160 THE DIAMOND MINES OF SOUTH AFRICA
of which Stafford Parker, one of the leading adventurers, was chosen president.1
This was, on its face, a proceeding that smacked of opera bouffe, but,
like Janus, it had another face. It was a flaunt of determination to
cut off every shred of political connection with the South African
Republic, and hold possession of a slice of rich mining land with a
Colony which, at some future time, if not immediately, Great Britain
might be disposed to welcome and incorporate with her imperial cluster
on the coast. If this hope was not openly avowed at first, it
undoubtedly existed in the minds of many of the diggers, and no time
was lost in communicating the situation to her Majesty's High
Commissioner at the Cape, Lieutenant General Hay.
It
is, however, unlikely that there was any confident expectation of the
endurance of the new Republic founded on a gravel bank whose precious
contents were fast fleeting, but the organization was set up as a
handy resort, on the spur of the moment, to make an imposing show of
resistance to the authority of the South African Republic, and with the
idea of shunning the penalty of forcibly contesting the execution of
the monopoly grant within a recognized district of its domain. Whatever
legal unsoundness there may have been in the construction of the
Klip-drift Republic, and in the notions of its framers, the shaky ship
of state served its main purpose. The administration of the Transvaal
Republic realized their grave blunder too late, and being humane and
peace-loving men, refrained from any attempt to maintain their grant or
their contested authority by force of arms. But they complained
earnestly to the British Colonial authorities of the intrusion and
illegal occupation and insubordination of the squatting adventurers on
the Vaal.
Meanwhile
the diamond diggers did not concern themselves with the remote vexation
of the Boer President and Council, but kept on ransacking the gravel.
Early in the year there had been some straggling prospecting on the
Pniel bank opposite Klip-drift, but the first continuous work on a
south bank placer
1 " South Africa," George -McCall Theal, 1888—1893. "Among the Diamonds," 1870-1 871.
