CHAPTER XIII.
I. D. B.
POPULATION OF THE DIAMOND FIELDS.—KAFIR EATING-HOUSES AS DECOY PLACES.—RUMORS OF TRIBUTE IN DIAMONDS BY NATIVES TO THEIR CHIEFS.—INGENUITY OF NATIVE THIEVES.—CELEBRATED CASE, QUEEN VS. VOGEL.—“HAPPY CHILD OF HAM.”—GRADES THROUGH WHICH A STOLEN DIAMOND PASSES.—SPURIOUS NOTES AND GLASS DIAMONDS.—CASE BEFORE MR. JUSTICE DWYER AT BEAUFORT WEST.—HIGH HANDED CONDUCT OF DETECTIVE DEPARTMENT.—TWO BISHOPS AND A SENATOR SEARCHED.—FREETOWN AND OLIPHANSFONTEIN.—A STARTLING EXPOSURE.—TRIAL OF NOTORIOUS HIGHWAYMEN.—SOCIAL GRADES OF I. D. B.’S, OR ILLICIT DIAMOND BUYERS.
The diamond, from its value, its portability, and the ease with which it can be secreted, has offered in India, Brazil and the Cape, at all times, a great temptation to dishonesty to those engaged in winning it from the soil.
Whether we refer to the works of the English traveler, William Methold, who visited the mines near Golconda in 1622, (where there were 30,000 laborers then at work) and mentions that it was impossible to prevent the abstraction of diamonds; those of Tavernier, the French traveler, who visited the Indian mines in 1766; Mawes’ description of the Brazilian diggings in the same century, where, in spite of the strict watch maintained over the slaves employed, they managed to steal half of the diamonds produced, or we study contemporary literature with regard to the mines of Griqualand West, we find that although most severe punishments have always been inflicted with a view to stamp out theft, they have never hitherto been completely successful.
With this subject, however, I shall deal in a future chapter; in this I intend to treat of the rise and progress of the I. D. B. (illicit diamond buying) trade, and describe the various devices adopted by the black thieves and white receivers.
On the Vaal River diggings there was very little thieving. The semi-patriarchal state of society existing there was not conducive to such a crime, and moreover the natives had not yet acquired a knowledge of the value of diamonds or “klips”[[36]] as they were then termed. Each digger had brought from the Cape Colony, Natal, the Free State, or Transvaal, his own servants, hired for a stated time; he lived in their midst, gave them both food and physic with his own hands, temptation they were delivered from, as they dared not roam about, and they generally remained honest and faithful.
This state of things, however, did not last long, as dishonest white men and cute natives soon put the unsophisticated savage in the way they wished him to go; but it was not until a large population had gathered round the dry diggings, composed of the Du Toit’s Pan, Bulfontein, Old De Beers and the New Rush, or Kimberley mines, in 1870 and 1871, that diggers began to be alive to the enormous losses they were sustaining through the robberies of their native servants. At this time the white population might roundly be estimated at from 20,000 to 25,000, and the natives and colored people at from 40,000 to 50,000 souls, or to be within the mark say 60,000 altogether.
Now it could not be expected that this motley crew, gathered from all the four quarters of the globe, would be without some black sheep among them. This quickly became alarmingly apparent, for although the early diggers, attracted by the chance of sudden fortune, were mostly old, respectable colonists, Boers owning farms, and men who had lived in South Africa many years, yet very soon “camp followers,” as debased as any who ever hung on the rear of an army, began to arrive, drawn from the purlieus of European cities; London sending from Whitechapel and Petticoat Lane her quota of fried-fish dealers, old clo’ men, quondam fruit merchants, and “vill you buy a vatch” gentry, who speedily brought their home experience into profitable use.
The South African native, especially the Zulu, is, as a rule, naturally honest. The fact irresistibly forces upon us the conclusion, however reluctantly we may accept it, that the natives were first taught to thieve by white receivers of stolen goods.
In those days the Basutos, the Shangaans, the natives from the neighborhood of the Zambesi and the Limpopo, left their kraals and their happy hunting grounds in the far interior (allured by the glorious reports of the money which they could earn) to trudge hundreds of miles on foot for work in the mines, imbued with but one object, the height of their ambition, which was to become the proud possessor of a rifle or other gun.
The quicker this could be effected the sooner they could return to their homes; consequently the unscrupulous white man found apt scholars enough to his hand in these poor blacks, who rapidly learned to steal all the diamonds on which they could lay their fingers.