taught from the wooden boxes slanting down to the claims at the bottom,—never less than four wires for each box, two for the ascending and two for the descending bucket. As one bucket runs down empty on one set of wires, another comes up full on the other set. The ascending bucket is of course full of “blue.” The buckets were at first simply leathern bags. Now they have increased in size and importance of construction,—to half barrels and so upwards to large iron cylinders which sit easily upon wheels running in the wires as they ascend and descend and bring up their loads, half a cart load at each journey.

As this is going on round the entire circle it follows that there are wires starting everywhere from the rim and converging to a centre at the bottom, on which the buckets are always scudding through the air. They drop down and creep up not altogether noiselessly but with a gentle trembling sound which mixes itself pleasantly with the murmur from the voices below. And the wires seem to be the strings of some wonderful harp,—aerial or perhaps infernal,—from which the beholder expects that a louder twang will soon be heard. The wires are there always of course, but by some lights they are hardly visible. The mine is seen best in the afternoon and the visitor looking at it should stand with his back to the setting sun;—but as he so stands and so looks he will hardly be aware that there is a wire at all if his visit be made, say on a Saturday afternoon, when the works are stopped and the mine is mute.

When the world below is busy there are about 3,500 Kafirs at work,—some small proportion upon the reef which has to be got into order so that it shall neither tumble in, nor impede the work, nor overlay the diamondiferous soil as it still does in some places; but by far the greater number are employed in digging. Their task is to pick up the earth and shovel it into the buckets and iron receptacles. Much of it is loosened for them by blasting which is done after the Kafirs have left the mine at 6 o’clock. You look down and see the swarm of black ants busy at every hole and corner with their picks moving and shovelling the loose blue soil.

But the most peculiar phase of the mine, as you gaze into its one large pit, is the subdivision into claims and portions. Could a person see the sight without having heard any word of explanation it would be impossible, I think, to conceive the meaning of all those straight cut narrow dikes, of those mud walls all at right angles to each other, of those square separate pits, and again of those square upstanding blocks, looking like houses without doors or windows. You can see that nothing on earth was ever less level than the bottom of the bowl,—and that the black ants in traversing it, as they are always doing, go up and down almost at every step, jumping here on to a narrow wall and skipping there across a deep dividing channel as though some diabolically ingenious architect had contrived a house with 500 rooms, not one of which should be on the same floor, and to and from none of which should there be a pair of stairs or a door or a window. In addition to this it must be imagined that the architect had omitted the roof in order that the wires of the harp above described might be brought into every chamber. The house has then been furnished with picks, shovels, planks, and a few barrels, populated with its black legions, and there it is for you to look at.

At first the bottom of the bowl seems small. You know the size of it as you look,—and that it is nine acres, enough to make a moderate field,—but it looks like no more than a bowl. Gradually it becomes enormously large as your eye dwells for a while on the energetic business going on in one part, and then travels away over an infinity of subdivided claims to the work in some other portion. It seems at last to be growing under you and that soon there will be no limit to the variety of partitions on which you have to look. You will of course be anxious to descend and if you be no better than a man there is nothing to prevent you. Should you be a lady I would advise you to stay where you are. The work of going up and down is hard, everything is dirty, and the place below is not nearly so interesting as it is above. One firm at the mine, Messrs. Baring Gould, Atkins, & Co. have gone to the expense of sinking a perpendicular shaft with a tunnel below from the shaft to the mine,—so as to avoid the use of the aerial tramway; and by Mr. Gould’s kindness I descended through his shaft. Nevertheless there was some trouble in getting into the mine and when I was there the labour of clambering about from one chamber to another in that marvellously broken house was considerable

and was not lessened by the fact that the heat of the sun was about 140. The division of the claims, however, became apparent to me and I could see how one was being worked, and another left without any present digging till the claim-owner’s convenience should be suited. But there is a regulation compelling a man to work if the standing of his “blue” should become either prejudicial or dangerous to his neighbours. There is one shaft,—that belonging to the firm I have mentioned; and one tramway has been cut down by another firm through the reef and circumjacent soil so as to make an inclined plane up and down to the mine.