Kimberley, South Africa

“ To imagine that Kimberley with all its wealth would have allowed itself to be ruled by a Dutch Volksraad at the little town of Bloemfontein, is to suppose that the tail can permanently wag the dog, instead of the dog wagging the tail. Diamond diggers are by no means people of a kind to submit quietly to such a condition of things. It was bitter enough for the Volksraad to abandon the idea of making laws for so rich and strong a population,—bitter perhaps for Mr. Brand to abandon the idea of governing them. ”

“ The two main roads from the Cape Colony to the Transvaal cross the Orange river at Hope Town, and a few miles north of Colesburg, both meeting at Kimberley, the diamond-field centre. Railways are open as far as Kimberley.
From Kimberley to Pretoria by road is 334 miles. The country, the whole distance, is open, and most uninteresting; grass-lands the entire distance, broken here and there with small patches of low mimosa bush. ”

“ Now that we have our railway up to Kimberley, we have the British South African Company to take it in hand, and the object of the Government is to see that we have an extension line into these territories which will, in time to come, be recognised as portions of the Cape Colony. Gentlemen, I and my colleagues have come to the conclusion, that we cannot better advance the best interests of South Africa than by joining hand-in-hand to advance British interests westward of the Transvaal State, and right up to the Zambesi. ”

“ They form the large majority of the town population, for not only the seaports, but also such inland places as Graham's Town, King William's Town, and Kimberley are quite English, and nearly all the commerce and finance of the country are in their hands. They have more enterprise than the Dutch, and are much less antiquated in their ideas, so it is to them that the profits of the new mining ventures have chiefly fallen, so far as these have not been appropriated by keener and more ingenious adventurers from Europe, mostly of Semitic stock. ”

“ On the other hand, if Ladysmith should meanwhile fall, the Boer commandos at present surrounding that town would be set free to seize not only Maritzburg but probably also the seaport of Durban, the possession of which would give to the republics direct access to the outer world, and would, as was believed by both Boer and British, be a signal to all the disaffected in Cape Colony to take up arms. In the western theatre of war, the early relief of Kimberley was an object dear to the hearts of all loyalists, and its loss would undoubtedly give an immediate impetus to the wave of rebellion. ”

“ The authorities at Pretoria and Bloemfontein realised fully that, though they might expect to have sympathisers in the colonies, active co-operation on any large scale was not to be counted on until successes in the field should persuade the waverers that, in casting in their lot definitely with the republican forces, they would be supporting the winning side. The conquest of Natal and the capture of Kimberley would, it was thought, suffice to convince the most doubtful and timid. ”

“ Next day, the news having got abroad, the locality was “rushed” and hundreds of claims pegged out. The other diggings very soon became practically deserted. Men packed up their belongings, moved their tents, and sought the “New Rush,” and, almost as if by magic, in the very place where but a few days before deer had been quietly browsing, hundreds of diggers could be seen. This famous “Kopje” is now the Kimberley mine, the richness of which it is impossible to estimate. ”

“ The gain of Kimberley, had they gained it, would have been poor compensation for the daily increasing solidity of the still weak British grasp on the central positions outlined by De Aar, Orange River and Naauwport. This absorption of the Boers' attention by Kimberley was maintained by frequent sorties of the garrison, in every direction, which at an early period of the siege became possible through the ready facility with which the citizens were converted into irregular mounted troops. ”

“ A black flag to be hoisted on the edge of the Kimberley mine was to be the signal for the revolters to fire upon the court-house and government offices. The Kimberley prison was to be leveled to the ground, when, as the rebels calculated, the liberated prisoners would instantly swell their ranks and help to overthrow the government. The lieutenant governor refused to make any terms whatever with men under arms and ordered them to give up their weapons to the government. ”

“ It should be well understood for the location of influential events that the city of Kimberley is the center of the diamond mine country. The Boers do not seem to have had the spirit of adventure, the breadth of understanding and the executive faculty to interest themselves largely in the development of the unparalleled riches found under their feet. ”

“ The yield of diamonds will be equal to the demands of trade, whatever it is. The store of them in the soil about Kimberley seems to be inexhaustible. It is these tremendous endowments of nature in the heart of South Africa that caused the immigration there, and has aroused the cupidity and excited the ambition of the Boers, causing them to array themselves against the growth of communities whose importance has been increasing so fast as to threaten the rule of the caste that has held the Transvaal with an iron hand. ”

“ The earnings of the diamond mines provided the Cape Colony with a revenue sufficient to enable it to link together its main towns by a tolerable railway system. The industry, once established, attracted British capital and British population, and by so doing it did what Blue-books and missionary reports had failed to do: it brought the every-day life of the British Colonist in South Africa within the purview of the nation. Thanks to the Kimberley mines the Cape ceased to be thought of as a country whose resources were exclusively pastoral and agricultural. ”

