"Ho! that's Kimberley rain," shouted a friend. Looking from a window, the width of the street appeared a solid mass of dust, if the term may be allowed, extending far above the roofs of the houses. "That's the sort of 'rain' we get in Kimberley," he explained. No rain had fallen for six months.
The depth of the diamond mines runs from 1,000 to 2,600 feet. The color of the soil in which the diamonds are found is blue—blue dirt, it is called—which is removed by explosives. Dirt, pebbles and stones are moved in iron trucks with iron covers, and locked. On coming to the surface it is started on gravity railways which extend from two to four miles from the mine. The truck of dirt, weighing about a ton and containing an average of one-third of a karat of diamond, is here dumped on the ground. The "dirt field" contains 1,400 acres of space. Three high barbed wire fences form the inclosure, and police—mounted, on bicycles, and on foot—see that no stranger gets inside the triple barbed-wire fence.
The blue dirt remains in the field from three to six months until, by exposure to the air, it crumbles. A harrow, with teeth 10 inches long, is drawn over the section of field ready for use, when any remaining lumps are broken into fine dirt. The diamond soil is next loaded into trucks and started back to the head of the mine. The dirt is here dumped into a revolving screen, which contains holes for pebbles of certain sizes to drop through. These drop into a revolving round tank, or vat, 14 feet in diameter and about a foot deep, into which water runs. Inside the vat are two large stationary rakes, around which the tank revolves. This is called the washery. The dirt runs out as muddy water, and the rakes serve to move the pebbles to a point in the circular vat where there is an opening. Connecting with this opening is a pipe, down which the stones pass into a steel truck below. When the truck is filled with pebbles, the door is closed and locked.
The truck is now started on a gravity railway to what is called the pulsator, where the nuggets and diamond-bearing stones are separated from those of no value. Here the contents of the truck also are emptied into a revolving screen with graduated holes to allow the pebbles to drop out. The stones of the various sizes now drop into compartments 4 feet long and 18 inches wide—called jigs—which move back and forth. Water runs over the pebbles in the jigs, the light-weight ones washing out and the heavier remaining at the bottom. The pebbles that remain in the jigs are taken out later and put into still another revolving screen. Under the grade sizes of this screen are inclined tables, over which water runs, these having a thickly greased floor, or bottom, on to which the stones drop. The nuggets and diamond-bearing stones stick in the grease, but the non-diamondiferous pebbles pass over. To emphasize how strongly grease acts as a magnet to the precious stones, of the millions and millions of pebbles that are washed over the greased bottoms, which are carefully inspected by experts, rarely is a diamond detected among the culls.
The little lumps on the greased tables—the diamonds covered with grease—might resemble a hand with big warts. The table is cleaned, when the scrapings are treated by a liquid, which renders the diamonds free of grease. They then pass to a sorting room. The sorters are native prisoners, but a white man is over them. Then one negro, very expert in detecting diamonds, examines the stones sorted by the prisoners. From him they pass to a room where two white men again examine them. They are then put into steel cups little larger than a teacup. The cup has a lid to it and a lock. The lid is closed, locked, and the cup labeled. The locked cups next go to the Kimberley office. Every Monday the output of the diamond mines is taken to a train headed for Capetown. That train makes connection with a steamship leaving for Europe on Wednesdays. From England most of the diamonds are sent to Amsterdam, Holland, to be refined.
The reducing character of the diamond mining industry is apt to astonish one. Over 200,000 trucks of dirt are treated daily, and the product from this great quantity of soil is less than a cubic foot. Twenty-three thousand men are engaged in digging, and the diamonds mined by that large force are examined by but four eyes and handled by only four hands in the examining room at the pulsator. The yearly output of the Kimberley diamond mines is from $35,000,000 to $40,000,000.
Credit for bringing to light the first stone found in the Kimberley district, in 1870, is given to an Irishman named O'Reilly. A Dutch boy, whose father's name was Van Niekerk, was playing jackstones. O'Reilly's eye being attracted by a bright stone among those with which the boy was playing, he told the boy's father he thought that particular one was a diamond. O'Reilly's judgment proved to be good, as, when weighed, it was found to be of 22½ karat. The stone was sold for $2,500, O'Reilly and Van Niekerk dividing the money.
On the wagon containing the weekly output of diamonds of the Kimberley mines, and which meets the train that goes to Capetown every Monday afternoon, is seated a white man and a native driver. No attempt has yet been made to rob the wagon while going from the head office of the diamond company to the railway station. This alone may serve to emphasize the grip which law and order has on that community.
A week before a native quits the diamond mines he is kept under strict surveillance. The natives live in compounds, as the kafirs do in the Rand mine compounds, but, unlike the "boys" working in the gold mines, mine "boys" of Kimberley are not allowed outside of the compound except when going to and coming from work, and then only under guard. They are hired for from three months to a year, and are paid from $15 to $30 a month and board. There are seven mines in the Kimberley district, which give employment to 20,000 natives and 3,000 Europeans. Three eight-hour shifts are worked.
Those engaged in the diamond diggings along the banks of the River Vaal carry with them during life a characteristic by which they may be picked out from among men following different pursuits. A fortune—which they all hope for—may escape them if their eyes are raised from the ground for even so brief a time as that required for the wink of an eyelash, as they might thus have missed the fleeting flash of a precious stone just peeping through the soil. For this reason, when engaged in the diamond diggings their eyes are constantly looking downward. After they leave the diggings—when they have spent their savings and become practically starved out—they walk about with bent head, looking at the sidewalk or ground as they did when hand-screening soil and digging alluvial dirt. Some have made fortunes in the diggings, but these are few and far between.