Some of these niggers have money, and are quite independent.
You would be surprised at their impertinence. I kicked one of them in
the hotel yesterday, and he asked me what the devil I was doing, so I
knocked the insolent scoundrel down. He says that he will sue me, but I
cannot believe that the law is so servile as to bolster up a black man
against a white one.

"Though Kimberley is the capital of the dry diggings, it is not there
that all the actual mining is done. It goes on briskly in a lot of
little camps, which are dotted along the Vaal River for fifty or sixty
miles. The stones are generally bought by licensed agents immediately
after they have been found, and are paid for by cheques on banks in
Kimberley. I have, therefore, transferred our money to the Standard
Bank here, and have taken my licence. I start to-morrow for Hebron,
Klipdrift, and other of the mining centres to see for myself how
business is done and to make friends with the miners, so as to get
myself known. As soon as the news comes I shall buy in all that offers.
Keep your eyes on that fellow Dimsdale, and let him know nothing of what
is going on."

He wrote again about a fortnight afterwards, and his letter, as it
crossed the Atlantic, passed the outward mail, which bore the news of
the wonderful diamond find made by an English geologist among the Ural
Mountains.

"I am now on a tour among the camps," he said. "I have worked right
through from Hebron to Klipdrift, Pniel, Cawood's Hope, Waldeck's Plant,
Neukirk's Hope, Winterrush, and Bluejacket. To-morrow I push on to
Delparte's Hope and Larkin's Flat. I am well received wherever I go,
except by the dealers, who are mostly German Jews. They hear that I am
a London capitalist, and fear that I may send up the prices.
They little know! I bought stones all the way along, but not very
valuable ones, for we must husband our resources.

"The process of mining is very simple. The men dig pits in loose gravel
lying along the banks of the river, and it is in these pits that the
diamonds are found. The black men, or 'boys,' as they call them, do all
the work, and the 'baas,' or master, superintends. Everything that
turns up belongs to the 'baas,' but the boys have a fixed rate of wages,
which never varies, whether the work is paying or not. I was standing
at Hebron watching one of the gangs working when the white chap gave a
shout, and dived his hand into a heap of stuff he had just tur