ANCHOR IN TABLE BAY. 
117 
The first diamonds found at Du Toit’s Pan and 
Bultfontein were picked out from the mud plaster 
covering the walls of an outbuilding at Bultfontein 
in 1869. Shortly afterwards several Kafirs were 
employed to look over the land for them. They 
succeeded in finding a great many small ones on the 
surface of the sandy soil. After searching on the 
surface, digging and sifting the surface soil was 
undertaken ; next, the lime tufa was bored into, and 
now large 66 paddocks ” are sunk to a depth of over 
twenty feet in the decomposed igneous rock. 
There is a tradition among the Bushmen that in 
former times their forefathers made journeys to the 
banks of the Yaal Biver to procure a small white 
substance with which they bored holes in the per- 
forated stones used by them to add weight to their 
digging sticks. Possibly this white substance was 
diamond, as the material out of which the digging 
implements were formed was often intensely hard. 
These perforated stones were afterwards handed 
down from father to son as heirlooms. 
After completing stores, and having refitted ship, 
we steamed round the famous Cape of Storms for 
Table Bay. The forty miles run was soon accom- 
plished, and the anchors let go about a couple of 
miles from the shore. It was intended we should 
have gone in the dock basin, so as to have given the 
inhabitants of the town free run on board, but the 
dock master was afraid of our size, and the damage 
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