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KIMBERLEY
19
guese, English, and various native dialects—but on the veld and in Kimberley everyone has spoken Afrikaans for at least a century. Mr. Beet, whose grandparents came to Kimberley from England during the diamond rush, had no problem communi­cating with Jacobs, for he speaks Afrikaans fluently, but he did have other problems. "Jacobs was an old man," Mr. Beet told me. "He had told his story many times, but there were many things he didn't remember. Why, he didn't even remember the year he found his diamond! I tried to pin him down, I worked him hard, but even so there's a lot to be desired in his account." Mr. Beet had translated and transcribed Jacobs' account, and he let me read it, leaning over me and breaking in fre­quently as I did so.
I was born on the 23rd October, 1851 [the account started], and at the time my life story began our family lived on the farm "de Kalk," on the south side of the Orange River, in the district of Hope Town . . . My parents were then well-to-do, and my father, Daniel Jacobus Jacobs, owned the farm "de Kalk," and also many cattle and sheep.
"The first finds weren't made at Kimberley, of course," Mr. Beet pointed out. "They were made along the rivers—the Vaal, north of here, and the Orange, to the south. It was some time before the diggers learned about what we call 'dry' mining."
I did not herd the livestock, but used to help my father in general work about the farm [Jacobs went on]. One day a water pipe leading out of a dam became choked up, and my father sent me out on the veldt to cut a long thin branch of a tree that could be used to clear the pipe. Having secured what I