176 THE DIAMOND MINES OF SOUTH AFRICA
nize
any assertion of legal claims that took the form of monopoly titles.
The first diggers on the Bultfontein farm were warned off by the owners
for trespass. There was a momentary hesitation till the rush was
swelled by numbers so large that the forbidden ground was "jumped" in
an hour, and diggers upturned the soil to the very door of the
farmhouse. Then the owners called on the Orange Free State police for
help, and the miners were driven away for some days ; but the certainty
of another irresistible rush was so ominous that, toward the end of
May (1871), the proprietors opened the field to all comers on payment
of a license of ten shillings a month for each claim of thirty feet
square.1 In the grants of farms by the Dutch East India
Company there had been no reservation of mineral rights, but from the
time of the cession to Great Britain, MacNab says the grant of lands
did not carry a title to " precious stones, gold, and silver," which
were explicitly excluded, and in i860 it was enacted in
