tened to, and then loudly cheered by the mob, who, however, proceeded on their way."
Not
long after this jaunt, the Kimberley diggers held a lively meeting at
which they voted unanimously that natives shouldn't be allowed to hold
claims. Until then, a few natives had been permitted to take out
licenses and work on the diggings, but the Europeans complained that
it was a bad practice; it gave the natives an alibi for any stones they
might be caught selling to I.D.B. agents. Besides, as one digger
pointed out, the money a native earned working his own claim wouldn't
do him any good; he would only spend it foolishly. It was resolved at
the meeting that every digger should have the right "to search his own
niggers whenever he chose," and that the government should be urged to
curb I.D.B., if necessary by means of mounted policemen. The boys
probably felt better for gettmg all this off their chests, but I.D.B.
went on. Penalties were duly increased, threats flew thick and fast,
and diamonds kept slipping through. A cartoon drawn at the time to
decorate the edges of a map of the Kimberley mine shows a procession of
huge diamonds attached to native legs walking out past a guard
stationed at a compound entrance.
Of
all the mines that lie under the South African sky, yawning in their
old age, the Kimberley Mine probably has the most interesting story. It
was the goal of the second great rush on the De Beers' property, so it
was first known as the New Rush at De Beers', or De Beers' New Rush.
For a while, it was also called Colesberg Kopje. Kopje, or koppie, means
"hill" in Afrikaans, and it was on a slight elevation in the fiat veld,
a couple of miles north of the site of the Old Rush, that the
discovery that led to the New Rush was made by a group of young
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