THE MOVING MEN
N
the rush of adventurers over the Diamond Fields the individual was
inevitably merged in the mass. He might feel the pulse of latent
powers, the unslaked thirst of ambition, but he must be for the time no
more than a drop of water in the rapid, a locust in the swarm. He was
one of a myriad which exulted in the enforced equality of living and
opportunity.
There
can scarcely be a purer democracy than an infant camp in such a field.
Imperial sovereignty or feeble state assertion barely cast a shadow of
authority over the stretch of " No Man's Land," the chrysalis of the
Colony of Griqualand West. One man here was as good as another in his
own mind, and free to maintain it. In the seething stream of humanity
that poured into the Diamond Fields it mattered not whether one was to
the manor born or cradled in a manger, the son of a peer or a beggar's
brat. In the hot scramble for diamonds in the dirt, all ranks were
levelled. The rough sailor jostled the captain, the university graduate
swung his pick side by side with the navvy, and the last of the Vere de
Veres snored in his sheepskin kaross back to back with a hopeless
Japhet. The representative " Diggers' Committee " was merely the
executive hand of the body of prospectors, the instrument of the will
of the masses. The distribution of the diamond beds from the start
marked the strain for equality, the hostility to aggrandizement; and
the relation of demand to supply compelled the division into little
patches of holdings. It was years before the acquisition of more than
two claims by one person was tolerated, and only imperious
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