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CHAPTER IV
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THE DISCOVERY
EARLY
two hundred years had passed since the memorable expedition of van der
Stel made known to geographers the Groote River, which, a hundred years
later, was christened the Orange. Before Great Britain took the Cape,
the daring van Reenen had penetrated to Modder Fontein, unconsciously
skirting the rim of a marvellous diamond field. Since the beginning of
the century scores of roving hunters had chased their game over a
network of devious tracks, traversing every nook of the land between
the Orange and the Vaal, and often camping for days upon their banks.
Then the trekking pioneer graziers and farmers plodded on after the
hunters, sprinkling their huts and kraals over the face of the Orange
Free State, but naturally squatting first on the arable lands and
grazing ground nearest the water-courses. So, in the course of years,
in the passage of the Great Trek, thousands of men, women, and children
had passed across the Orange and Vaal, and up and down their winding
valleys, and hundreds, at least, had trodden the river shore sands of
the region in which the most precious of gems were lying.
On the Orange River, some thirty miles above its junction with the Vaal, there was the hamlet of Hopetown, one of the most thriving of the little settlements, and a number of farms
dotted the angle between the rivers. Along the line of the Vaal, for
some distance above its entry into the Orange, there were some
ill-defined reservations occupied by a few weak native tribes, —
Koranas and Griquas, — for whose instruction there
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