The negroes are formed into working parties, called troops, containing two hundred each, under the direction of an administrator and inferior officers. Each troop has a clergyman and a surgeon to attend it. With respect to the subsistence of the negroes, although the present governor has in some degree improved it by allowing a daily portion of fresh beef, which was not allowed by his predecessors, yet I am sorry to observe that it is still poor and scanty: and in other respects they are more hardly dealt with than those of any other establishment which I visited: notwithstanding this, the owners are all anxious to get their negroes into the service, doubtless from sinister motives, of which more will be said hereafter.
The officers are liberally paid, and live in a style of considerable elegance, which a stranger would not be led to expect in so remote a place. Our tables were daily covered with a profusion of excellent viands, served up on fine Wedgewood ware, and the state of their household generally corresponded with this essential part of it. They were ever ready to assist me in my examination of the works, and freely gave me all the necessary information respecting them.
Having detailed the process of washing for diamonds, I proceed to a general description of the situations in which they are found. The flat pieces of ground on each side the river are equally rich throughout their extent, and hence the officers are enabled to calculate the value of an unworked place by comparison with the amount found on working in the part adjoining. These known places are left in reserve, and trial is made of more uncertain grounds. The following observation I often heard from the Intendant: “That piece of ground” (speaking of an unworked flat by the side of the river) “will yield me ten thousand carats of diamonds whenever we shall be required to get them in the regular course of working, or when, on any particular occasion, an order from Government arrives, demanding an extraordinary and immediate supply.”
The substances accompanying diamonds, and considered good indications of them, are bright bean-like iron ore, a slaty flint-like substance, approaching Lydian-stone, of fine texture, black oxide of iron in great quantities, rounded bits of blue quartz, yellow crystal, and other materials entirely different from any thing known to be produced in the adjacent mountains. Diamonds are by no means peculiar to the beds of rivers or deep ravines; they have been found in cavities and water-courses on the summits of the most lofty mountains.