THE ROMANCE OF THE DIAMOND 5 



enclosing walls show no signs of igneous action, and are not 

 shattered or broken up even when touching the "blue 

 ground." It is pretty certain that these pipes were filled 

 from below after they were pierced, and the diamonds 

 were formed at some previous time and mixed with a mud 

 volcano, together with all kinds of debris eroded from the 

 rocks through which it erupted, forming a geological ' ' plum 

 pudding. " A more wildly heterogeneous mixture can 

 hardly be found anywhere else on this globe. 



It may be that each volcanic pipe is the vent for its own 

 laboratory a laboratory buried at vastly greater depths 

 than we have yet reached where the temperature is com- 

 parable with that of the electric furnace, where the pres- 

 sure is fiercer than in our puny laboratories and the 

 melting-point higher, where no oxygen is present, and 

 where masses of liquid carbon have taken centuries, per- 

 haps thousands of years, to cool to the solidifying-point. 



In 1903 the Kimberley mine had reached a depth of 

 2,599 feet. Tunnels are driven from the various shafts at 

 different levels, about 120 feet apart, to cross the mine from 

 west to east. These tunnels are connected by two other 

 tunnels running north and south. The scene belowground 

 in the labyrinth of galleries is bewildering in its complexity, 

 and very unlike the popular notion of a diamond mine. 

 All below is dirt, mud, grime ; half -naked men dark as 

 mahogany, lithe as athletes, dripping with perspiration, 

 are seen in every direction, hammering, picking, shovelling, 

 wheeling the trucks to and fro, keeping up a weird chant 

 which rises in force and rhythm when a greater task calls 

 for excessive muscular strain. The whole scene is more 

 suggestive of a coal mine than of a diamond mine, and all 

 this mighty organization this strenuous expenditure of 

 energy, this costly machinery, this ceaseless toil of skilled 

 and black labor goes on day and night, just to win a few 

 stones wherewith to deck my lady 's finger ! All to gratify 

 the vanity of woman! "And," I hear my fair reader 

 remark, ' * the depravity of man ! ' * 



