Part 5 (1/2)
Whilst affecting still to disbelieve in my find, my partners now treated me with more respect. Towards them I a.s.sumed a patronizing att.i.tude. They no longer tried to force me to do cattle-herding. Day by day the finds grew richer and more important. So far as I remember, it was on the third day that Government sent officials to verify boundaries and make a general survey of the surface of the mine. Each individual had been, I think, permitted to mark out two claims. But the ”rush” had been so swift that very few had been able to avail themselves of this privilege.
A certain amount of ”hustling” was attempted; ”roughs,” who had come in late, occasionally tried to bully those who looked ”soft” out of their ground. Being quite a youngster, I was, naturally, the kind of game these gentry were seeking. However, I sought and obtained help among my Kaffrarian friends, so when two glib tongued scoundrels endeavored to claim my burrow on the score of prior occupation, they were soon hunted off. Messrs. Tom Barry and George Ward were entrusted by the Landdrost with the survey. Ward, who had been in the Austrian Army, was an exceedingly handsome man. He was killed in the Kaffir War of 1879, not far from the Taba 'Ndoda.
I think it was on the third day after the rush that Brown, who was the only moneyed man among us, first expressed his full belief in the mine.
We were seated under a camel-thorn close to the edge of the kopje, and were just about to begin our midday meal. Brown, who had been unusually silent, put down his rosterkoek and pannikin of coffee. Then he stood up, saying:
”Yes; there are diamonds here, right enough. I'll go and buy another claim.”
In about half an hour he returned, looking very hot and ill-tempered as he threw himself down on the sand.
”I'm d.a.m.ned if they're not asking ten pounds apiece for claims,” said he; ”did you ever hear of anything so ridiculous?”
Within a few weeks it was amply proved that the new mine was one of enormous richness. Day by day large and valuable stones were unearthed.
On some sorting-tables the finds ran up to as many as five and twenty diamonds per day. People flocked in by thousands from the surrounding camps. At Du Toit's Pan, Bultfontein, and De Beers claims were abandoned wholesale.
As though by magic the vast plains surrounding ”New Rush,” as it now came to be called, became populous. A great city of tents and wagons sprang up like mushrooms in a night. There was at first no attempt at orderly arrangement; each pitched his camp wherever he listed. How, eventually, streets and a market square came to be laid out is more than I can explain. I would not like to guess at the number of people and tents surrounding the mine three months after the latter was rushed, but the tents alone must have figured to many thousands. Money literally abounded. I have more than once seen fools lighting their pipes with bank-notes, thus giving the banks concerned a present of the face value. One of the men I saw indulging in this pastime I came across a few years later in a remote goldmining camp. He was then almost starving.
Sanitary arrangements did not exist. Although disagreeable in the extreme, this did not matter so very much as long as the weather was cool and dry, but later, under the summer sun and the then frequent thunder showers, fever began to take its toll. The epidemic was called ”diamond-field fever,” and was supposed to be a malady peculiar to the neighborhood. But I am convinced that it was neither more nor less than ordinary enteric the inevitable concomitant of the neglect, on the part of a crowded community, of ordinary sanitary precautions.
The character of the population soon changed. At first the ordinary colonist predominated the kind of man who had hitherto led the simple life, in most cases that of a farmer. He was very often accompanied by his whole family. At that time many a farm, especially in the Eastern Province, must have been tenantless, or else left in charge of native servants. But as the fame of the rich and ever richer finds went abroad, a cosmopolitan crowd of wastrels and adventurers poured in from the ends of the earth. However, there never was in those early days anything like the lawlessness that afterwards as much under British as under Republican rule prevailed on the Rand. The great stay of law and order was the individual digger, and this element of stability has always been missing at the goldfields, except in the few instances where alluvial mining has been pursued.
The first serious result of the changed conditions was the development of illicit diamond-buying, ”I.D.B.” as it came to be called. This was due to white men of the undesirable cla.s.s tempting native servants to steal from their masters' claims. The clearing-houses for this kind of trade were found to be the low canteens. When the evil had reached a certain pitch and there was no adequate law to deal with it, the better cla.s.s of diggers took the matter in hand, according to the methods of Judge Lynch, and burnt down the more notorious establishments. This was done calmly, judicially, and without any unnecessary violence.
CHAPTER V
My claim a disappointment--Good results attained elsewhere--A surprised Boer--”Kopje wallopers”--Thunderstorms--A shocking spectacle--”Old Moore”
and his love affair--The morning market--Attack of enteric--I go to King William's Town to recruit Toby once more--A venture in onions--Return to Kimberley--The West End mess--The Rhodes brothers--Norman Garstin--H. C.
Seppings Wright--”Schipka” Campbell--Cecil John Rhodes--A game of euchre The church bell--Raw natives--Alum diamonds--Herbert Rhodes and the cannon His terrible end.
