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FIRE IN THE EARTH
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Then
one day late in 1869 a man named Richard Jackson, who had stuck
tenaciously to his diggings for two years at Hebron, heard that a
mysterious white man "working over there in the south," was finding
diamonds every day. He and a few friends decided to trek south and on
the afternoon of the second day they saw the old homestead of one of
the so-called De Beers family. On the third day they were negotiating
with Mynheer De Beers who, on April 18, i860, only for purposes of
farming, had bought the property from the Orange Free State Government
of South Africa for the sum equivalent to $250 in American money.
(Today, after more than three score and ten years, about $450,000,000
worth of diamonds has been taken from that land.)
Jackson's
party obtained the right to peg claims, on a basis of 25 per cent
royalty. Soon other river diggers along the Vaal and elsewhere heard
about it, forsook their claims, and rushed toward the De Beers Farm.
These river diggers swept in like a flood. Pegs were knocked in far
beyond the confines of the original mine. A new diamond era had begun.
Now,
in the middle of July, a group of young men camping a mile from the De
Beers Farm, on what was the crater of an extinct volcano, chanced on
diamonds and staked off claims. And others came. The horde. This was to
be known as the famous Kimberley Mine, the biggest mine hole— the
biggest hole created by man—the biggest diamond-bearing hole. Men came
hurrying not only from De Beers's diggings but from the river camps far
away. There were now 430 legitimate claimants. There were thousands of
fools with hope.
Soon,
too, fourteen parallel roadways, fifteen feet wide, were dug for the
"open-cut" mine, and they sliced 7-1/2 feet from the sides of the
bordering claims. The 430 claims were
(42)
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