So great had been the rush, for a time, that the police had been quite unable to cope with it, and when I came to see more of the motley crowd of “fortune seekers” that had invaded the place, I easily forgave the irascibility of the stout, overfed and overheated German officials who had had to deal with them all. What a lot they were! Only a small minority were genuine prospectors, engineers, or mining-men with a legitimate interest in the diamond discoveries; the majority were shady “company promoters,” bucket-shop experts, warned-off bookmakers and betting-men (“brokers” they usually styled themselves), and sharpers of all sorts, on the lookout for prey in the shape of lucky diggers or discoverers. Then, too, there were a number of self-styled “prospectors,” runaway ships’ cooks, stewards, stokers, and seamen, the bulk of whom had never seen a rough diamond in their lives, and of course a modicum of genuine men of past experience--principally ex-“river-diggers”--men whose small capital was running away like water for bare necessities in this miserable dust-hole of creation. We soon found that most of the available land in the vicinity of Luderitzbucht had been taken up, and much of it had already changed hands two or three times. Companies and syndicates were being “floated” at a great rate, many of them by unscrupulous scoundrels of promoters, acting upon the “reports” of equally lying and unscrupulous “prospectors.” _Schurfscheinen_ (prospecting licences) were at that time transferable, and as they were daily becoming more difficult to procure, they often changed hands several times, and for quite large sums, before they were even used for their legitimate purpose of enabling the holder to locate and peg-off a claim. And often, when, as a result of an expensive expedition, ground was located and title secured, the diamonds shown to back up the “discoverer’s” or “promoter’s” highly coloured report would be the only ones ever seen by the gullible purchaser or shareholder.