There is not so much of this now as there was, and as years roll on,--if the diamonds still be to be found,--there will be less and less. If the diamonds still be there in twenty years’ time,--as to which I altogether decline to give my opinion,--a railway will have been carried on to Kimberley, and planks will have been carried up, and perhaps bricks from some more favoured locality, and possibly paving stones, so that the town shall be made to look less rowdy and less abominable. And pipes will be laid on from the Vaal river, and there will be water carts. And with the dust the flies will go into abeyance. And trees will have been planted. And fresh butter will be made. And there will be a library and men will have books. And houses will have become pleasant, so that a merchant may love to sit at home in his own verandah,--which he will then afford to have broad and cool and floored. And as the nice things come the nasty habits will sink. The ladies will live far away from the grit, and small diamonds will have become too common to make it worth the parents’ while to endanger their children’s eyes. Some mode of checking the Kafir thieves will perhaps have been found,--and the industry will have sunk into the usual grooves. Nothing, however, will tend so much to this as the lessening of the value of diamonds. The stone is at present so precious that a man’s mind cannot bear to think that one should escape him. I should be doing injustice to Kimberley and to those who have managed Kimberley if I did not say that very great struggles have been made to provide it with those institutions which are peculiarly needed for the welfare of an assembled population. Churches are provided plentifully,--at one of which, at any rate, sermons are to be heard much in advance of those which I may call the sermon at sermon par. I could have wished however that the clergymen who preached them had not worn a green ribbon. And there are hospitals, which have caused infinite labour and are now successful;--especially one which is nearly self-supporting and is managed exquisitely by one of those ladies who go out into the world to do good wherever good may be done. I felt as I spoke to her that I was speaking to one of the sweet ones of the earth. To bind up a man’s wounds, or to search for diamonds among the dirt! There is a wide difference there certainly. I could have wished that the prison had been better,--that is more prisonly,--with separate rooms for instance for those awaiting trial and those committed. But all this will be done within those twenty next coming years. And I know well how difficult it is to get money to set such things afloat in a young community. THE ORANGE FREE STATE. CHAPTER X. THE ORANGE FREE STATE.--ITS EARLY HISTORY.