Japanese artists arrange their lines; they have no sense of perspective to guide them. They discredit a new country because it cannot satisfy the tests which they would apply to an old country: they condemn the change of to-morrow because it is impossible under the conditions of to-day.

It was no easy task, that task which was undertaken by the English in the sixth century-to clear the forests, to drain the marshes, and reclaim the wastes of Britain; and who shall say that this same colonising race, with its quickened intelligence, its inherited aptitudes, its accumulated stores of knowledge, its ocean-going steamships, its railways, and its telegraphs, shall not teach even the desert of South Africa to "rejoice and blossom as the rose "?

IT

CHAPTER VIII.

THE DIAMOND MINES.

T is certainly somewhat remarkable that the circumstances which attended the discovery of diamonds in South Africa appear to be only imperfectly remembered to-day. There are various accounts; but these accounts differ from each other in some material particular, and that, too, although the events to which they refer happened less than thirty years ago.

This much, however, would appear to be established. In the year 1867, a hunter or trader, named O'Reilly, was enamoured of a white stone which was shown him among a collection of river pebbles at a farmhouse in the Hopetown district of the Cape Colony. This white stone proved to be a diamond, and was sold eventually to the Governor, Sir Philip Wodehouse, for £500. Two years later, in 1869, the farmer himself, Van Niekerk, purchased a similar stone from a Griqua Hottentot for cattle and goods of the estimated value of £400.

This second stone was bought by Messrs Lilienfeld of Hopetown for 10,000 pounds or guineas. It was appropriately christened "the Star of South Africa," and subsequently came into the possession of the Countess of Dudley, who paid £25,000 for it.

This was exciting news, and before long a number of persons were searching for similar treasures over the district at the confluence of the Vaal, the Modder, and and the Orange Rivers. As the white pebbles had been river stones, the diggers first of all directed their attention

to the banks of the Vaal, working their way northwards, and finding numerous diamonds. By the beginning of

the year 1870 there were 10,000 men on the banks of the Vaal. Towards the end of that year diamonds were discovered on two farms, Dutoitspan and Bulfontein, about 20 miles south of the bend of the river where these (6 wet diggings were situated. The diggers now rushed southwards, and established themselves as best they could in the middle of the barren and desolate plain. Next year two new mines were reported, "Old" De Beers and the " Colesberg Kopje," or Kimberley. All these four mines would be enclosed by a circle with a diameter of only 3 miles, and they produce nine-tenths of the total output of diamonds from South Africa.

Kimberley, as the "dry" diggings came to be collectively called, was anything but a pleasant place of residence. There was no regular communication even by road with the surrounding districts, and no certain supply of food; the miners were sheltered by the most unsubstantial of dwellings; water was scarce, and the dust of an eight months' drought blinded their eyes and choked their throats.

The diamondiferous area is covered by the square formed on the map of South Africa by the intersection of the 28th and 30th parallels of south latitude and the 24th and 26th degrees of east longitude. This square

would include the two mines in the Free State, Koffyfontein and Jagersfontein, subsequently discovered and situated to the south of Kimberley, and the river diggings to the north. Almost the whole of this district is enclosed by the wide fork of the Orange and Vaal Rivers, and it has an elevation of more than 4000 feet above sea level. The diamond mines of Kimberley* are the craters and

* The account in the text is based upon the reports of the De Beers Consolidated Mines, Limited, and in particular on the "Technical Report of Mr Gardner F. Williams, the general manager, issued in the second Annual Report (1890).

pipes of extinct volcanoes filled with mud, or "blue These oval ground," of igneous or eruptive origin. columns of blue ground occur in the formation known as the Karoo Beds-a formation which extends over the whole of the interior of what we call "South" Africa, and

below the surface layers they are encased in horizontal strata consisting of, first, carbonaceous shales, then an amygdaloidal trap called "melaphyre," and, lastly, quartzite.

The thrust which filled the pipes has come from below. That appears from two circumstances. In the first place, the edges of the softer strata, the carbonaceous shales, were found to be turned upwards, and, in the second,

fragments of the lower encasing rocks are found in the higher levels of the column in the shape of boulders embedded in the blue ground.

The origin of the diamonds themselves is not yet explained. At first it was suggested that the diamonds, being pure carbon, had been formed by the passage of volcanic steam through the carbonaceous shales; but when the work of excavation proceeded, and the levels of the column below the shales were still found to contain diamonds, this theory had to be abandoned.* That the diamonds were not made in the pipes in which the blue earth is now enclosed is proved by the fact that broken crystals are frequently found: for these crystals, of course, could only have been broken during the movements which accompanied the process of filling the pipes. There is one further fact which is noticeable. It seems that the blue ground has not spread beyond the lips of the craters. This circumstance is accounted for by the supposition that, at the time the columns reached the surface, the country was under water. It was covered, it is supposed, by the waters of a great fresh-water lake in the Karoo area. The waters of this lake subsequently flowed into the sea, over, and through, the barrier ranges, discharged by some great convulsion of nature.

The diamonds were won at first by surface diggings, and afterwards by subterranean workings.

During the first period the mines rapidly assumed the appearance of open quarries. In the Kimberley mine, the richest of the four mines, the blue ground was at first removed by means of roadways which had been left between the claims when the diamondiferous area was first marked out. But in the middle of the second year, 1872, these roadways fell in, and a system

* If, however, as appears to be the case, fresh strata of carbonaceous shales are found below the quartzite, the theory would again become possible,