224 THE DIAMOND MINES OF SOUTH AFRICA had been hoisted to the surface usually in buckets, by means of a rope passing around a windlass and through a pulley fixed in a pole set near the edge of the claim, but in 1872 a simple device of haulage over two grooved wheels was largely intro­duced. One wheel was set on the pit bottom, and the other on the surface, with a handle attached by means of which one or more stout natives could wind up a rope passing from wheel to wheel, carrying up a loaded bucket and lowering an empty
	one. This crude device served the purpose as long as a wheel could be set near the edge of a claim on unbroken ground, or along the roadway; but when all the claims were at the bottom of one huge open pit, it was obvious that only the outer tier of claims could be worked by this method. Then a haulage system of really remarkable ingenuity was contrived. A massive timber staging was set completely around the mouth of the mine, carrying two, and in parts three, plat­forms, one above the other. The upper platform was connected by strongly anchored ropes with the claims in the middle of the mine, and the lower platform in the same way, with the claims