Diamond Mines: The Great White Camps Page 241



	THE GREAT WHITE CAMPS	193

	two churches, a hospital, and a theatre, and might have mentioned, besides, its less distinguished billiard room, "canteens," and dance halls.¹ It was surely a wonderful birth of a smartly growing infant city on the face of scrub-covered prairie in the heart of South Africa. The rise of the camps at De Beers and Kimberley was even more rapid than the growth of the camp on Dorstfontein and Bultfontein farms. There was no regular working in the De Beers diggings before May, 1871, but the diggers could buy



	Kimberley, 1873. Christmas presents that year in rows of brick and iron stores on the main roadsides, intermingled with "hotels "and saloons, and a great white canvas town was spread out in a picturesque medley of tents and marquees, straggling far over the veld, and seeking the shelter of some stubbornly rooted mimosa or camel-thorn.'² Kimberley's growth was still more surprising. Three months after the rush began, the Colesberg Kopje was the centre of an immense encampment in whose heart streets were irregularly laid out, and neat stores built of iron and brick. In December, 1871, there were, by actual count, on the lower street of Kim- ¹ "The Diamond Diggings of South Africa," Payton, 1872. ² Ibid.