THE SOUTH AFRICAN DIAMOND FIELDS.

Thames Guardian and Mining Record, Volume I, Issue 251, 29 July 1872, Page 3

THE SOUTH AFRICAN DIAMOND FIELDS.

(From the “ Fall Mall Gazette," April 2(J.) We learn from South Africa that great despondency prevails at the diamond fields, and we do not wonder that the diggers are disgusted. The life was a hard one at best, oven to men to the manner bom, while to those middle-class adveulutes who flocked thither in such numbers nothing but great success could make it even tolerable. It is no joke breaking ground as navvy in shadeless sand under a scorching sum. When you are used to your little comforts; it is disagreeable to have to ration yourself, frugally on tough ox-flesh, dispensing with bread and vegetables, and bying condiments at the price of gold dust; to sleep through rain and heat under a bush or a waggon, or if very luxurious, a flimsy bell-tent. Burning thrist has its compensations, but it turns to torment when you can only slake it iu tepid water sorely in need of tlie filter. Still, when hope was young and the diggings nearly virgin, men made up their minds to endure this sort of thing. Those were the days when the diamonds brough from natives to-day for a waggiu and team and resold tomrrovv for several thousand sterling : of clay-huts, run up in haste, whoso sunbaked walls when they dried were seen to sparkled with gems. In these days diggers not only belived in their finds, but exaggerated their value, and the prices bid by middlemen and merchants fostered their found illusions. Partriotic and sanguine South Africans seem to have assumed that tlie stones from the Vaal river must necessarily he of water as pure as those from Goleondahor Minas Ceraes. Gheu they are to remit their purchases to Europe, they found in many instances that they had burned tneir fingers. Dealers iu Lomlo aud Amsterdam shook lhair lieae and pronounced the consignments valuable and curious, but of decidedly inferior quality. Besides, markets whose customers are necessarily select must very speedly be glutted. When stones differ widely in lustre and purity, it is difficulty to quote a price, but on receipt of figures from home buyers at the mines drew hack into excessive caution. Then those of the diggers who could afford to hold declined altogether to deal there. Some of the richest speculated in their neighbor’d geins, and embarked for England with Their prizes. They amused the :selves outlie voyage by building castles iu tue air, aud counted confidently on a competency for tlie rest of tlieir days. We know of cases wnere those who reckoned iu this way found cause to regret bitterly that they had not “ thrown away” tlieir bargains at the mines. They were reduced to the option of doing it here, or of laying aside tlieir locked-up capital in the hope of realising it to better purpose in some indefinite future. These, ,be it remembered were the lucker ones, and we repeat that we do not wonder that diggers are disgusted. The probability is that the population of the once thriving canvas cities will thin fast, and the mines be left to some knots of plodding adventurers who can resign themselves to severe work and moderate pay, when the work is sweetened to them by a dash of speculation. Meantime it seems likely that before judgment is given in the arbitration be! ween the rival potentates, of the Free State and the Transvaal Ilepbulic, the bone of contention may be hardly worth the picking.

Ten counties in lowa have female superintendents of schools. A Chicago lady played it fine at a circus recently exhibited in that city. She pretended to faiut, and got nine glasses of lemonade free. A cautious old bachelor, who knows that the present year is leap-year, says, “If you meet a young lady who is not very shy, you had better be a littlle shy yourself,”