Through the Kalahari Desert. G.A. Farini
the streets naked, and not ashamed,” he is imme- diately arrested and “fined.” Seeing that he wears no clothes, he cannot have a pocket, and, as he is
Martyrs to Civilization.
innocent of either current coin or a cheque-book, he is locked up for a month in default of payment. When he comes Out he profits by his lesson so far as to cover his legs with a pair of old pants, and civilization is satisfied; but, if he does not find a master the same day, he is again arrested as a “vagrant,” and gets another day or two. The poor wretch is bewildered, and falls violently in love with the white man and his customs, and takes care to get somebody to give him a piece of paper certifying that he is in a situa- tion. He then goes to seek for some Kaffir friends of his at the mines, and finds his way into a compound. Arrested for being there without permission, or with unlawful intent,” he is charged, fined, and eventually gravitates again to the prison. Having served his time, he will probably return to his “master,” but finds that as he has been away “without leave” for a week his occupation’s gone “and the joyous round of the police-station, court-house, and prisoner’s cell begins once more.
Yet with all this experience of civilization he hardly ever grumbles, but is always to be found, whether in the streets or at work, singing and laughing—an occupation, by the way, which comes much more naturally to him than manual labour of any kind.
The natives in Kimberley are principally Basutos and Zulus—fine, stalwart specimens of humanity. Seen at work in the mines, in all the sweet simplicity of their dark skins, they are living bronze statues—as fine models of the human form divine as one would wish to see; but when they go into the streets, they become supremely ridiculous: an old hat, the taller and more battered the better, is stuck on the top of a
Green Hands.
dirty rag with which they always bind up the head; and as a covering for the body there is the choice of an old sack with a hole in the bottom, and another on each side, for the head and arms to pass through, of a torn shirt, or of a dilapidated pair of unmen- tionables. Sometimes, indeed, a Kaffir may be seen in the full glory of two, or even all three, of these garments united in a complete suit; and on such a scarecrow Mrs. Grundy looks with complacency, while the British Matron” declares that in her eyes it is a “thing of beauty and a joy for ever,” with which no Andromeda or Aphrodite in the Royal Academy can compare.
But this by the way. “While the law has aimed at the recRiver of stolen goods—and the recRiver who is always worse than the thief is in this case doubly so, because he is a white man, while the thief is black—the companies are endeavouring to reach the thief by hiring “green hands,” from Natal and Zulu- land, uncontaminated by the Kimberley atmosphere, and by building compounds in which the labourers are to be required to agree to live before they are hired, so that they will be perpetually under surveil- lance.
CHAPTER III.
The blasting of the blue—Down the crater—Searching the blacks—The washing-grounds—How the diamonds are unearthed—The sorting-tables—Judging the weight of a stone—Who are the diamond thieves?—Life in Kimberley—Its climate and its moral atmosphere—The mining pioneer.
ONE day Mr. English, the manager of the Standard Company, took us to see the “blasting of the blue.”
We took our place in a large iron bucket big enough to bold a ton of earth, suspended by four grooved wheels, two on each side, from two stout iron wires, which, supported at each end by wooden props, ran in a straight line down the steep slope for the distance of some 150 yards.
The shots are fired at dinner-time, when all the men are out of the mine, and it was a curious sight to see a long line of naked blacks clambering up a narrow, steep path from the lowest depths, 350 feet below: they looked at the distance like an army of ants in single file, or rather, with their shiny skins, like a stream of black water pouring up-hill. “
“I wish I had my camera here,” said Lulu; “I should like to have a picture of that human tide.”
“I would much rather have what those black thieves are bringing out with them,” said Mr. English. “Naked as they are, and closely searched as they will be before they leave the workings, they will carry off some hundreds of pounds’ worth between them.”
Diamond Swallowing.
“But how can they secrete the stones, if they have no clothes ? “
“Their hair will be searched, their ears examined, and every man will open his mouth for inspection, and perhaps not a single stone will be found: they carry them in a pretty safe place, for they swallow them. It is as much as a man’s liberty is worth to have a diamond in his possession without a permit or a licence to purchase; but the temptation is too great. I once knew a man to have a forty-carat stone in his possession: he was arrested and searched, but it could not be found. He had swallowed it, and so was put into prison under strict surveillance, and when there managed to swallow it a second time; but on dejecting it a second time he was detected, and is now doing his ten years on Cape Town breakwater.
“Sometimes the overseers are in league with the black diggers, so that it is most difficult to detect the thieves. Once we tried convict labour, which seemed to work admirably, till one day the gun of one of the overseers was found loaded with a full charge of diamonds for shot. A favourite trick of the I.D.B.’s was to commit a trivial offence so as to get into gaol for a day or two, when they had splendid opportunities of buying from the convicts and the overseers.”
By this time the bell was ringing as a signal that the shot was ready to be fired. In a few minutes after- wards a lurid flash was seen amid a great discharge of dust and stones mingled with smoke, followed by a long, low reverberation; then two, three, four blasts followed one another m rapid succession, and some tons of hard blue clay were loosened ready to be carried to the “floors.”
Diamond Farming.
What a grand picture that would have made!” cried Lulu. “If I could only get a photograph of an explosion like that ‘taken from life’!”
“Why, the concussion would smash your plates, if not your lens,” I replied. “You might as well sit on the top of Vesuvius and wait for an eruption, and expect to get safely down again.’’
Presently the black labourers came back, and began loading the earth that had been loosened by the ex- plosion into the big iron buckets, in which it was hauled up the wire tramway, one bucket going up full and another coming down empty. We returned the same way we had come—in one of these big buckets—the usual method of ascent and descent. ‘Sometimes a mistake is made in the signals and the passengers are dumped like dirt down a shoot some twenty feet deep. I was determined not to be thus ignominiously treated if I could help it, and took the precaution of making myself as conspicuous as possible, and of seizing the wire as we approached the summit; but fortunately we were served with the respect due to animated earth, and the brake put on in good time.
The hard, flinty clay cannot be treated at once. It is left exposed for a time to the atmosphere on the ‘‘floors.” Some of these are ten or fifteen acres in extent, and each company has altogether hundreds of acres for the treatment of the earth. In the wet season the rain assists disintegration; but in the dry weather the process is hastened by frequent sprinklings with water from a hose; and when the lumps begin to get soft a harrow is run over the mass. It is just like irrigating and cultivating a farm, only the seed is gold and the crops are diamonds.
Diamond Washing.
It takes about three months before the stuff is fit to wash, when it is loaded into iron boxes running on a narrow tramway, and hauled away by horses up an incline to the washing-machine. Here each little trolly dumps its load into a hopper, from which it is passed over a grating just narrow enough to retain the large stones. Here a man stands with a hose, and gives the “blue” a good dosing, so that it falls away in the form of liquid mud into the ‘‘washers” underneath. These are