on
the working levels. Others carried up buckets and tubs and rawhide
sacks to the surface, climbing ladders resting on successive terraces,
or mounting flights of steps cut in the rock, or trundling wheelbarrows
up plank inclines. Around the edge of the mines there was a mustering
of carts, and barrows, and carriers, to bear off the quarried ground to
depositing places, where it was dried, pounded, and sifted.1
The
open quarries, swarming with workers, buzzed like prodigious beehives.
The upsetting of the tower of Babel would scarcely have poured out such
a medley of tongues and sounds. From the vast amphitheatres scooped in
the rock there rose in the air the clicking of picks, the rasp and
clatter of shovels, the cracking of rock, the rattle of gravel, the
thud of bucket-filling, the creaking of windlasses, the tramp over
planks, the thump of wheelbarrows, the rolling of carts, the lowing of
bullocks and braying of mules, mingled with calls and chatter and
chants of whites and blacks in an indescribable din. Diggers in rough
working dress, and natives almost stark naked, bent and heaved, and
scrambled and climbed, side by side, reeking with sweat and grime, in
an ever shifting, restless swarm that covered the face of the quarry
like flies in some monstrous sugar bowl. The flocking in of the native
African tribes—joined with the white diamond seekers in opening the
strange funnels of crystal-sprinkled breccia — made a compound of
color, feature, and character never before assembled in any mines on
the face of the earth.2 The sinewy negroes proved themselves
such willing and sturdy workers in the dust and heat of the
sun-scorched quarries, that the claim-holders were glad to hire them
and confine their own work to the task of overseers, directing the
digging and hauling, and the sifting and sorting. No blaze of the sun
and no whirl of the dust could subdue their bubbling spirits, breaking
out in wild whoops and chants, and yelling in pack when any big diamond
was found, revelling in every chance diversion, — the fall of a bucket,
the slip of a ladder, the
1 "The Diamond Diggings of South Africa," Payton, 1872. "South African Diamond Fields," Morton, 1877. 2 Ibid.
