Kimberley, with a population of about 35,000, one-third of this number being white, is the capital of Griqualand West, a section of Cape Colony. Before diamonds were discovered, the territory embraced in the Kimberley district was understood to be a part of the Orange Free State. When the diamond fields promised rich returns, Cape Colony officials claimed this tract as being part of that province. The matter was finally adjusted by the Free State surrendering its claim to the Cape authorities upon payment by the latter to the Boer republic of several million dollars. The Diamond City has evidently stood still while other places in the sub-continent have kept pace with the progress of the times. Its newspapers are inferior; only one building reaches three stories; there is very little street paving, practically no sidewalks, and public buildings are quite ordinary; the shacks standing not far from the business center, built by colored people out of American oil cans, are a disgrace; church bells even are suspended from a crosspiece resting on the top of two posts, 10 feet high, in the churchyard; the parks do not amount to much, most of the shade trees in these being fine-bearded pine, through which the sun beats down on one. If there was anything of a creditable character here, save for a modern street car system, we did not observe it. To Alexandriafontein, a fenced-in private pleasure resort, an electric line runs, but it costs 25 cents to reach this park.
Were one in need of an object lesson to understand thoroughly what a trust means to a municipality, he would learn that lesson in Kimberley. A number of diamond mines are in operation in the Kimberley district, but there is but one diamond mining company--the De Beers. Diamond mining is the only industry in Kimberley. Mine officials are very kind to visitors who wish to look about the works.
"Ho! that's Kimberley rain," shouted a friend. Looking from a window, the width of the street appeared a solid mass of dust, if the term may be allowed, extending far above the roofs of the houses. "That's the sort of 'rain' we get in Kimberley," he explained. No rain had fallen for six months.
The depth of the diamond mines runs from 1,000 to 2,600 feet. The color of the soil in which the diamonds are found is blue--blue dirt, it is called--which is removed by explosives. Dirt, pebbles and stones are moved in iron trucks with iron covers, and locked. On coming to the surface it is started on gravity railways which extend from two to four miles from the mine. The truck of dirt, weighing about a ton and containing an average of one-third of a karat of diamond, is here dumped on the ground. The "dirt field" contains 1,400 acres of space. Three high barbed wire fences form the inclosure, and police--mounted, on bicycles, and on foot--see that no stranger gets inside the triple barbed-wire fence.