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SOUTH AFRICAN DIAMONDS
the
open pit to underground tunnels; the vast network of wire ropes with
their ascending and descending buckets disappeared, and with it the
cosmopolitan crowd of busy miners working like ants at the bottom of
the pit. In 1905 the main shaft had been sunk to a depth of 2,600 feet
at the Kimberley mine.
How
the great pipes were formed originally is hard to say. They were
certainly not burst through in the ordinary manner of volcanic
eruption, since the surrounding and enclosing walls show no signs of
igneous action and are not shattered or broken up even when touching
the "blue ground". It is pretty certain that these pipes were filled
from below after they were pierced and the diamonds were formed at some
previous times and mixed with mud volcano, together with all kinds of
debris eroded from the rocks through which it erupted. The direction of
flow is seen in the upturned edges of some of the strata of shale in
the walls.
The
scene below ground in the labyrinth of galleries is bewildering in its
complexity and very unlike the popular notion of a diamond mine. All
below is dirt, mud, grime; half-naked men, dark as mahogany, dripping
with perspiration, are seen in every direction, hammering, picking,
shoveling, wheeling the trucks to and fro, keeping up a weird chant
which rises in force and rhythm when a greater task calls for excessive
muscular strain. The whole scene is more suggestive of a coal mine than
a diamond mine, and all this mighty organization, this strenuous
expenditure of energy, this costly machinery, this ceaseless toil of
skilled
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