thing:
they always put it back into digging. When a man finds a big stone and
earns eight, ten thousand pounds on it, ten to one he just branches out
instead of retiring. Sometimes he goes in for breakwater work. I'd
like to show you a breakwater if I knew where there was one going on. A
breakwater is when you take and dam the river and turn it out of its
bed, and dig where the water's been. That's where you find the very
best stones—big and clear and beautiful. But it costs a lot of money. A
lot of money." His voice trailed off and he concentrated on the road,
which was growing worse as we drove downhill towards a river. At the
best of times South African driving is pretty rugged, but this was
worse than usual. It was not only the road, either, that was getting
more bumpy; the land on either side of it had undergone a lot of
upheaval. Red rock, red dust, red rubble lay tumbled about, showing
that hundreds of diggers had been hard at work over all of it for
incredible distances. The scrubby growth had done its best to hide
chopped-out pits, but bushes and trees couldn't camouflage the damage.
If you wanted to be fanciful, the land looked alive—ravaged and
furious. I said something of the sort, and Mr. Van der Westhuizen
nodded soberly.
"A
lot of work's gone into this country around here," he said. "And a lot
of wealth been taken out of it, too. Mr. Anthony, for instance; he's
spent a long time here at Gong Gong, and done well at it, but it's all
worked out now. I don't see much going on, do you?" The car paused at
the top of a steep incline down to what must have been a river hidden
in a gorge beyond; we saw a steam shovel sticking up gauntly against
the sky. It wasn't working and the pit was empty.
A colored child sat drowsily on the veranda of a tin house
