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278 THE DIAMOND MINES OF SOUTH AFRICA
Here
was a task of such tremendous magnitude and difficulty that men of good
ordinary judgment might well question its feasibility. What man in or
out of the Fields would dare attempt it? Who could do it, if he dared
to venture ? There is a mighty fillip to the conceit of man, that in
such great exigencies as these — in times when some prodigious
undertaking is imperatively needed — the man or men who can carry it on
to completion are almost always forthcoming. " Nothing is impossible
nowadays," said the " Bonanza King," Flood, when doubts were raised of
the practicability of piping water from the Sierra Nevada Mountains to
the Comstock Silver Mines on the Virginia range; " the only question
is, will it pay ? " That seems, indeed, the only touchstone which men
of such pith and temper are disposed to apply to any object. It was
again made evident on South African Diamond Fields how far the possible
stretches when men with Flood's touchstone are the adventurers. The
moving men, who could comprehend the need for union and effect it, came
irresistibly to the front in the Fields.
The
undertaking to which they set their hands should be clearly set forth.
In spite of the ruin of the open mine workings in the competing
development scramble, and in spite of the continuing conflict and
recurrent disasters in the underground mining so cogently enforcing the
call for union, there were still, at the end of 1885, no less than
ninety-eight separate holdings in the four mines. In Kimberley mine
there were eleven companies and eight private holdings ; in De Beers
there were seven companies and three private holdings ; in Dutoitspan,
sixteen companies and twenty-one private holdings ; in Bultfontein,
eight companies and twenty-four private holdings. Thus the four mines
were operated by a total of forty-two companies and fifty-six private
firms or persons, all clashing within a surface area of 70 acres. The
original location claims, aggregating 3600, had been united to this
extent, merely, at the close of fourteen years of mining on the
helter-skelter plan.
It is hardly just to credit Rhodes and Barney Barnato with an equal perception of the imperative call for the union of all
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