A large compound was built around the mines and all the employees locked within it. No employee can buy anything except from the Company and within that compound. On leaving the compound, the employees have to go through an ordeal that is simply beastly, because the Company fears that some of them may have swallowed a diamond. It requires a week to pass the last door and every one must swallow such purging drugs as the Company may command. The Compound is simply a little hell established by the civilized English. They made a law in the Colony by which any one caught with a rough diamond in his possession is sent to penal servitude for a term of years, the period ranging from five to seven years. This law was especially enacted for the Diamond Company, now known as De Beers Company. Any one in Kimberly who might say anything about the Compound System would incur the displeasure of the Diamond Company. That means that one of the Company's detectives would watch his chance and drop a rough diamond in the offender's pocket. In another five minutes the detective would arrest the offender and charge him with having a rough diamond in his possession. The offender would plead innocence, but the search brings out the diamond, the offender is hauled before the Company's judge and sentenced to five or seven years' penal servitude. I remember, in one instance, where the judge held a rough diamond in his hand and remarked to those in the court room that that one diamond had sent eleven men to penal servitude. Sure it is that under an English administration, there is no doubt that justice will be given. This frightful state of affairs exists because Rhodes, Barnato, Beit, Philips, etc. must be pleased. Rhodes and Bernato are now dead, the one having been fatally shot by John Barleycorn, and the other having jumped overboard at sea that it might be recorded of him that he had at least done one good thing. Having sliced off the diamond fields and annexed them to Cape Colony, the English now allowed the Free Staters to live in peace. The people of the Transvaal had long since established their Government, but they were struggling hard to keep starvation from the door. There was no money in the treasury, the people had no money and every official gave his time and services free. There was no complaint, however, for all could be happy in their religion even if they had no money and starvation was staring them in the face. While still struggling to live, a great misfortune fell upon them in the year 1887 by the discovery of the great Rand gold fields at Johannesburg. People from all parts of the world poured into the country and the Boers suddenly jumped from poverty into affluence. These fields became world known, all was flourishing in the Transvaal, and Boers and foreigners alike were all happy and prosperous. England, through the subsidized press soon manufactured an excuse to make war upon the Boers and rob them of their gold fields.