e, Hottentots, Kafirs, and wild blue blacks
gayly clad in an ostrich feather, a scarlet ribbon, and a Tower musket
sold them by some good Christian for a modern rifle.

On one side of Staines were two swells, who lay on their backs and
talked opera half the day, but seldom condescended to work without
finding a diamond of some sort.

After a week's deplorable luck, his Kafir boy struck work on account of
a sore in his leg; the sore was due to a very common cause, the burning
sand had got into a scratch, and festered. Staines, out of humanity,
examined the sore; and proceeding to clean it, before bandaging, out
popped a diamond worth forty pounds, even in the depreciated market.
Staines quietly pocketed it, and bandaged the leg. This made him suspect
his blacks had been cheating him on a large scale, and he borrowed Hans
Bulteel to watch them, giving him a third, with which Master Hans was
mightily pleased. But they could only find small diamonds, and by this
time prodigious slices of luck were reported on every side. Kafirs and
Boers that would not dig, but traversed large tracts of ground when the
sun was shining, stumbled over diamonds. One Boer pointed to a wagon
and eight oxen, and said that one lucky glance on the sand had given him
that lot: but day after day Staines returned home, covered with dust,
and almost blinded, yet with little or nothing to show for it.

One evening, complaining of his change of luck, Bulteel quietly proposed
to him migration. "I am going," said he resignedly: "and you can come
with me."

"You leave your farm, sir? Why, they pay you ten shillings a claim, and
that must make a large return; the pan is fifteen acres."

"Yes, mine vriend," said the poor Hollander, "they pay; but deir money
it cost too dear. Vere is mine peace? Dis farm is six tousand acres.
If de cursed diamonds was farther off, den it vas vell. But dey are too
near. Once I could smoke in peace, and zleep. Now diamonds is come, and
zleep and peace is fled. Dere is four tousand tents, and to each tent a
dawg; dat dawg bark at four tousand other dawgs all night, and dey bark
at him and at each oder. Den de masters of de dawgs dey get angry, and
fire four tousand pistole at de four tousand dawgs, and make my bed
shake wid the trembling of mine vrow. My vamily is with diamonds
infected. Dey vill not vork. Dey takes long valks, and always looks on
de ground. Mine childre shall be hump-backed, round-shouldered, looking
down f