SOUTH AFRICAN DIAMOND FIELDS.

Temuka Leader, Volume I, Issue 94, 9 November 1878, Page 3

SOUTH AFRICAN DIAMOND FIELDS.

The first diamond found in Cape Colony was discovered barely ten years ago, and now the annual value of the gems exported may be counted by ten thousands of pounds. The diamond fields give few signs of exhaustion ; on the contrary, the greater the depth reached by the elaborate machinery, which is fast superseding the primitive contrivances originally used, the more satisfactory are the results. Griqualand West, a small territory only lately acquired, is the great seat of the South African diamond industry, and it is peopled by I S,IKK) white people, 10,000 coloured, and 20.000 native labourers, who are nearly all centred in one spot. At first diamonds wove found singly and scattered along the course of the Orange and Vaal rivers, and diggings were established in various promising' spots. But the diggings were mere surface scratching?, and it was only five years ago that more effective operations were commenced, when the famous Kimberley mine, originally known by the name of New Rush, started into existence. Each day more earth is turned over, fresh claims, divided and sub-divided into minutest sections, are being worked, and over all the confused heap of excavations stretches a net-work of wire rope, seventy feet high, by which the buckets of washdirt are hauled up. At first the digging was hasty and superficial ; but when t.‘ie ganund came to be moie equally paicelled out, the flehn* already thrown up and supposed to hare been caicfullr searched yielded, by the now process of water-washing brought to bcai on it, diamonds to the value of upwards of a million of pounds. Such is the yield of Kimberley that from 90 to 95 per cent of all the'diamonds exported from the Cape come from this pni tieulai mine, whose surface only extends or ei some nine acres. Eor every foot it has hern worked down, the average yield has been in value £IOO,OOO. H is a singular fact that different parts of the mine yield totally different diamonds as to colour and weight. These precious nine acres pay a royal tv of L 6 per annum fa cvoiy 81 feet square, and there is besides a license on >the diamonds found. Ine Kimberley is surrounded by a girdle of distinctly non-diamond-boaring rock, and it is from this sort of basinlike form that tire Dutch took their word « pan,” as the earl EG, name for the depressions holding the rich Deposits here and there. In contradistinction to this, is the term “ kopje,” a hillock ; and although diamonds have been found in small quantities in the “kopjes,’ still it is into the “pans,”or reservoirs, that the true diamond-bearing material has evidently been washed. The colour of the diamond-bearing clay changes from yellow ocbreoiis to bluish grey as it gets deeper, and it yields large quantities of garnets, or “ Cape rubies” as they have been termed, probably on account of their brilliant colour. The diamondfinding process was carried on at at first in a verv'primitive fashion, by the simple method of emptying the sifted soil upon a long deal table and setting a score of Kaffirs to search for the stones with iron scrapers, but this was tedious beyond expression, and gave great opportunities for concealing any particularly fine gem. But the system of washing the diamond-bearing clay, introduced a few years ago, is now universally adopted. Among its other advantages the saving - of labour is great, aud the possibility of theft is reduced to a minimum. Wages are high even for native labour, and although the Kaffirs do not remain long at the fields, still fresh ones come with every new moon to fill the vacant pfiaces. A great deal of complicated and costly machinery for crushing gold-bearing quartz, sifting diamond-bearing clay, &c., has been sent out to the Cape diggings of recent years, but skilled labour is still at a paremium there. Although the charm of novelty in connection with the South African diamonds fields has by this time worn off, their riches are by no means exhausted, and they still offer splendid prizes to associated labour, enterprise, and capital.