necessity
forced the further consolidation of claims when the mines had reached a
depth that made patch-working impracticable. In this mass movement and
equalizing of opportunity, the rise and display of strong individuality
were necessarily subdued and slow to appear. In the years of the rush
and the early advance of the mines, it is the life of the mass and not
of the fractional unit that makes the history of the Fields. But with
changing conditions, as the years rolled on, the way was opened for
individual assertion, influence, and distinction. Then the men,
hitherto unmarked, stood up preeminent. Then the brains that were
capable of great conceptions and great performances found pressing
occasion for all their foresight and energy. The history of the great
mines that have explored the diamond-bearing craters so far beyond the
pitfalls of the prospecting diggers is very essentially a story of
remarkable men.
In July, 1873, a young Hebrew, Barnett Isaacs, took passage from England to Cape Town at the call of his brother from the
new
Diamond Fields. His grandfather was a learned and honored rabbi, and
the good standing of his family was marked by the marriage of his
father, Isaac Isaacs, to a relative of Sir George Jes'sels, Master of
the Rolls. But the son of the rabbi was only a small, plodding, frugal
shopkeeper in London. His sons, Henry and Barnett, were trained in the
excellent Hebrew Free School in Spital-fields, but both boys left
school at the age of fourteen to help their father in his shop. Henry
was drawn away in the current of the early rush to the Diamond Fields
in 1871, and had such success as a kopje walloper that he wrote home to
urge his brother to join him.
