THE CAPE DIAMOND FIELDS.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume III, Issue 168, 24 May 1872, Page 6

THE CAPE DIAMOND FIELDS.

The following extracts from a letter received~by a gentleman in Christchurch, from a friend who is trying his luck upon the Cape Diamond Fields, has been kindly placed at our disposal for publication. It is dated "El Dorado Peak, Diamond Field, South Africa," and runs as follows:

" Notwithstanding_;■all my friends at home doing their best to prevent my leaving, here I am, a veritable diamond seeker. I have been three months coming from Natal (450 miles) on a bullock dray with sixteen bullocks. Freight for self and2cwt. baggage, £6. We travelled always by night, and were between seven and eight weeks coming. I should say we are 700 miles from Cape Town, and 450 from Algoa Bay. There is a passenger waggon now going to Cape Town in nine, days, the fare £ls, while the postcart does the distance in five days. . .

There are two others with myself in our party. We have got since I came four diamonds, weighing each 3i, 2,1, £ carats; the largest sold for £35. Not many, you will say, for the time we have been here; but we hope, like the rest of us, to find c The Big Diamond.' However, the fact of therc ; being diamonds, both plentiful and valuable, is no myth. A party of three, whose claim is not far from ours, have jnafc divided £24,000 between them, and retain a quarter share of their claim. In a claim adjoining ours, one-eighth share was sold for £250, the buyers-doing well with it. So you see our hopes have good

grounds of foundation. There are between thirty and forty thousand persons on these diggings. The diggings here are drythat is, the stuff is dry sifted and cradle washed, as at river diggings. After the stuff has been out and broken up, it is passed through two sieves, the first with half to-three-quarter inch mesh to take out the lumps and stones; the second, or fine sieve, has meshes with from six to seven holes to the inch ; this sifts the sand out, and the gravel remains, the sieve being | placed on a table to be scraped off a little |at a time, and search made for diamonds. It is very dusty work, and down in some of the holes it is hard enough work to breathe for the quantity of small fine sand. But one will put up with a great deal for the hope of a big diamond. There is but little, if any wood for fuel, but its substitute, is pretty plentiful. Water also is very scarce, and we pay 3d. per bucket for all we use; meat, od. per lb.; butter, 3s. 6d.; tea, 55.; and a 31b. loaf of bread, Is. It blows hard five days a week, diversified with heavy thunderstorms, accompanied with severe gales; and there being no shelter, you may imagine the condition of our tents, which, if blown away, as sometimes happens, are | difficult to replace, at not less than £lO. Amongst the diggers are many Dutch and Australians . . . At the river diggings the stuff is washed in a cradle and then sorted."—'Canterbury Press.'