In December, 1870, the dry diggings first were heard of. Hitherto the search for diamonds had been only carried on by river banks, and the gems discovered there had been washed down in ancient floods from some kopje, or dry mine now perhaps worn away. In two years of such digging in a score of places, the yield had not been greater than 300,000 pounds, as Mr. Webb computed. This is indeed an astonishing figure, all circumstances considered, but the time draws near when the same amount will be returned as the monthly average in Custom House reports at Cape Town. In December then, it was whispered that the children of Dutoit, a Boer living at Dorsfontein--so well known by the name of Dutoitspan--were in the habit of picking up diamonds on their father's farm. To those who believed the rumor, it was evident that diamond digging was henceforth to enter on a novel phase. The gem would be sought in the bed where nature created it. But few believed--not till the end of January did the crowd put faith. About that time the farm was "rushed," an expressive word, though sinister to the ears of a landed proprietor nowadays. It signifies that diggers swarmed to the spot in such throngs as to render merely foolish any resistance a proprietor might meditate. But the simple Boer who owned Dutoitspan never dreamed of such a thing. He only sat in, staring, amazed at the endless train of carts and wagons and foot travelers that filed past him. [Sidenote: Conditions Under Which Diamonds are Found] Diamonds in South Africa are found in a limy, chalky grit, bound together in smaller or larger lumps, from the measure of a foot ball to that of a pea. The grit is very dry and of considerable hardness, so that a heap of it looks like shingle on the sorting board. I do not understand that the diamond is found under those conditions anywhere else. It is discovered in a limy stratum at the Brazils, I find, but rarely, and always waterworn. The river beds are the treasure houses there. In India, for the most part, it seems to have been the same case; though at one large field, five days' journey from Golconda, the diamonds were hooked out from crevices of the rock. "In the neighborhood of the mines," says Tavernier, "the earth is sandy, covered with rocks and thickets; something like the environs of Fontainebleau. In these rocks there are many veins, sometimes half a finger wide, and sometimes double of this. The miners have short iron instruments, hooked at the end, which they thrust into the veins, and so drag out the sand or earth collected there. This earth they load into convenient vessels, and therein are the diamonds found. No one reading this description can doubt that the jewels were lodged in the crevices by water power."