138 THE DIAMOND MINES OF SOUTH AFRICA
bank!
— the confused clustering at the ford — the rambling of stragglers
along the shore — the gravel cracking and grinding under the hoofs of
the horses and ponies racing along the bank and rearing, plunging, and
bucking at the check of the bits and prick of the spurs — the
outspanning and inspanning of hundreds of oxen — the swaying and
creaking wagons — the writhing, darting lash of the cracking whips of
the drivers — the sulking, balking oxen, driven into long, straining
lines that dragged the ponderous, canvas-arched "prairie-schooners"
through the turbid water and over the quaking sands — the whistling,
shouting, yelling, snorting, neighing, braying, squeaking, grinding,
splashing babel — the scrambling up the steep Klip-drift bank — the
scattering of the newcomers — the perching of the white-topped wagons
and the camp-tents like monstrous gulls on every tenable lodging place
on bank, gully, and hillside — the scurrying about for wood and water —
the crackling, smoking, flaming heaps of the camp fires — the steaming
pots and kettles swinging on cranes — the great placer face, pockmarked
with holes and heaps of reddish sand, clay, and gravel — the long
stretches of the miners' rockers and troughs at the water's edge — and
chief of all in interest, the busy workmen, sinking pits and throwing
out shovelfuls of earth, filling buckets and hauling them up with
ropes, loading and shaking the rockers, driving carts full of heavy
gravel to the water troughs, returning for new loads, scraping and
sorting the fine, heavy pebbles on tables or flat rocks or boards
spread on the ground !
No
labored, crawling recital can compass and picture in print any approach
to the instant impress on the eye and ear of the moving drama on the
banks of the Vaal. Observer after observer groped vainly for graphic
comparison. " Klip-drift is a swarm of bees whose hive is upset," said
one, " a bank lined with ant-hills," wrote another, prosily ; " a wild
rabbit warren, scurried by a fox," ventured a third; " an insane asylum
turned loose on a beach," sneered a fourth. It was a mushroom growth
of a seething placer-mining camp in the heart
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