THEIR HISTORY. 173 



certain that the bushmen and Corannas have used Diamonds for 

 boring stones from time immemorial, and on several occasions the 

 old Dutch Boers of Capetown were excited about the matter, but 

 the rumours died away, and were forgotten till 1867, when a tra- 

 velling trader brought some Diamonds to Cape Town, which he 

 had obtained from a farmer on the Orange River. Sir P. E. 

 Wodehouse bought them, and startled the world by sending them 

 to the Paris International Exhibition. Soon the Colony was all 

 agog, and by 1870 5,000 people were digging on the banks of the 

 Orange and Vaal Rivers, where the Diamonds are found in much 

 the same manner as in India and Brazil. These were, however, 

 only what are known as the " river diggings," and were soon to be 

 eclipsed by the so-called " dry diggings " of Dutoitspan, Bultfon- 

 tein, Old de Beers, and lastly, but more important than all the rest 

 combined, the mine of Colesburg Kopje, called at first New Rush, 

 and now famous before the world as the Kimberley Mine. Here, 

 at last, was the Diamond traced to its parent rock, to its matrix, to 

 the place of its crystallisation. Before describing the mine, let me 

 draw your attention to the general characteristics of the country, 

 although it is at present impossible to give a very exact geological 

 account of it, as no two geologists who have been on the fields 

 seem to agree in their description of the formation. In fact, 

 there are not yet data sufiicient to draw up a good geological map 

 of the district. Kimberley is situated some 600 miles north-east 

 of Cape Town and about 24 miles south of the Vaal River. The 

 country, which is barren and sterile to a fearful degree, seems to 

 consist to a considerable extent of a loose conglomerate, varying 

 considerably in constitution, resting upon the Karoo shales of 

 unknown thickness, and traversed in all directions by dykes of 

 greenstone and other volcanic rocks. In places are large, super- 

 ficial deposits of tufa, pebbles, and sand. Peculiar and 

 marked features of the country are the salt-pans (shallow depres- 

 sions of the land, containing saline deposits) and the low, trun- 

 cated hills, known as Kopjes. These Kopjes rise 40 to 80 ft. 

 from the plain, have flat tops, and seem to be protruding masses 

 of a rock that has been described as basaltic, and are frequently 

 more or less covered with a loose, fine, red sand. These remark- 

 able hills are now known to be ancient volcanoes, and on such a 



