RACING FOR WEALTH

Hokitika Guardian, 10 August 1926, Page 1

RACING FOR WEALTH

(By a Diamond Digger). Twenty thousand people attended the pegging of diamond claims at a far metalled Elandsputte, near Lichtenburg, in the Western Transvaal. Sensational finds of gems had brought people flocking to the spot, and a line of runners fifteen deep and a mile long awaited tho signal which sent them racing to the field. To most people the discovery of a now diamond field suggests vast wealth. True, there faro a few lucky people who dig up a number of fairly valuable stones, or one great, lustrous one, whose sale places them in. comfortable circumstances immediately. But the great majority of the diggers are poor folk, whoso comfortless lives are only made hearable by the chance tliat the next spadeful may bring wealth. Tho stones along the Vard and in the Western Transvaal are found a few feet from the surface, scattered about in alluvial drifts. Geologists assume that they are derived from soil washed down from some undiscovered pipe or pipes at la higher level.

One of the dreams of the prospector is that some day lie may discover the great “mother pipe” which is supposed by some people to exist, and of whose wealth the diamonds found scattered over hundreds of square miles merely represent the surface scrapings. Oneimaginative geologist has worked oul its position fairly exactly. Tt is a curious fiict that a large- area near hi.s theoretical point is covered with dc-i posits of ancient lava hundreds of feet thick in places. It seems quite possible tliajt the “pipes” from, which the stones come are buried for all timeunder the stone which flowed molten down the valleys in a- remote geological; ago.

The. lure of the diamond has drawn largo communities which, while they include many ski I led and hard working diggers, sue composed largely of people who have failed at other occupations or dislike work. On tlic “dry diggings” o ftlio Transvaal there is constant migration, and consequently little control and no real provision of education. Til at there is a great deal of abject poVerty will be realised from the tact that in one area the average earnings of Europeans and natives alike were £3 per month. Even assuming that the white man on the average received ivice or three times this sum. the difficulty of /living is very great. The necessaries of life are unnsu,ally expensive. and in some places even the water for washing ilia soil has eithoi to be carted as far as fifty miles or purchased at anything up to 2s Gd a barrel.

Living jh temporary shacks of wood and iron, in tents or in sn’,ilt mud hovels, the inhabitants at this new place, Hlandsputte, will wash millions of tons of soil for possibly a few score of stones—or perhaps for enough to make five per cent of them wealthy. They will have no schools and no hospital, unless the State, the Church, and the people of Johannesburg, 120 miles away, intervene (is has been done in one or two cases when there was danger of epidemic disease. in a month- or a. year the majority will have passed on, attracted by newer “finds” elsewhere, or discouraged "by ill luck.