The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1899-11-24
Getting Of the Dirty the
South Africa Runs With Blood To-day.

| Your correspondent has just returned
/ from a visit to the kim berley diamond
1 mines controlled by the De Beer syndi-
cate at Kimberley These mines, To-
Gated in the heart of mother earth,
showing nothing of their exterior from
the surface and amounting, after all, to
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 I visited there
they We're 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 su-
perlntendent 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 1t is no easy matter to get ac-
cess to the great Kimberley mines. It
is difficult to reach Kimberley, but as a
war correspondent carried papers
which took me through the lines, and
L found that, so great is the BOer sense
of honor, 1 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 q 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 a friend.
TO KIMBERLEY.
I took railroad train for Queens
town and there purchased cavalry
mount, and so 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
putt either Of wood or corrugated iron
with very little attempt at architecture.
Here and there is a more pretentiOus
edlhce, but the substantial houses are
few, owing to the difficulty of getting
the material up from the coast
put up at a public lodging house
and here the landlord told me that the
people OF Kimberley have always felt
the town to be 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 its 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
walked along the street until 1 came to
a great wire rope which stopped nv
progress. And then 1 saw that l was
within thirty yards of the edge of a
great black pit which yaWned before
me in q Wierd and uncanny way
Those who have ever been down in a
coal mine, and there are many In the
United States Will recall the yawnina-
abyss and the shafts up and down
which the buckets travel.
The great pit vas fully three hun
dred feet deep. At the top, down to
the very bottom and around the sides
Of this great bowl, electric lights were
placed at irregular intervals, and by
straining the eyes one could see par
ties of half-naked workers fitting in
and out, while from the big hole came
a low hum of human voices drowned
by the occasional rattle of the great
iron buckets as they were drawn up on
their wire cables and sent down again
These buckets, when they came up
were filled with dull Jumps o. dark ma
terial, all of which is poured into a car,
which is drawn away, and the diamond
from the rough starts out upon its ca
reer of becoming a polished stone.
GOING DOWN.
Following the invitation of my guide,
got into one of the buckets and was
lowered to a gallery, which is nothing
more than a ledge cut in the rock upon
which the workmen are busy. There