Wheeling Sunday register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1882-1934, 1899-11-19
ADAY IN A KIMBERLY DIAMOND NINE.
Treasure for the Love of Which South Africa Runs
With Blood To-day.

Your correspondent has just returned
from visit to the Kimberley diamond
mines. These are the great De Beers
mines controlled by the De Beer syndi-
cate at Kimberley. Thees mines, To-
Gated in the heart OF mother earth,
showing nothing of their exterior from
only a few Jumps of sparkling material,
are the cause Of the great South Afri-
can war; and for their possession men
are killing each other and South Africa
, is running with blood.
The De Beers mines are worked very
seldom now. At the time visited there
they were running two hours a day and
all approach to them was guarded with
even more than the usual amount of
caution. The diamond output, the SUI
perintendent told me, was very small,
| and he added that the London agents
had wired them that unless they could
send more, the price of diamonds would
go up one hundred per cent, it having
already advanced fifty per cent in Lon
| don.
In the present disturbed state Of the
country it is no easy matter to get ac-
| cess to the great Kimberley mines. 1t
is Difficult to reach Kimberley, but as a
war correspondent I carried papers
| which took me through the lines, and
| I found that, so great is the Boer sense
| of honor, I could ride over the hills and
even enter strange towns by merely
| showing my passports and proving my
identity The Beers have the utmost
confidence in a stranger who tells them
a straight story, though they are natu-
rally on the alert. These sturdy Dutch
men seem endowed with an extra sense
! which tells them when the newcomer
is an enemy and when friend.
TO KIMBERLEY.
I took a railroad train for Queens
town and there purchased cavalry
mount, and so 1 managed to get across
to Kimberley, sometimes following
wagons and again accompanying the |
troops.
The whole town of Kimberley is a |
typical mining camp. The houses are
built either of wood or corrugated iron |
with very little attempt at architecture. |
Here and there is more pretentious !
edifce, but the substantial houses are
few, owing to the difficulty of getting
the material up from the coast.
1 put UP at public lodging house, I
and here the landlord told me that the |
people of Kimberley have always felt |
the town to be a merely transient one. |
They know that Kimberley depends en-
tirely upon the diamond mines, and |
though the output shows no signs Of |
decrease, still it may cease at any time;
and Kimberley without It's mines would |
be nothing. Owing to its unfortunate
location, which is high on the hills, it
is not fertile, and a newcomer would
quickly predict that Kimberley, with
out its diamond mines, would degener-
ate into pasture lands, and poor lands
at that, in a very short time.
The next morning, through the kind
ness of the superintendent of the De
Beers mines, to whom l took a letter
of introduction, I started out and walk
ed along the street until I came to a
great wire rope which stopped my pro-
gress. And then l saw that was with
in thirty yards of the edge of great
black pit which yawned before me in
a wierd and uncanny way.
Those who have ever been down in a