neighboring
Boer farmers were generally well pleased with the opening of ready
markets for their produce. Representatives of the Republic were
recognized as officers of the law at Hebron, but there was little
attempt to impress any recognition of its authority on the camps
farther down the Vaal.1
So
the miners at Klip-drift went on digging and scraping the gravel, under
their own simple regulations, month after month, until their busy camp
burst suddenly into an uproar, when the news came in that President
Pretorius and the Executive Council of the Transvaal Republic had
granted to a firm of three privileged persons the exclusive right to
search for diamonds in the territory of the Republic for a term of
twenty years from June 22, 1870, subject to a royalty of six per cent
upon the value of all diamonds discovered.2 There were some
old Australian placer miners on the Vaal River Diamond Fields, and they
doubtless grinned at the thought of the reception that such a
proclamation would have met with at Bendigo and Ballarat; but it was
not necessary for an adventurer to have had a rearing on any gold
placer field to fire his spirit to revolt against an edict of
dispossession and monopoly. It is idle to debate the question of the
technical legal right of the administration of the South African
Republic to make this grant. This may be conceded without affecting the
countering facts of its gross partiality, inexpediency, and practical
futility. The whole regular army of the United States would have been
too small to enforce any such disposition of its mineral lands after
they had been occupied without protest for more than six months by
squatting placer miners, and bare common sense would have sufficed to
inform the administration of the little South African Republic that it
could not give effect to its paper monopoly without a succession of
fights that would add another " Blood River " to the face of South
Africa.
The
instant effect of the grant was a universal uprising and mass meeting
of the Klip-drift camp, and the declaration of the foundation of
another free and independent Republic on the Vaal,
1 " Among the Diamonds," 1870—1871.
2 "South Africa," George McCall Theal, 1888-1 893.
