To cross the Orange River in those days was to go beyond the confines of civilization; but the diamond is a wonderful magnet, and as the news spread a large population of many thousands soon collected. The influx, as time went on, became of the most cosmopolitan character, North, South, East and West adding their quota, gold diggers came from the gulches of California and the creeks of Australia, “Cousin Jacks” from Cornwall, diamond buyers and speculators from London, Paris and Amsterdam, “tinkers, tailors, soldiers, sailors, ploughboys, apothecaries and thieves,” eager at all cost to embrace this chance of sudden wealth. Hardships were endured, money risked, labor spent. Some were lucky, others unlucky. The life on the river, however, is spoken of by the “old hands” as one of happy memory. I should think that thirty different sites were “rushed” by the early diggers on the Vaal,[[23]] and although Pinel and Klipdrift were the principal, yet the banks of the river for at least seventy miles of its course were more or less prospected and worked. As I will presently show, the river diggings after the discovery of diamonds at Du Toit’s Pan and the other three mines became rapidly deserted, until at the present time there are not more than 400 diggers altogether on the banks. The diggings are all in alluvial soil. No great finds are made. The diggers, however, enjoy a healthy, happy existence, surrounded by the beauties of nature, on the banks of a broad and majestic river, which in the early days bore on its broad bosom a perfect flotilla of ferry boats plying for hire day and night, and which even now, on the birthday of our beloved queen and other public holidays, may be seen in goodly numbers, with “youth at the prow and pleasure at the helm,” a very different form of life from the dust and discomfort of the dry diggings. The returns from these diggings are at present about £50,000 per annum.
While men were busily engaged in scraping away among the pebbles of the Vaal River, prospecting was going on some twenty miles southward. The first dry diggings struck were those of Du Toit’s Pan in the middle of 1870, which were worked chiefly by the Dutch, who at that time never thought of testing the ground to a greater depth than eighteen inches or two feet, and who, when they came upon calcareous tufa, abandoned their operations. Shortly afterward, on the adjoining farm, Bulfontein, and within gunshot range of Du Toit’s Pan, diamonds were found in the very plaster which lined the walls of the homestead. Hearing this, many diggers moved over from Du Toit’s Pan and proved the diamondiferous character of this farm, the returns from which, however, were found not to be equal to those of the former place, while a month or two later another diggings named Old De Beers, and situated about a couple of miles north of Du Toit’s Pan, were also opened up. An occurrence which has proved of absorbing interest to the whole of South Africa took place about this time. In July a young man of the name of Rawstorne, who came up from Colesberg in the Cape Colony, was out shooting, and becoming somewhat weary, rested himself under the shades of a thorn bush, and scratching the ground, from, force of habit and to pass the time away, unearthed a beautiful diamond. Highly elated with his unexpected success, when he returned after his day’s amusement to his friends at Old De Beers, he told them of his luck. Next day, the news having got abroad, the locality was “rushed” and hundreds of claims pegged out. The other diggings very soon became practically deserted. Men packed up their belongings, moved their tents, and sought the “New Rush,” and, almost as if by magic, in the very place where but a few days before deer had been quietly browsing, hundreds of diggers could be seen. This famous “Kopje” is now the Kimberley mine, the richness of which it is impossible to estimate. When this mine was first opened the claims were laid out in an oblong of 30 from north to south and 28 from east to west, making in all upon the original plan 840 claims of 30 feet square (Rhynland measure), giving 961 English square feet to each claim. After the whole of the claims were measured and given out, hundreds of others were marked off and worked. Some were very soon abandoned as worthless, but others equally worthless were worked, the owners for some time hoping that a change for the better would take place, and that they would become remunerative. These extended far into the present site of the township, and much valuable time was lost in testing them.
At the present time out of the 420 claims originally worked 339⅕ only remain, and the holdings by various diggers, which at that time amounted to over 1,100, are now reduced to twenty-two companies and individuals. In the same manner Old De Beers with its 592, Du Toit’s Pan with its 1,417, and Bulfontein with its 799 claims, are represented by 6, 34, and 21 holdings respectively.[[24]]
No more wretched existence can be imagined than that endured by the early diggers. As I have already mentioned, a malarial fever raged, water was dear and bad, being carted in barrels from adjacent farms, (after even wells were dug it was sold for as much as 10s. per barrel) and so scarce that I have seen diggers wash in soda water which had been imported 700 miles from Capetown. Vegetables were also extremely dear and almost unprocurable, cauliflowers being retailed at 20s. each and cabbages at 8s., fleas and flies abounded, sand-storms blew in blind fury, and of amusements there were none; yet notwithstanding all these drawbacks, sociability ruled throughout the camps, and a helping hand was always thrown out by a lucky digger to assist his less fortunate brother.
Crime was nearly unknown. As I have mentioned elsewhere, the fields were too far inland and the cost of travel too great to induce any not honestly inclined to suffer the privations and incur the expense necessary to get there. Men would leave their tents for hours, even days, and yet find everything intact on their return, such was the quiet and order which reigned through the camp.
DRYING FLOOR FOR BLUE GROUND, CENTRAL COMPANY, KIMBERLEY MINE.
But as time went on, and as transport became easier, cheaper and quicker, the fields became the rendezvous of, I should say, nearly all the light-fingered gentry and desperadoes that Africa contained; and as a consequence instances of illicit diamond buying, robberies and assaults became comparatively numerous, in fact Kimberley became “civilized.”
At the present day churches and chapels, a theatre and library, a municipal council, with a mayor, a properly drilled police force, a well-kept cemetery, the electric light, a race-course and grand stand, public gardens, with tastefully laid out grounds, an admirably arranged and conducted hospital for whites and blacks, a noble court of justice, a comfortably arranged post-office, telegraphic office, and other public buildings, with last, but not least, a large railway station (which for the present is the terminus of the iron way to the interior), are manifestations of the strides which, thanks to the discovery of the diamond, civilization has made in a region which a few short years ago was simply the hunting field of the untutored savage or the nomadic boer. Barkly, which I have already mentioned, Hebron, Likatlong, Boetsap, Douglas and Campbell are the other towns of the territory, though the Langeberg and some other parts are inhabited; but the description of a late writer that “they are poor—are almost waterless—the trading and mission stations occupied as a rule by the most depraved of the human race, things whose language is a curse or a click, whose forms are inferior to those of apes, and whose doom is extinction,” is perhaps a little too severe on the aborigines of this country.
