Ten shillings a week and their food were the regular wages here as elsewhere. This I found to be very fluctuating, but the money paid had rarely gone lower for any considerable number of men than the above-named rate. The lowest amount paid has been 7s. 6d. a week. Sometimes it had been as high as 20s. and even 30s. a week. A good deal of the work is supplied by contract, certain middlemen undertaking to provide men with all expenses paid at £1 a week. When mealies have become dear from drought,--there being no grass for oxen on the route,--no money can be made in this way. Such was the case when I was in Griqualand West. It is stated by Mr. Oats, an engineer, in his evidence given to the Committee on the Griqualand West Annexation Bill, in June 1877--that the annual amount of wages paid at Kimberley had varied from £600,000 to £1,600,000 a year. Nearly the whole of this had gone into the hands of the Kafirs. Perhaps the most interesting sight at the mine is the escaping of the men from their labour at six o’clock. Then, at the sound of some welcomed gong, they begin to swarm up the sides close at each other’s heels apparently altogether indifferent as to whether there be a path or no. They come as flies come up a wall, only capering as flies never caper,--and shouting as they come. In endless strings, as ants follow each other, they move, passing along ways which seem to offer no hold to a human foot. Then it is that one can best observe their costume in which a jacket is never absent but of which a pair of trowsers rarely forms a portion. A soldier’s red jacket or a soldier’s blue jacket has more charms than any other vestment. They seem always to be good humoured, always well-behaved,--but then they are always thieves. And yet how grand a thing it is that so large a number of these men should have been brought in so short a space of time to the habit of receiving wages and to the capacity of bargaining as to the wages for which they will work. I shall not, however, think it so grand a thing if any one addresses them as the free and independent electors of Kimberley before they have got trowsers to cover their nakedness. I must add also that a visitor to Kimberley should if possible take an opportunity of looking down upon the mine by moonlight. It is a weird and wonderful sight, and may almost be called sublime in its peculiar strangeness. CHAPTER IX. KIMBERLEY.