This remarkable discovery attracted immediate attention to the potentialities of a country which produced diamonds of such a size, and prospectors began to swarm into the district, gradually spreading up the Vaal River. For some little time not much success was experienced, but at length, early in 1870, a rich find was made at Klipdrift, now known as Barkly West, which was on the banks of the Vaal River immediately opposite the Mission camp at Pniel. The number of miners steadily increased until the population on the two sides of the river included altogether some four or five thousand people, and there was every appearance of stability in the existing order of things. But a vast change came over the scene upon the discovery of still richer mines lying to the south-east and some distance from the river. The ground was actually situated on the route traversed by parties hurrying to the Vaal River, but no one dreamed of the wealth that lay under their feet. The first discovery was made in August 1870 at the farm Jagersfontein, near Fauresmith in Orange River Colony, by De Klerk, the intelligent overseer, who noticed in the dry bed of a stream a number of garnets, and, knowing that they often accompanied diamond, had the curiosity to investigate the point. He was immediately rewarded by finding a fine diamond weighing 50 carats. In the following month diamonds were discovered about twenty miles from Klipdrift at Dutoitspan on the Dorstfontein farm, and a little later also on the contiguous farm of Bultfontein; a diamond was actually found in the mortar used in the homestead of the latter farm. Early in May 1871 diamonds were found about two miles away on De Beers’ farm, Vooruitzigt, and two months later, in July, a far richer find was made on the same farm at a spot which was first named Colesberg Kopje, the initial band of prospectors having come from the town of that name near the Orange River, but was subsequently known as Kimberley after the Secretary of State for the Colonies at that time. Soon a large and prosperous town sprang up close to the mines; it rapidly grew in size and importance, and to this day remains the centre of the diamond-mining industry. Subsequent prospecting proved almost blank until the discovery of the Premier or Wesselton mine on Wesselton farm, about four miles from Kimberley, in September 1890; it received the former name after Rhodes, who was Premier of Cape Colony at that date. No further discovery of any importance was made until, in 1902, diamonds were found about twenty miles north-west-north of Pretoria in the Transvaal, at the new Premier mine, now famed as the producer of the gigantic Cullinan diamond. [Illustration: _PLATE XVII_ KIMBERLEY MINE, 1874] [Illustration: _PLATE XVIII_ KIMBERLEY MINE, 1881]