169 
SOUTH AFBICA AND ITS DIAMONDS. 
By T. EUPEET JONES, E.G.S., 
Proeessor op Geology at the Stapp and Eoyal Military Colleges, 
Sandhurst. 
“ T)ABKEETON is being surveyed, and before long it will bave 
j_ its Market-square, Church-square, High-street, West-end, 
back slums, and river villas. . . . The Church Committee 
are calling for tenders for bricks. . . . The Standard Bank 
premises will shortly be completed ; and the British Commis- 
sioners’ Offices will not be very much longer on the road.” 
Store is added to store ; and the jeweller’s store “is as safe as if 
it were in the best watched site in London — nay, it is safer. . . 
At Pniel great attention is being given to sanitary measures. 
... Its natural situation entitles it to be called the very gate of 
the Diamond Fields. . . . Pniel and Parkerton are likely to live 
and flourish.” “Hebron is to have its races on January 2,” 
and Pniel also on the same day ; whilst the necessaries and 
comforts of life, together with music-halls, liquors, quack- 
medicines, and other accompaniments of civilisation, are 
announced as ready to hand at the above-named settlements 
in the Klip-drift Diamond-fields, by the “ Diamond News and 
Vaal Advertiser,” No. 10, December 17, 1870, out of which 
paper and its “ Supplement ” (published at Pniel) the fore- 
going extracts have been taken. The newspaper and the 
nascent towns are, of course, due to the concourse of diamond- 
seekers, and of tradesmen supplying their wants, right and 
left of the Pniel Mission Station, near the “ Great Bend ” of the 
Vaal Eiver, 480 miles north-east of Cape Town, upwards of 
300 miles due north of Port Elizabeth (Algoa Bay), and about 
290 miles west by north of D’Urban (Port Natal). 
There are numerous spots at which local proprietors, squat- 
ters, and regular diggers have met with diamonds along the 
valley of the Lower Vaal, as at Hebron, Klip-drift (or ford), 
Pniel Mission-station and its neighbouring grounds, Bultfontein 
(or Du Toit’s Pan), Zitzikamma, Yogelstruis Pan, Sitlacomie’s 
