“When people in the colony began to think that there was a chance of more diamonds being found where this one came from, numerous parties of fortune hunters came up and began to search along the banks of the Orange River, and afterward those of the Vaal. This is the way that the first diggers came here.” It is now seventeen years ago since Mr. Southey, then colonial secretary, laid the second diamond which had been found, on the table of the House of the Cape assembly, with the prophetic remark: “Gentlemen, this is the rock on which the future success of South Africa will be built.” There is not a man who knows this gentleman but rejoices that he still lives, ripe in years, to see the continued fulfillment of his remarkable prediction. To cross the Orange River in those days was to go beyond the confines of civilization; but the diamond is a wonderful magnet, and as the news spread a large population of many thousands soon collected. The influx, as time went on, became of the most cosmopolitan character, North, South, East and West adding their quota, gold diggers came from the gulches of California and the creeks of Australia, “Cousin Jacks” from Cornwall, diamond buyers and speculators from London, Paris and Amsterdam, “tinkers, tailors, soldiers, sailors, ploughboys, apothecaries and thieves,” eager at all cost to embrace this chance of sudden wealth. Hardships were endured, money risked, labor spent. Some were lucky, others unlucky. The life on the river, however, is spoken of by the “old hands” as one of happy memory. I should think that thirty different sites were “rushed” by the early diggers on the Vaal,[23] and although Pinel and Klipdrift were the principal, yet the banks of the river for at least seventy miles of its course were more or less prospected and worked. As I will presently show, the river diggings after the discovery of diamonds at Du Toit’s Pan and the other three mines became rapidly deserted, until at the present time there are not more than 400 diggers altogether on the banks. The diggings are all in alluvial soil. No great finds are made. The diggers, however, enjoy a healthy, happy existence, surrounded by the beauties of nature, on the banks of a broad and majestic river, which in the early days bore on its broad bosom a perfect flotilla of ferry boats plying for hire day and night, and which even now, on the birthday of our beloved queen and other public holidays, may be seen in goodly numbers, with “youth at the prow and pleasure at the helm,” a very different form of life from the dust and discomfort of the dry diggings. The returns from these diggings are at present about £50,000 per annum.