In the first days of diamond mining there was no idea that diamantiferous earth extended to any particular depth, and miners were allowed to dig holes at haphazard and prospect where they liked. When the Kimberley Mine was discovered a new arrangement was made, and in July, 1871, it was cut up into about 500 claims, each 31 feet square, with spaces reserved for about fifteen roadways across the mine. No person at first could hold more than two claims--a rule afterwards modified. The following quotation from a description of a visit to Kimberley in 1872, by Mr. Paterson, taken from a paper read by him to the Geologists’ Association, gives a graphic picture of the early days of the Kimberley Mine: “The New Rush diggings (as the Kimberley Mine was at first called) are all going forward in an oval space enclosed around by the trap dyke, and of which the larger diameter is about 1000 feet, while the shorter is not more than 700 feet in length. Here all the claims of 31 feet square each are marked out with roadways of about 12 feet in width, occurring every 60 feet. Upon these roadways, by the side of a short pole fixed into the roadway, sits the owner of the claim with watchful eye upon the Kafir diggers below, who fill and hoist, by means of a pulley fixed to the pole above, bucketful after bucketful of the picked marl stuff in which the diamonds are found. “Many of the claims are already sunk to a depth of 100 feet, and still the diamonds continue to be found as plentifully as ever. From the roadway above the marl is carted away to the sorting-tables, outside the range of the diggings, among mounds of marl stuff which seem like little hills. Here, amidst such whirls of dust as are nowhere else seen, the marl stuff is pounded, sifted from the finest powder of lime and clay, and from the residue put on the sorting-tables, the diggers, with a piece of zinc 9 inches long by 4 inches in breadth, search out in the successive layers taken from the heap the precious gems. I need not tell you that the search is by no means very perfect, or that perhaps as many diamonds escape the digger’s eye as are discovered and taken out by him, but you will perhaps confess with me that their aptness in picking out the diamonds is by no means to be despised, when I tell you that in one six months from the date of opening New Rush diggings, little short of a million sterling in diamonds has been extracted from them. At close of day the diggers take daily stock of their finds, and between five and six o’clock in the afternoon are to be seen hundreds and hundreds moving through the main street of New Rush on visits to the tents of the buyers, seated behind their little green baize tables, with scales all ready, and bags of gold and silver and piles of banknotes, to buy the little gems.”