A TOWN BUILT ON DIAMONDS.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2229, 20 April 1881, Page 3

A TOWN BUILT ON DIAMONDS.

No town in Africa can boast such rapid growth as Kimberley, the seat of Government in Griqualand West, and the head-quarters 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 source of its wealth and the very origin of its existence. Kimberley is identical with the “New Bush ” 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 to enquire whether the soil on which they pitched their tents or erected their log huts was not equally diamondiferous. As the wooden shanties have given place to more substantial buildings, it has been found that Kimberley itself has boon built on a diamond-field, and that tho West End or residential part of the town is as full of gems os the actual diggings themselves at the eastern or working end of the town. Now 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 difficult to say. But it will be interesting to watch the future progress of a town which owes its existence and its subsequent partial destruction and removal to tho same cause—the abundance of the diamonds in the midst of which it appears to have grown.