ter, attracted by the high
wages, usually eighteen to thirty shillings a week, and remain for three
months or more and occasionally even for long periods, knowing, of
course, that they have to submit to the precautions which are absolutely
needed to prevent them from appropriating the diamonds they may happen
to find in the course of their work. To encourage honesty, ten per cent,
of the value of any stone which a workman may find is given to him if he
brings it himself to the overseer, and the value of the stones on which
this ten per cent, is paid is estimated at L400,000 in each year.
Nevertheless, a certain number of thefts occur. I heard from a
missionary an anecdote of a Basuto who, after his return from Kimberley,
was describing how, on one occasion, his eye fell on a valuable diamond
in the clay he was breaking into fragments. While he was endeavouring to
pick it up he perceived the overseer approaching, and, having it by this
time in his hand, was for a moment terribly frightened, the punishment
for theft being very severe. The overseer, however, passed on. "And
then," said the Basuto, "I knew that there was indeed a God, for He had
preserved me."

When the native has earned the sum he wants--and his earnings accumulate
quickly, since he can live upon very little--he takes his wages in
English sovereigns, a coin now current through all Africa as far as
Tanganyika, goes home to his own tribe, perhaps a month's or six weeks'
journey distant, buys two oxen, buys with them a wife, and lives
happily, or at least lazily, ever after. Here in the vast oblong
compound one sees Zulus from Natal, Fingos, Pondos, Tembus, Basutos,
Bechuanas, Gungunhana's subjects from the Portuguese territories, some
few Matabili and Makalaka, and plenty of Zambesi boys from the tribes on
both sides of that great river--a living ethnological collection such as
can be examined nowhere else in South Africa. Even Bushmen, or at least
natives with some Bushman blood in them, are not wanting. They live
peaceably together, and amuse themselves in their several ways during
their leisure hours. Besides games of chance we saw a game resembling
"fox and geese," played with pebbles on a board; and music was being
discoursed on two rude native instruments, the so-called "Kafir piano,"
made of pieces of iron of unequal length fastened side by side in a
frame, and a still ruder contrivance of hard bits of wood, also of
unequal size, which when struck by