Thinking, doubtless, that I was like unto the ordinary city fellow who comes at rare intervals to look at a mine, he made me a present of a piece of rock with some worthless garnets in it, also a sample of country rock pregnant with mundic; the garnets and the mundic glittered in the sunshine. I rose to the bait, as I was expected to do, and intimated that I would like a lot of it. This delighted the Dutchman, and he beamed all over his expansive face, all the time cursing me for the second son of an idiot, as is the way with mine managers. But he stopped grinning before the afternoon wore out, for I set him climbing and clambering for little pieces of mundic and tiny patches of garnets in all the toughest places I could find in that mine, and went into ecstasies over each individual piece, until I had quite a load of the rubbish. Then I intimated gently that I would be back that way when the war was over, and would surely send my Cape cart for them if he would be good enough to mind them for me. I fancy an inkling of the truth dawned in that Dutchman's soul at last, for he made no further reference to either garnets or mundic. I satisfied myself with a sample of the matrix in which diamonds are found, and also with a specimen of the country rock for geological reference, but the garnets are on the heap still. The mine, which is named the "Monastery," is very crudely worked; everything connected with it is primitive. A huge quarry, about 600 feet in circumference, and about 40 feet deep, had been opened up. There was nothing in it in the shape of lode or reef, but a large number of disconnected "stringers," or leaders of rocky matter, in which diamonds are often found. At the bottom of the quarry the water lay fully eight feet deep, owing to the fact that the mine had lain unworked during the war. A vertical shaft had been sunk a little distance from the quarry to a depth of 150 feet, but there was a hundred feet of water in it, so that I am unable to say anything concerning the Monastery diamond mine at its lower levels. One or two tunnels had been drawn from the quarry into the adjoining country on small leaders, and from what I could gather from my guide diamonds had been discovered. Whilst I went below, I left my Kaffir boy on top to pick up what he could in the shape of rumour or gossip from the natives, and he informed me that the niggers had been the cause of the opening of the mine, they having found diamonds near the surface in some of the leaders, which consisted of a rock known in Australian mining circles as illegitimate granite. The white folk, fearing that the poor heathen might become debauched if they possessed too much wealth, had gathered those diamonds in--when they could--and later had started mining for the precious gems, with what success the heathen did not know. I tried the Dutchman on the same point, but I might as well have interviewed an oyster in regard to the science of gastronomy.