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THE CAMPS ON THE VAAL
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and driving man and beast to the nearest shelter.1
As a safeguard from these electric bolts the miners commonly put iron
lightning rods alongside of their tent poles and insulated them with
the necks of glass bottles, but the insecurity of this shield was
evident in the occasional shattering of a tent and the killing or
maiming of its occupants.2
Except
for these storms the climate of the Vaal valley was generally
agreeable. The winter days were particularly pleasant, for the sun soon
warmed the air even when the nights were so cold that ice formed on the
face of water-troughs. In midsummer the days were often exceedingly
hot, the mercury rising as high as ioo Fah. in the shade; but the dry
air was not nearly as enervating as the humid atmosphere of summer davs
in Europe or America, and the lightly clothed miners, avoiding the
midday glare, suffered little. There was a notable exemption from
sickness throughout the year, except for diarrhoea and dysentery, and
fever contracted in summer chiefly from the reckless use of unboiled
and unfiltered river water.8
Plain
food of some kind was plentiful and cheap, especially maize meal,
commonly called mealie meal, and mutton and game were brought into the
camp from the neighboring Transvaal and Free State farming and pasture
lands. There were many wild fowls, too, that flocked to the valley of
the Vaal, and several kinds of food fish abounded in the river,
especially one resembling the voracious English barbel, or the catfish
of America, and the one which the miners called "yellow fish." The
chief lack in the food supply was cheap and wholesome vegetables — for
the dearth of these and the excess of meat caused a mild form of scurvy
to appear in the camp. Fuel for cooking was readily cut from the trees
along the river bank or from the thickets in the ravines.4
When
the choice locations on the Klip-drift bank were taken, the influx,
continuouslv moving to the new Diamond Fields from the coast, spread up
and down the river, and little camps sprang
1 The Diamond News, Klip-drift, Nov. 4, 1871. 3 Ibid.
2 " The Diamond Diggings of South Africa," Payton, 1872. * Ibid.
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