So.

cart except the black boy who drives it. The cart travels day and night along desolate roads and is often many miles distant from the nearest habitation. Why the mails are not robbed I cannot tell. The diamond dealers say that the robber could not get away with his plunder, and would find no market for it were he to do They, however, secure themselves by some system of insurance. I cannot but think that the insurers, or underwriters, will some day find themselves subjected to a heavy loss. A great robbery might be effected by two persons, and the goods which would be so stolen are of all property the most portable. Thieves with a capital, -and thieves in these days do have capital,-might afford to wait, and diamonds in the rough can not be traced. I should have thought that property of such immense value would have paid for an armed escort. The gold in Australia, which is much less portable, is always accompanied by an escort.*

I was soon sick of looking at diamonds though the idea of holding ten or twenty thousand pounds lightly between my fingers did not quite lose its charm. I was however disgusted at the terms of reproach with which most of the diamonds were described by their owners. Many of them were "off colours," stones of a yellowish hue and therefore of comparatively little value, or stones with a flaw, stones which would split in the cutting, stones which could not be cut to any advantage. There were very many evil stones to one that was good, so that nature after all did not appear to have been as generous

Since this was written a mail steamer with a large amount of these diamonds among the mails has gone to the bottom of the sea. The mails, and with the mails, the diamonds have been recovered; but in such a condition that they cannot be recognised and given up to the proper owners. They are lying at the General Post Office, and how to dispose of them nobody knows.

as she might have been. And these dealers when the stones are brought to them for purchase, have no certain standard of value by which to regulate their transactions with their customers. The man behind the counter will take the stones, one by one, examine them, weigh them, and then make his offer for the parcel. Dealing in horses is precarious work,-when there is often little to shew whether an animal be worth £50, or £100, or £150. But with diamonds it must be much more so. A dealer offers £500 when the buyer has perhaps expected £2000! And yet the dealer is probably nearest to the mark. The diamonds at any rate are bought and sold, and are sent away by post at the rate of about £2,000,000 in the year. In 1876 the registered export of diamonds from Kimberley amounted in value to £1,414,590, and reached 773 pounds avoirdupois in weight. But it is computed that not above three quarters of what are sent from the place are recorded in the There is no law to make such accounts that are kept. record necessary. Any one who has become legally possessed of a diamond may legally take it or send it away as he pleases.

The diamond dealers whom I saw were the honest men, who keep their heads well above water, and live in the odour of diamond sanctity, dealing only with licensed But there are diamond diggers and loving the law. dealers who buy from the Kafirs,—or from intermediate rogues who instigate the Kafirs to steal. These are regarded as the curse of the place, and, as may be understood, their existence is most injurious to the interests of all who traffic honestly in this article. The law is very severe on them, imprisoning them, and subjecting them to lashes if in any case it can be proved that a delinquent has instigated a Kafir to steal. One such dealer

I saw in the Kimberley gaol, a good-looking young man who had to pass I think two years in durance among black thieves and white thieves because he had bought dishonestly. I pitied him because he was clean. But I ought to have pitied him the less because having been brought up to be clean he, nevertheless, had become a rogue.

Next to diamond dealing the selling of guns used to be the great trade in Kimberley, the purchasers being Kafirs who thus disposed of their surplus wages. But when I was there the trade seemed to have come to an end, the Kafirs, I trust, having found that they could do better with their money than buy guns, which they

seldom use with much precision when they have them. There was once a whole street devoted to this dealing in guns, but the gun shops had been converted to other purposes when I was there. Great complaint had been made against the Government of Griqualand West for permitting the unreserved sale of guns to the Kafirs, and attempts have been made by the two Republics—of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State-to stop the return of men when so armed. The guns were taken away from those who had not a pass, and such passes were rarely given. Now they may travel through the Transvaal with any number of guns, as the British authorities do not stop them. Why it has come to pass that the purchases are no longer made I do not understand. Whether the trade should or should not have been stopped I am not prepared to say. We have not hesitated to prevent the possession of arms in Ireland when we have thought that the peace of the country might be endangered by them. I do not think that the peace of South Africa has been endangered by the guns which the Kafirs have owned, or that guns in the hands

of Kafirs have been very fatal to us in the still existing disturbance. But yet the Kafirs are very numerous and the white men are comparatively but a handful! I would have a Kafir as free to shoot a buck as a white man. And yet I feel that the Kafir must be kept in subjection. The evil, if it be an evil, has now been done, for guns are very numerous among the Kafirs.

There can hardly be a doubt that Kimberley and the diamond fields have been of great service to the black men who obtain work. No doubt they are thieves,-as regards the diamonds, but their thievery will gradually be got under by the usual processes. To argue against providing work for a Kafir because a Kafir may steal is the same as to say that housemaids should not be taught to write lest they should learn to forge. That argument has been used, but does not now require refutation. And there can be as little doubt that the finding of diamonds has in a commercial point of view been the salvation of South Africa. The Orange Free State, of which "The Fields" at first formed a part, and which is closely adjacent to them, has been so strengthened by the trade thus created as to be now capable of a successful and permanent existence,- a condition of things which I think no observer of South African affairs would have considered to be possible had not Kimberley with its eighteen thousand much-consuming mouths been established on its border. As regards the Cape Colony generally, if quite the same thing need not be said, it must be acknowledged that its present comparative success is due almost entirely to the diamonds, or rather to the commercial prosperity caused by the consumption in which diamond finders and their satellites have been enabled to indulge. The Custom duties of the Cape Colony in 1869, before the diamond industry existed, were less than

£300,000. * In 1875 that sum had been very much more than doubled. And it must be remembered that this rapid increase did not come from any great increase of numbers. The diamond-digging brought in a few white men no doubt, but only a few in comparison with the increase in revenue. There are but 8,000 Europeans in the diamond fields altogether. Had they all been new comers this would have been no great increase to a population which now exceeds 700,000 persons. The sudden influx of national wealth has come from the capability for consumption created by the new industry. White men looking for diamonds can drink champagne. Black men looking for diamonds can buy clothes and guns and food. It is not the wealth found which directly enriches the nation, but the trade created by the finding. It was the same with the gold in Australia. Of the national benefit arising from the diamonds there can be no doubt. Whether they have been equally beneficial to those who have searched for them and found them may be a matter of question.

What fortunes have been made in this pursuit no one can tell. If they have been great I have not heard of them. There can be no doubt that many have ruined themselves by fruitless labours, and that others who have suddenly enriched themselves have been unable to bear their prosperity with equanimity. The effect of a valuable. diamond upon a digger who had been working perhaps a month for nothing was in the early days almost mad

In 1869 the amount was £295,661. In 1875 it was £735,380. In 1869 the total revenue was £580,026. In 1875 it was £1,602,918; the increase being nearly to three-fold. The increase in the expenditure was still greater;-but that only shews that the Colony found itself sufficiently prosperous to be justified in borrowing money for the making of railroads. The reader must bear in mind that these Custom Duties were all reeeived and pocketed by the Cape Colony, though a large proportion of them was levied on goods to be consumed in the Diamond Fields. As I have stated elsewhere, the Cape Colony has in this respect been a cormorant, swallowing what did not rightfully belong to her.