At the present day churches and chapels, a theatre and library, a municipal council, with a mayor, a properly drilled police force, a well-kept cemetery, the electric light, a race-course and grand stand, public gardens, with tastefully laid out grounds, an admirably arranged and conducted hospital for whites and blacks, a noble court of justice, a comfortably arranged post-office, telegraphic office, and other public buildings, with last, but not least, a large railway station (which for the present is the terminus of the iron way to the interior), are manifestations of the strides which, thanks to the discovery of the diamond, civilization has made in a region which a few short years ago was simply the hunting field of the untutored savage or the nomadic boer. Barkly, which I have already mentioned, Hebron, Likatlong, Boetsap, Douglas and Campbell are the other towns of the territory, though the Langeberg and some other parts are inhabited; but the description of a late writer that “they are poor—are almost waterless—the trading and mission stations occupied as a rule by the most depraved of the human race, things whose language is a curse or a click, whose forms are inferior to those of apes, and whose doom is extinction,” is perhaps a little too severe on the aborigines of this country. [Illustration] CHAPTER X. GEOLOGY OF THE MINE AND SURROUNDINGS.—SECTION OF REEF STRATA.—SURFACE SOIL.—CALCAREOUS TUFA.—LIGHT COLORED SHALES.—BLACK CARBONIFEROUS SHALE.—LIMONITE. LANDSLIPS.—BURNING REEF.—SULPHUR VAPORS.—NATIVES AFRAID TO WORK.—COAL PLANTS.—FIRE AND CHOKE-DAMP.—IGNEOUS ROCKS.—CONTRACTION AND EXPANSION OF MINE.—STRATA OF MINE ITSELF.—RED SAND.—TUFA.—YELLOW GROUND.—BLUE GROUND.—RICH AND POOR CLAIMS.—REMARKABLE BOULDERS.—GREASY SLIPS.—MESSRS. MASKELYNE AND FLIGHT’S OBSERVATIONS. Any work dealing with Kimberley would be incomplete that did not treat of the geology of the mine. For many years I have had the pleasure of an intimate acquaintance with Mr. George J. Lee, who has made the mineralogy of the Kimberley mine his special study, and who has been, as I have already mentioned, in Kimberley since the mine opened. To his kindness I am indebted for most of the information and for the drawings in the two following chapters. In the first of these I propose to give an account of the geological formation, not only inside, but also as revealed by shafts sunk by the Kimberley mining board and the Central and French companies, outside the mine. The depth of the lowest working, either within or without the mine, is now about 550 feet, whilst that of the deepest trial shaft is 620 feet. A section of the strata in the Mining Board shaft, about 700 feet from the north side of the mine, I will now describe, which strata, I may tell my readers, vary very little at any point in the vicinity, so far at least as is shown by the examination of the other shafts.