My ”burrow” claim, which was situated near the north end of No. 7 Road, did not turn out to be the fountain of riches I had antic.i.p.ated. As a matter of fact we never found another diamond in it. Under its thin crust of limestone was an inconsiderable layer of very poor diamondiferous gravel. Beneath this lay a ma.s.s of blue shale, of the variety known as ”floating reef.” The latter filled the claim, as well as several of those adjoining it, to a depth, as it turned out, of between forty and fifty feet. Below the shale the ground proved to be rich enough. But within a few weeks of the rush we sold this piece of ground for 40 pounds.
However, our half claim in No. 9 Road paid very well indeed. For several months our finds there averaged from three to five diamonds per diem. None of the stones were large; the heaviest weighed only about fourteen carats, and the general quality was exceptionally poor.
Nevertheless, we sold the proceeds of about four months' work for nearly 600 pounds. Of this I received one quarter.
It is curious now to reflect that we, in common with many others, were convinced that it would never pay to work to a greater depth than about ten feet. At first every claim holder sank a ”paddock,” its dimensions being about eight by twelve feet. The ground lifted out was then sifted on the yet unbroken portion of the claim. The largest clods were extracted by means of a sieve with a very wide mesh, and then pulverized in a very perfunctory manner with clubs and pick-heads. The result was cleared of sand in a sieve with a fine mesh, the contents of which were poured on to a table, usually measuring about five feet by four, and sorted. It was in the course of this sorting that most of the diamonds weighing from ten carats downward were found. Larger stones were generally observed either when the ground was loosened in the claim or else in the large sieve. But there can be no doubt that millions of pounds' worth of diamonds were thrown away, owing to the clods not being properly pulverized.
I remember the case of a very old Boer, who was practically a pauper, finding a 90-carat stone when scratching on the side of a rubbish heap.
The finder's agitation was so great that he picked up his treasure and bolted incontinently. A few people who saw what had happened gave chase, and within a few minutes his following had increased to several hundreds. The old man sped down the street, rushed into Crowder's store, sprang over the counter, and took refuge among some sugar bags which lay beneath. For a long time he could not be persuaded that the crowd was actuated only by curiosity, and had no furtive intent.
As may be imagined, the detritus in the claims soon became a serious embarra.s.sment. Many claims were heaped up to such an extent that further work, pending the getting rid of the rubbish, became impossible. For those whose holdings lay close to the edge of the mine the problem was simple enough; all they had to do was to keep one or two natives, with barrows, removing the sand and gravel as soon as these had been sifted and sorted. But for those such as ourselves, whose claims lay more or less in the centre of the mine, the problem was a very different one. It sounds hardly credible, but after consultation we came to the conclusion that it would never pay to clear the ground by removing the rubbish, so we solved the problem by filling in the ”paddock” we had sunk with the ground excavated therefrom, and opening another alongside. We unanimously decided that the portion of the claim we had sunk to a depth of about eleven feet was done with as a paying proposition. However, it was not very long before we were ridiculing our miscalculations in this respect.
According to the mining regulations, a portion of every claim had to be left standing. These portions, respectively, lay to the right-hand side of one claim and the left of another. Together they formed roadways running right across the mine. There were, I think, fourteen such roadways. They ran parallel with each other, and provided, for a time, access to every claim from the edge of the mine.
There were so far no laws regulating the diamond trade, so a swarm of itinerant diamond buyers were let loose on the community. Many of these were young men, who were averse to manual labor, but whose business instincts were acute. ”Kopje Wallopers” was the generic term by which such dealers were known. The equipment of a kopje walloper consisted of a cheque-book, a wallet known as ”a poverty bag,” a set of scales, a magnifying-gla.s.s, and a persuasive tongue. In the course of a morning one's sorting-table might be visited by a dozen of them. Naturally enough they tried to make the best bargain circ.u.mstances permitted, but on the whole their dealings appeared to be fair enough.
During the summer months the vicinity was occasionally visited by violent thunderstorms, with deluging rain. Such were always welcomed, for they laid the almost intolerable dust. Considering the severity of these storms there were but few accidents from lightning. However, I recall one occasion when three fatalities resulted from three successive flashes. One almost unbearably hot afternoon in 1872 a small, globular, solid looking cloud pa.s.sed slowly over the mine.
Otherwise, the sky was almost clear. There was not a drop of rain.
Within the s.p.a.ce of about eight minutes the three strokes fell. The first killed a mule just at the edge of the mine; the second struck two men, Europeans, who were engaged in stretching a wire rope at the western end of the mine; the third killed a Native who was sifting gravel about fifty yards from where I was standing. The stroke pierced his neck from back to front at the base of the skull; then it ran across the sieve which he was holding in his hands and over which he was bending. It melted every third wire in its course, and made a small hole, such as might have been made with a red-hot brad-awl, through the wood. The unfortunate victim afforded a shocking spectacle, for his tongue swelled enormously and protruded from his mouth for about nine inches.