The Anaconda standard. [volume] (Anaconda, Mont.) 1889-1970, 1890-06-22
DIAMONDS BY The TON
The Way In Which the South African
Mines Are Worked.
Millions Invested in the Work BY a
Company That Gets Robbed
All Round and Yet
Makes Money.
For the Sunday Standard.


PRETORIA, Transvaal. S. Africa, April
Y.-My first impression of Kimberly wal
bad. There was no such thing as an ex-
pressman to take our baggage and those
ID pieces weighed heavily on our minds.
After much delay, we rescued them from
the mass OF luggage in the van and piled
them up on the seats, on the floor. on the
box of a carriage, and followed after this
OF runks in a Cape cart. My
own private opinion Of the Cape cart is
that IL is an invention Of the devil, de-
signed to make men swear. 1t looks like
"a common, ordinary, everyday dirt cart
with springs and a hood. The front seat
is movable, in order to balance the ma
chine. This desirable object is never at
tanned, and every time the wheels strike q
stone you are bounced all over The cart,
and a new adjustment is necessary. We
were thus bounced to the Grand Central
hotel-everything is grand, in name at
least, in this country-where a bath and a
good dilner greatly refreshed us. 1t was
too late, and we were too tired to see
much Of the town that night, SO we turned
in To be ready bright n early the next
morning.
At q a. m. a knock was heard. A very
sleepy ''come in" was the answer, and a
III t"o VIE VI SoitCSs 4NoWs
coffee is a nice beverage, of that there is
no doubt, but s a. m, in my humble opin-
ion, is not a ~seasonable hour at which TO
be awakened merely for the pleasure Of
drinking coffee, M we tried to impress
this fact on the darky, but TO no good ef-
feet. You can't change in an hour the
habits of a lifetime, especially not Of q
negro. Making the best of a bad matter,
We got up, and, after donning our clothes,
stepped out into the streets of Kimberly,
which were beginning to show life i'm the
person OF the early pedestrian or rider
bent on getting up an appetite for break
fast.
Kimberly is certainly not a pretty town
to look at. The general galvanized iron.
one-story appearance OF the houses is not
prepossessing, and the streets are made
filthy by the seemingly endless streams of
o~x-wagons taking the goods u~p-country.
After a substantial meal had satisfied
our hunger we presented "a letter. which
Is called a soup ticket by globe-trotters-
to Mr.. Gardner Williams, general man.
ager of the De Beers Consolidated mines.
La Mr.. Williams we found an old Cali
fornian, "a most genial man and a delight
full cicerone. Under his guidance we
went to look at the hole in the ground out
of which so many diamonds were taken.
The four great mines of Kimberley are
the Kimberley, the DE Beers, Du Toit Pan
n Bultfontein. All four of them are
craters of old volcanoes, filled up with
what is locally called playground. The
first Two are almost round, having a diam
eter of about three hundred feet, the other
two being oblong, some three hundred
feet wide by from six hundred to eight
hundred feet long. All of these mines
were worked as open cuts down to the
5OO-foot level, and owing to the necessary
inclination of the sides, the openings are
Ia. sIa.. t....AV A1.. -l- s.-.
When the New Rush, as Kimberley was
first called, was started, "A claim was only
thirty feet square, and as every owner
worked his own claim or claims, the man
who had a claim in the middle of the era
ter had a hard time getting his stuff to the
rim where il could be sorted. Finally a
law was passed hat every man had to
leave seven and "A half feet of his claim
unworked for q roadway; SO that pres
entity The craters presented the appear
aDce of a huge checker-board with n road
way every sixty feet. Tho sides of these
roads were trimmed perpendicular, and
as the claims were worked, some thirty,
some forty, fifty, and even ninety feet
deep a cave of the road was not an un-
frequent occurrence. Finally a law was
passed by the diggers that all hosting
gear had to be placed on the rim. This
was the funeral knell of the individual
claim owner and worker. Many claims
were joined together into companies and
were worked on some sort of system.
Nevertheless, the companies were small
and numerous. consequently the humble
of gears was great. The manner of hoist
ing was To have two wires anchored in the
claim and fastened to the bank any an.
worked claim or high ground was passed
over by of jumpers, up
rights which held the wires oil the
ground. These uprights were so called
from the tendency of the truck To jump
off the guide wires at these places. When
all these wires were up the mines looked
like nothing SO much as n spiders web
and the hum of the trucks travelling on
the taut wires must have been dreadful,
To Judge from the few ! saw working at
DuToit's Pan and Buff n EN-. When the
yellow or surface soil was entirely ex-
hausted and blue ground was struck
which could not be treated by simple dry
sorting and win tanning, amalgama-
tons were the order of the day, until fin
ally last year Mr.. Cecil Rhodes obtained
contract OF all four miles and formed them
into the DeBeers Consolidated, which con-
trolls the worlds supply of diamonds.
The method of working is to sink a shaft
n safe distance from the vein, then TO run
crosscut from zach l00-foot level to the
crater through il, with side drives every
30 feet, thus cutting il up into 8-foot
blocks; from these side drives shoots are
raised to the next level above, and from
these shoots intermediate levels are driven
every 30 feet. When a level is thus blocked
out work is commenced at the rim oppo-
site the shaft and the whole of the ground
is stopped out, the rim coming in behind,
not a stick Of timber being used in the
slopes, timber being an expensive luxury,
costing In Kimberley about seventy-five
cents per running foot for 6x6. l was told
that very few Kafers were ever caught by
the caving rim, as they seem to know
when il is going to ave and they get out
of the way. Work is only carried on on
one level. and consequently in order TO
get out enough stuff the trainming and
hosting system must be good. At the
Kimberley mine they were hosting from
the 7OO-foot level with a 20 nominal horse
power engine about 225 indicated, and
their daily output was $500 tons, and on a
push they hoisted 4. 100 tons. THIS seemed
incredible 10 me until saw how IL was