136 
ORIGIN OF THE AMERICAN NEGRO. 
worthy white men; for here the danger of robbery is greatest. 
Sweeping the heap of gravel to the right, the sorter scrapes a little 
of it to the center of the table by means of a flat piece of sheet zinc. 
With this tool he rapidly passes in review the grains, seizes the 
diamonds, and puts them into a little tin box in front of him. 
The stuif is then swept off to the left, and another lot taken, 
and so on till the sieveful of gravel is exhausted, when another is 
brought in. The stuff the sorter has passed to his left as tem¬ 
porarily inspected, is taken next to another part of the room, where 
it is again scrutinized by native convicts again and again, and as 
long as diamonds can be found in quantity suflicient to repay the 
cost of convict labor, it is passed under examination. 
The diamond has a peculiar luster, and on the sorter's table 
it is impossible to mistake it for any other stone that may be present. 
It looks somewhat like clear pieces of gum arabic, with a sort of 
luster which makes a conspicuous shine among the other stones. 
NATIVE LABORERS OF THE CONVICT CLASS. 
In the pulsator and sorting house most of the native laborers 
are long-sentence convicts, supplied with food, clothing and medical 
attendance by the company. These men are necessarily well 
guarded, and all the white men in the works carry revolvers. Apart 
from the hopelessness of a successful rising, there is little induce¬ 
ment to revolt; the lot of these diamond workers is preferable to 
life in the government prisons, and they seem contented. 
Sometimes as many as 8,000 carats of diamonds come from the 
pulsator in one day, representing about $50,000 in value. Prod¬ 
igious diamonds are not so uncommon as is generally supposed. 
Diamonds weighing over an ounce (151.5 carats) are not unfre¬ 
quent at Kimberley, and, were it necessary, there would be no diffi¬ 
culty in getting together a hundred of them. 
Just as very few are familiar with the fact that Egypt was 
once a Christian kingdom, for 259 years ending A. D. 640, so there 
are fewer still outside the circle of missionary enterprise, who know 
or care aught for the existing Christian Empire of Abyssinia, 
beyond its more recent political records. Yet Abyssinia has been 
