Before describing the elaborate washing machines, etc., in vogue to-day, I will proceed to give my readers some idea of the successive methods by which the diamondiferous soil has been removed from the claims for manipulation. The Kimberley mine attracting by its marvelous richness diggers from other mines was, at the time of its opening, and indeed still is, a wondrous hive of human industry. In the earliest days the sorting tables were placed in the claims themselves, and marvelous were the scenes that then might daily be observed. In a space of some dozen acres were often gathered together as many as ten thousand people; diggers with their wives, sisters and children, busily engaged in sorting; natives shoveling the earth into buckets ceaselessly, the whole scene dotted with myriad parasols and umbrellas of the most varied hues, and awnings of the most gayly-colored blankets. The example of Horace’s “magni formica laboris,” that insect to which Mr. Eugene Wrayburn objected to King Solomon referring him, was closely followed by thousands filled with sanguine hopes, some doomed to bitter disappointment, but full many destined in greater or lesser degree to have their realization. After a time, however, as the claims were worked deeper, it was found more convenient to have the sorting tables placed outside the mine. I may here mention that in order to facilitate work, roads were reserved running across the mine from north to south. They were some fourteen in number, and 7½ feet being allowed from the claims on each side, were 15 feet broad. On these roads the native laborers tossed the ground, most of which was conveyed to the sorting tables outside the mine, but some to tables placed upon the sides of the road. The waste ground out of which the diamonds had been sorted was of course deposited outside the mine,[31] after having been conveyed along the roads in sacks or buckets, or sometimes in wheelbarrows or carts, by the “boys,”[32] the name by which the native employés were entitled. As the mine became yet deeper the system of “benches” came into vogue. There were levels or terraces cut in the side of a claim, and on each of them was posted a native who shoveled up the ground thrown to him from the level below, until at last the precious soil reached the roadway, where a fourth or perhaps a fifth native was waiting to convey it to its destination. Of course the number of benches varied with the depth of the claim.