When it became apparent that the place had not a sufficient amount of capital to support its enormous number of mining undertakings, many plans were formed for the introduction of capital from Europe, and in the hope of this object meeting with a successful issue, speculators still continued to buy and sell shares, but as time went on and it became perfectly clear that the hope of any benefit being derived from this source must be abandoned, the value of scrip gradually became lower and lower, until at last in many cases it was all but nil, and where there were calls unpaid a minus quantity. The decline in the value of shares in the market was enormous. Central shares in the Kimberley mine, which had an easy sale in March, 1881, at £400[54] per share were in 1884 almost unsalable at £25. Rose Innes shares which were sought after at £53 sank to £5, and a similar fall also occurred in the shares of all the companies in the other mines of the province. In the mines of the Free State the depreciation in the value of shares was more extraordinary still. An instance I well remember. A friend of mine after years of application to business, combined with indomitable perseverance, amassed a large fortune, when he was tempted to speculate in the Koffyfontein mine, to which I have already alluded, during the months of June and July, 1881. He bought during the height of the mania 1,200 Koffyfontein shares at £28 each, which were afterward within two years realized in his estate at 6d a share. He thus lost over £30,000 on the one venture. This was far from being an unparalleled instance of men being completely ruined by the unprecedented fall which took place in shares at that time. Though the diamond mania did not convey such widespread disaster as the South Sea bubble or the Mississippi scheme, yet it will be years before the effect of the South African “bubble year” of 1881 is forgotten. On the time arriving when dividends were expected to be declared, in but very few instances were the directors able to do so. Ground which had yielded well in the hands of private owners often proved entirely unremunerative under the joint-stock system, and the reason of this was evident; the digger when working on his own account required no office with a highly paid staff; he was his own manager and secretary, he looked keenly after his own interests, and would never have dreamed of trusting the most vital matters in his business to a possibly incompetent servant.