e survey. Ward, who had been in the Austrian Army, was an
exceedingly handsome man. He was killed in the Kaffir War of 1879, not
far from the Taba 'Ndoda.

I think it was on the third day after the rush that Brown, who was the
only moneyed man among us, first expressed his full belief in the mine.
We were seated under a camel-thorn close to the edge of the kopje, and
were just about to begin our midday meal. Brown, who had been unusually
silent, put down his rosterkoek and pannikin of coffee. Then he stood
up, saying:

"Yes; there are diamonds here, right enough. I'll go and buy another
claim."

In about half an hour he returned, looking very hot and ill-tempered as
he threw himself down on the sand.

"I'm damned if they're not asking ten pounds apiece for claims," said
he; "did you ever hear of anything so ridiculous?"

Within a few weeks it was amply proved that the new mine was one of
enormous richness. Day by day large and valuable stones were unearthed.
On some sorting-tables the finds ran up to as many as five and twenty
diamonds per day. People flocked in by thousands from the surrounding
camps. At Du Toit's Pan, Bultfontein, and De Beers claims were
abandoned wholesale.

As though by magic the vast plains surrounding "New Rush," as it now
came to be called, became populous. A great city of tents and wagons
sprang up like mushrooms in a night. There was at first no attempt at
orderly arrangement; each pitched his camp wherever he listed. How,
eventually, streets and a market square came to be laid out is more
than I can explain. I would not like to guess at the number of people
and tents surrounding the mine three months after the latter was
rushed, but the tents alone must have figured to many thousands. Money
literally abounded. I have more than once seen fools lighting their
pipes with bank-notes, thus giving the banks concerned a present of the
face value. One of the men I saw indulging in this pastime I came
across a few years later in a remote goldmining camp. He was then
almost starving.

Sanitary arrangements did not exist. Although disagreeable in the
extreme, this did not matter so very much as long as the weather was
cool and dry, but later, under the summer sun and the then frequent
thunder showers, fever began to take its toll. The epidemic was called
"diamond-field fever," and was supposed to be a malady peculiar to the
neighborhood. But I am convinced that it was neither more nor less than