waving
feathers and gleaming earrings and bracelets. Others vied with this
show in greasy red shakos, faded blouses, and other cast-off equipments
of soldiers and hunters. So the parade ran down to the barest loin
cloth or utter nakedness, through leopard skin wraps, dirty karosses,
ragged breeches, tattered shirts, and every other meagre covering of
the native hunter or shepherd. Some of this drift to the mines tramped
more than a thousand miles over mountain ridges and sun-scorched veld,
swimming through rivers, scrambling down steep ravines, and plunging
deep in mud and desert sand, to reach their goal, as many did, gaunt
skeletons of men, with bleeding feet, and bodies scratched and sore and
tottering with weariness and hunger.1
Diamonds
were no temptation to them. They would not have walked a mile to pick
up a Koh-i-nur. But the white diamond seekers were willing to pay, for
a few months' hunting for little white pebbles, enough to buy a cheap
gun and a bag of powder and balls — most precious of all earthly things
in the eyes of a roving African. Then the white camps were lively,
humming social resorts, abounding with good food and tempting drink,
where black men were welcome and well protected. So the natives swarmed
in faster and faster as the mining progressed and the news spread to
distant regions. Some of this swarm could be persuaded to remain at the
mines for a year or more and work quite steadily ; but most drifted
away, at the end of a few months, or as soon as they were able to get
their coveted guns and powder pouches. Thus while many thousands
flocked yearly to the Fields from their opening, the outflow kept the
supply from swamping the demand. As this influx from the dark continent
met and mingled with the rush from the outside world in the
diamond-mine workings and camps, how greatly vivid, unique, and
stirring were the kaleidoscopic shifts of this strange concourse!
Europe, Asia, Africa, and America had boiled over into a hotchpotch,
splashed on a diamond bed in the heart of South Africa.
1
"The Diamond Diggings of South Africa," Payton, 1872. "South African
Diamond Fields and Journey to Mines," William James Morton, M.D., New
York, 1877.
