The lower Vaal then became the scene of a bustling, restless and struggling population of miners and speculators. Wealth and diamonds go together, and with them naturally came questions of ownership and territorial rule. The latter was and had been in dispute for many years. The southern bank of the river was probably Free State territory, but the ownership of the northern bank was in grave doubt. No actual government had been established there, although the Transvaal, the Free State, the Batlapin tribe of natives, and the Griqua captain--Waterboer--all claimed portions of the ground. There was naturally much disorder at the mines, both north and south of the River, under such conditions, and, finally, as the bulk of the miners were British subjects, the High Commissioner at Cape Town decided to interfere, and proposed a general arbitration. President Brand declined the suggestion, but President Pretorius of the Transvaal acceded, and a Court was established at Bloemhof, on the northern bank of the Vaal, with Mr. Keate, Governor of Natal, as final Umpire. From the information then available there seems no doubt that the Award issued by Mr. Keate in October, 1871, was just. He acted, and could only act, upon the evidence presented to the Court, and, as the Free State refused to work up or present its case, and as Waterboer was enabled by the use of a clever advocate to prepare a fairly strong one, the region in dispute was finally awarded to him. He had already offered his claim to the territory to the British authorities, and, as soon as the legal decision was announced, Sir Henry Barkly, as High Commissioner, proclaimed the Diamond Mines and what had long been familiarly known as Griqualand West, to be a British dependency. Afterwards, during the holding of a special Court for the settlement of individual ground-claims, a minute search into the history of the region south of the Vaal revealed an unsuspected flimsiness in Waterboer's title, and the judgment of the Court thereupon threw out all titles based upon Griqua grants. This very impartial verdict--under all the circumstances of the case--at once gave President Brand a position in the matter which he did not hesitate to use. He went to London and laid his case before the British Government, which replied that the possession of the country in question was a necessity to the paramount Power in South Africa, but that he would be given $450,000 as a settlement of the Free State claims. This he accepted. [Sidenote: A Momentous Decision]