The "Queen's Hotel" was the resort of most of the better class of diggers and diamond merchants in the camp. A noisy crowd of fine-looking men usually filled the long, low dining-room at meal-times, a large number bearing the unmistakable stamp of the Jewish race, nearly all of them being representatives of the diamond trade in London and on the Continent. On the evening of our arrival several acquaintances we had made on board the steamer coming out to the Cape called on us, and they seemed like the faces of old friends; through them we were made acquainted with the Kimberleyites. For the first few days we could do nothing but wonder at the extraordinary energy and resource that men's brains can display when incited thereto by the hope of wealth. The town is unlike any other place in the world, and looked at first sight as though it had been built in a night, being more like a huge encampment than a town. It is usually spoken of by the residents as "the camp," and they use the expression of going "up camp" or "down camp" just as we would say "up town" or "down town." The day after our arrival we paid a visit to the mine, and were rewarded by a sight of the very biggest hole in the world, covering between twenty-five and thirty acres, shaped like a huge bowl, and over four hundred feet deep. The first diamond in South Africa was found in 1867 by one of the children of a Dutch farmer named Jacobs, who had it in his possession for months, in perfect ignorance of its value, before the accidental calling of a traveller, Mr Van Nierkirk. Mr Van Nierkirk sent it at once to an eminent geologist, Dr Atherstone, of Grahamstown, who discovered the fact that indeed it was a diamond. Natives and Europeans began to search, and the result was that several other diamonds were very soon found, and the hopes of the Cape Colony, which at that time was in a bankrupt condition, began to revive. The first diamonds were found in the boulders and under the Vaal River, so that it was not until 1872 that the diggings at Dutoitspar and Kimberley attracted any attention. But they very soon eclipsed the old diggings, and the present town sprang up around the claim. For some time the claims were kept distinct from one another, but as they dug lower and lower, it was found impossible to retain the roads separating the claims, so the whole was thrown into one large mine. The diamondiferous soil is quarried out below by Kafirs and deposited in great iron buckets which run on standing wire ropes, and are hauled up by steam to the receiving boxes on the brink of the mine. Everywhere is activity and bustle, and a loud hum comes up out of that vast hole from three or four thousand human beings engaged at work below.