Swarms
of men were now digging the yellow earth, and other swarms were digging
the boulder-strewn gravel, and soon what had started out as an
occasional camp on the landscape changed to the scene present-day
Kimberley residents point to in blown-up photographs on their walls—a
great jumble of tents, shacks, and iron houses, jostling one another
for space. Kimberley itself sprang up in 1871, though the settlement
was not properly christened until 1873, when it was given the name of
the British Colonial Secretary then in office. It was one settlement
among many, and they were all unlovely but vivid. The life was one of
either constant dust or constant mud. The veld, sparsely covered with
scrub and an occasional camel's-thorn tree, is flat for the most part
and open to burning sun and, occasionally, pelting rain. The first
diggers were in too much of a hurry to contemplate town planning, or
even to make themselves comfortable. They could not be bothered with
trivialities like hygiene; a diggers' camp stank to heaven, and if it
hadn't been for the purifying sun, epidemics would have been graver and
more frequent than they were. After all, to the prospector a mine is a
short-lived thing. There is something in the ground that can be dug out
and sold, and the idea is to dig it out as quickly and cheaply as
possible, dispose of it, and then move on to another cache. This is not
the sort of attitude that leads to town planning; that comes later,
when traders follow the prospectors, women arrive, and men begin to
wash their necks and wonder about schooling for their children.
Very
soon, traders did come to the settlements—first men from the coast and
then men from overseas. They set up shacks and tents near those of the
miners and went into business, selling gear and provisions and, in
many cases, buying diamonds.
