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When,
after long weeks of plodding over rugged mountain ranges, parched
karroos, and rolling prairie, a traveller suddenly saw rising before
him these white camps, springing up like prodigious mushrooms in an
African desert, even the dullest brain was strangely disturbed. It was
hard to realize that these exotic plants were the work of men's hands,
for they seemed rather the fantastic conceit of the trance of an opium
eater. Here were such cities as the mirage shapes from clouds or as
Solomon might have built with the help of his docile genii. When they
lay outstretched and gleaming under the burning sun in the full
splendor of noon, they were weird creations to amaze the beholder; but
who can conceive their impress at night, under the towering sky dome
sprinkled with stars, with their masses of
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twinkling and sparkling lights on the black face of the veld, like the tail of a fallen comet.1
1 "The Diamond Diggings of South Africa," Pay ton, 1872. "To the Cape for Diamonds," Frederick Boyle, 1873. "South African Diamond Fields," William Jacob Morton, 1877.
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