Diamond Mines: The Rush to Kimberley Page 213



	THE RUSH TO KIMBERLEY	171

	rude rock staircase. This was a rapid and convenient mode of opening ground at the start, but where claims were only thirty feet square, it was clear that no single claim-holder could go far down in this way without reaching a point where the bottom step of his staircase would cover the floor of his claim. For this reason many preferred to mine more slowly in small perpendicular shafts, in whose side little niches, familiarly known as toe holes, were cut, so that agile men could clamber up and down. Or the shaft bottom was reached by means of a knotted rope or riem of rawhide, dangling into the pit from a post set in the ground near the mouth of the shaft. When a bucket was filled with broken rock by a digger working on a pit floor, his mate hauled up the load by winding a rope stretching from the handle over a rude windlass, or by sheer lifting. When only one digger was holding a claim, he was obliged to clamber out of his pit and haul up his bucket whenever he filled it. To extract the diamonds the broken rock was pulverized by beating with shovels and then screened in a common round sieve of coarse mesh, to separate the larger stones that were worthless. After this screening the ground passing through the coarse wire mesh was carefully sifted, a second time, in a rocking sieve of fine, strong wire. This sieve was set in an oblong frame, usually about three feet long and two broad, with handles at one end and deep notches at the other, gripping a narrow strip of rawhide stretched between two upright posts called sieve props. When this rocker was swung rapidly, all the sand and dust fell through the wire mesh, leaving a concentrate of fine chips and little pebbles of limestone, talc, basalt, and trap, carrying a sprinkling of garnets, peridot, and an occasional diamond crystal. This concentrate was then taken to a sorting table and scraped over in the same way as the river gravel.¹ Diamond winning on the upland was easier, at first, than working the river placers ; but there was one common annoyance which was much more irritating on the new fields than at ¹ "The Diamond Diggings of South Africa," Payton, 1872. "Among the Diamonds," 1870-1871.