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MEN AND MINES
Each is shaking violently from side to side and has a coating of thick yellow vaseline on its surface. Here the concentrates—;the
little black particles of rock—mixed with water, wash down the
table-tops and fall off the lower end into a trough. Over the upper end
of each table is a flat glass hoodi hinged and padlocked. Here, at
last, is the end of the traili Through the glass you can see the
shining little spots thai are diamonds, sticking to the grease, unmoved
by the watei or the incessant motion of the table—for, strangest or
stones, the diamond sheds water like a duck's back and sticks fast to
the grease while the last of the waste rock washes off.
Twice
a day the tables are stopped, the hoods are lifted, and the grease and
diamonds are scraped off. The yellow mass is put into perforated iron
pots, which are then immersed in boiling water. Away goes the grease,
to be cooled and used over again. And so, at the end of the day, a
handful of the bright little mites of carbon is spread on a table in a
quiet room to be sorted. This is the harvest from five thousand tons of
the queer blue rock fetched from the depths of the earth by/the racking
skips.
Native
workers, emerging from the mine and mill by the hundreds, throng to
their quarters at the end of the "shift." Some are small men, with
light-brown skins; others are tall, well built, black as ebony. Between
these two extremes are all manner and shapes of colored men. They are
sometimes called "Kaffir boys." Yet some chatter in one dialect and
others in another. About a dozen tribes are represented here, including
Zulus, the little brown Cape boys and the Xosas and the M'Pondos.
All
the "boys" live together in a compound which is closely guarded. It is
a walled enclosure of several acres' extent, with bunkhouses facing
inward on a great courtyard.
(35)
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