failed
to perceive how those natives whose practice it is to go about in a
state which, for aught to the contrary, may be termed totally nude,
obtrude themselves upon notice, as though they gloried in their
shame—as no doubt they do. The consequence is that no respectable
female can walk the streets . . . without having her sense of sight
shocked in a manner for which there is no earthly excuse."
There
were plenty of smaller vexations, and some larger ones. One letter
writer pointed out waspishly to the editor that the English language
was going to pieces in the camps. His particular grievance was
neologisms—for instance, the word "jumping," for "stealing" or
"sneaking in ahead," and the word "bogey," for "bad" or "faulty." Even
the newspaper, he complained, had got into the habit of using the
adjective "off-colored"—properly applied only to certain diamonds—to
describe the pigmentation of half-caste people. But the letter writer
was obviously fighting for a cause that had already been lost. The
social column of the same issue reported on a diggers' party at which,
after the customary toast "To the ladies!" one guest leaped up and
proposed "Three cheers for the off-colored ones!" According to the
paper, the cheers were vociferous.
The
greatest vexation of all in the settlements was I.D.B., or illicit
diamond buying. Right from the start, native employees filched
diamonds that the claim owners hadn't happened to see and sold them at
prices under the going one. The traders who bought these diamonds were
looked upon as the real offenders (that was why the practice was called
illicit diamond buying), and since nearly everybody who wasn't digging
diamonds was trading in them—innkeepers, horse copers, merchants—the
list of suspects was long. The situation, as a matter
