THE RUSH TO KIMBERLEY
HERE
was a pretty green valley near the Free State settlement of Fauresmith,
hardly a mile in width, but stretching for several miles to the
northeast through ridges of volcanic rock kopjes. Fauresmith lay in the
track of the stream flowing from the coast ports to the
diamond-bearing vallev of the Vaal, but there was no thought of a
probable diamond field on the plateau so far from a river bed. So for
months the adventurers passed on without pausing, except for a night's
camp, on their way to the Vaal. A Boer settler, Cornells Johannes
Visser, had taken up a considerable part of the neighboring valley in
his farm of Jagersfontein, where his house stood in the midst of a gay,
blooming garden. He had died before the discovery of diamonds, but his
farm was held by his widow, Jacoba Magdalena Cecilia Visser, and worked
by an overseer in charge.
A
little stream, flowing from the hills, ran through the valley in the
rainy season, though for the greater part of the year its track was
only marked by a spruit or dry water-course. De Klerk, the overseer,
noticed that many small garnets mixed with pebbles of agate were
sprinkled along the dry bed of this spruit, and learned that the
diggers on the Vaal believed garnets to be an indication of the
presence of diamonds. So he began prospecting one day in August, 1870,
on the line of the spruit, awkwardly sifting the dry gravel and sand
in a common wire sieve. At the depth of six feet he found a fine diamond of fifty carats, and the news of his discovery was soon widely spread throughout the Free State.1
1 "Among the Diamonds," 1870—1871. 164
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