226 SOUTH AFRICA. 



to do the amount of possible production consider 

 it a certainty. Kimberley is still a prosperous little 

 place, no longer, indeed, progressing by leaps and 

 bounds, but very well to do. 



Little or no demand for additional white labour 

 exists, then, at present, neither is the locality 

 attractive to the eye, although it is only just to 

 say that it would be difficult to discover anywhere 

 in South Africa a heartier or more genial set of 

 people than the inhabitants of the diamond- 

 producing centre. 



A curiously marked characteristic of the South 

 African situation is that when ruin seems inevitable 

 something which may be called, for the want of a 

 better term, a fluke occurs, and the crash is 

 averted. The discovery of diamonds saved the 

 Cape Colony ; and just as the Transvaal had 

 reached the lowest grade of poverty and degrada- 

 tion, some ten years or so ago, the discovery of 

 the wonderful deposits of gold in and around the 

 Witwater's Randt district saved the country from 

 the utter smash which seemed so nearly impending, 

 and Johannesburg has become in spite of every 

 possible obstacle the Transvaal autocrat, Kruger, 

 and his myrmidons could oppose a handsome 



