DIAMOND: OC(JURRENCE IN SOUTH AFRICA 197 



A. Wilkens, a mine-owner resident there, a few diamonds were found in the seventies along 

 with pebbles of serpentine in a stream, in the neighbourhood of which serpentine with nickel 

 ores occurs in situ. It is therefore not impossible that these diamonds had been derived 

 from the serpentine. Similar relations between diamonds and serpentine rocks have also 

 been reported from Australia and the western part of North America. 



Although the association of diamond with serpentine in South Africa renders it very 

 probable that the former has been derived from an olivine-rock, yet it is a noteworthy fact 

 that the only mineral found actually inter-grown with and firmly attached to the diamond 

 is garnet. Professor Bonney has recently (1899 and 1901) described the occurrence of 

 colourless octahedra of diamond as a constituent 6f rounded boulders of eclogite. These 

 boulders of eclogite, which is an igneous rock composed of garnet and green diopside, came 

 from the " blue ground " of the Newland's Diamond Mine in Griqualand West, about forty- 

 two miles north-west of Kimberley. The same observer describes the occurrence, also in 

 this mine, of rocks rich in olivine, such, for example, as saxonite and Iherzolite, in which, 

 however, diamonds have not yet been observed. 



At all other known diamond localities, especially those of India, Brazil and Lapland, 

 olivine or serpentine as a mineral associated with diamond is conspicuous by its absence. 

 In such localities, therefore, the mother-rock of the diamond cannot be an olivine-rock. On 

 the other hand, diamonds have occasionally been found in meteoric stones, of which olivine 

 is an invariable constituent, and the association of these two minerals in extra-terrestrial 

 matter is a fact of considerable interest and importance. 



The mining operations for obtaining the diamonds at the dry diggings were 

 commenced at the end of the year 1870 ; by 1872 the industry was in a flourishing condition, 

 and since this date it has steadily developed. At first the deposits were worked, regardless 

 of future inconvenience, in an irregular and haphazard fashion, the aim of the miners being 

 to amass the greatest possible amount of treasure with the least possible immediate 

 expenditure of labour and money. Thus much valuable ground was covered with debris, 

 which subsequent workers were forced to remove at a great sacrifice of time, labour and 

 capital. In the deposits more recently discovered, the authorities have profited by former 

 mistakes and mining operations have from the first been carried out in a systematic manner, 

 with due regard to future necessities. 



Each diamantiferous area was at first divided into square lots or claims, as was the 

 custom in the gold-fields of California and Australia and also at the river diggings of South 

 Africa. These claims in the Kimberley and De Beer's mines were 31 feet, and in the Du 

 Toil's Pan mine 30 feet square; each claim therefore had an area of 100 square yards or a 

 little more. In the Kimberley mine there were 331 such claims, in the De Beer's mine 591, 

 in the Bultfontein mine 886 and in Du Toit's Pan, 1430. In the three last-named mines 

 the claims were laid out in such a way that there was no means of access to those in the 

 centre except over the surrounding lots; this inconvenient arrangement materially increased 

 the difficulty of mining and transporting material. When the Kimberley mine was opened, 

 the Government Inspector of Mines in what was then the Orange Free State, profiting by 

 past experience, arranged that every claim should be directly accessible by the construction 

 of fourteen or fifteen road-wayS, each 15 feet wide and all running in a north and south 

 direction across the narrowest p&rt of the mine. By this regulation every possessor of a 

 claim lost 7^ feet of ground, and until the advantage of the arrangement was realised it was 

 bitterly opposed. In Plate VII. is shown the Kimberley mine as it appeared in 1872, with 

 these road-ways. 



Up to 1877, no single individual was permitted to possess more than two claims, the 



