A TOWN BUILT ON DIAMONDS.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3053, 8 April 1881, Page 3

A TOWN BUILT ON DIAMONDS.

No town in Africa can boast such rapid growth as Kimberly, the seat of Government in Griqualand West, and the headquarters of the South African diamond diggings. Eleven years ago not a hut stood ■where now some 16,000 people, with a trade of over two millions a year, form one of the most thriving communities on the African continent. It is now discovered that the town is built upon land which promises to be as productive of diamonds as the neighboring " diggings" which have been the sotrrce of its wealth and the very origin of its existence. Kimberly is identical with the " New Rush" Diamond Settlement of 1870 ; and the thousands who flocked to the locality to secure a " claim" in the valuable reefs, which have been worked further and further to the east of the site of the future town, were in such a hurry to seek their fortune in the diggings that they forgot tojinquire whether the soil on which they pitched their tents or erected their log huts was not equally diamondiferous. As the wooden shanties have giver place to more substantial buildings, it has been found that Kimberley itself has been built on a diamond field, and that the West End or residental part of the town is as full of gems as the actual diggins themselves at the eastern or working end of the town. New claims are being taken up in all directions, and land which was beginning to acquire considerable value as building sites has suddenly assumed, fresh importance as possibly containing some new " Star of South Africa." How many houses will be pulled down in the search for the diamonds on which they are built it would be diffioult to say. But it will be interesting to watch the progress of a town whioh owes its existence and itß subsequent partial destruction and removal to the same cause—the abundance of the diamonds in the midst of which it appears to have grown.