“ Then I would propose to attack Bloemfontein from Kimberley, and I think an army holding Bloemfontein based on Kimberley will be better off than one which holds Bloemfontein but has allowed Kimberley to be again invested. Time, after all, is in our favour. The Boers cannot reproduce their horses which are being used up, and if they lose their mobility, they lose their power. I believe that French and Gatacre are strong enough to prevent the spread of disaffection, and that when the 7th division arrives they will join hands, and the disaffected Dutch will go back to their homes. ”

“ The Kimberley mine attracting by its marvelous richness diggers from other mines was, at the time of its opening, and indeed still is, a wondrous hive of human industry. In the earliest days the sorting tables were placed in the claims themselves, and marvelous were the scenes that then might daily be observed. In a space of some dozen acres were often gathered together as many as ten thousand people; diggers with their wives, sisters and children, busily engaged in sorting ”

“ I was taken up to Barkly “on a picnic” as people say; and a very nice picnic it was,—one of the pleasantest days I had in South Africa. The object was to shew me the Vaal river, and the little town which had been the capital of the diamond country before the grand discovery at Colesberg Kopje had made the town of Kimberley. There is nothing peculiar about Barkly as a South African town, except that it is already half deserted. There may be perhaps a score of houses there most of which are much better built than those at Kimberley. They are made of rough stone, or of mud and whitewash ”

“ In the western theatre, the safety of Kimberley and Mafeking mainly depended on the untried fighting qualities of recently enlisted colonial corps, volunteers, and hastily organised town-guards; detachments of regular troops dotted along the northern frontier of Cape Colony were without hope of support either from the coast or each other, and would be cut off and crushed in detail in the case of serious attack or of a rising in their rear. ”

“ Some squalor one must have with that disturbance of nature which mining involves, but here the enlightened activity of the Company and the settlers has done its best to mitigate these evils by the planting of trees and orchards, by the taste which many of the private houses show, and by the provision here and there of open spaces for games.
From Kimberley the newly-opened railway runs one hundred and fifty miles farther north to Vryburg, till lately the capital of the Crown Colony of British Bechuanaland, annexed in 1895 to Cape Colony, and thence to Mafeking. ”

“ It is probably the most hideous that has yet come to man’s hands;—but it is the most portable and therefore in many localities the cheapest,—in some localities the only material possible. It is difficult to conceive the existence of a town in which every plank used has had to be dragged five hundred miles by oxen; but such has been the case at Kimberley. Nor can bricks be made which will stand the weather because bricks require to be burned and cannot well be burned without fuel. Fuel at Kimberley is so expensive a luxury that two thoughts have to be given to the boiling of a kettle. ”

“ It is the same with the other mines; the population, including whites and blacks, must exceed 30,000. Kimberley is twenty-five miles south-east from Barkly, and is the great diamond centre, where the government of the province is carried on. These four principal mines cover an area of over six square miles, and are situated in a part of the country the most wretched, barren, and exposed I have ever been in; no trees, but open dreary plains, surround the mines in all directions. ”

“ A series of boldly-conducted raids on the long line of railway from Cape Town to De Aar might at this period have paralysed Lord Methuen's advance on Kimberley, while a Boer column in the central districts of the Colony would have formed a nucleus round which the disaffected and lawless might have rallied, before the loyal farmers could be armed and organised to defend their own homes. ”

“ One powerful influence is telling upon them, even where they live uncontrolled by any white government. The diamond-mines at Kimberley, the gold-mines in the Witwatersrand and in various parts of Mashonaland and Matabililand, offer large wages for native labour, and cannot (except at Kimberley) obtain as much native labour as they need. Accordingly a steady though still insufficient stream of Kafirs sets towards these mining centres, not only from Basutoland, Natal, and Bechuanaland, but also from the Portuguese territories, where the Shangans live, and from the banks of the Zambesi. ”

“ The invalids in hospital, both British and Boers, were visited frequently by the Colossus, whose generosity in the matter of delicacies, which were now very scarce, was highly appreciated.
Much of the Kimberley news was obtained through the energy and acuteness, almost amounting to genius, of the despatch-runners. Of these, Mr. Lumming of Douglas succeeded in getting in and out of the town with missives for and from Mr. Rhodes, always at tremendous risk. The Boers had offered a large reward for his capture. ”

“ The South African War of 1899 grew out of racial conditions and national considerations far apart from, and long precedent to, the growth of Kimberley and Johannesburg or the discovery of diamonds and gold. It arose, primarily, from racial tendencies which had grown more and more opposed to each other as the climate and conditions of South Africa accentuated their peculiarities. History and tradition had early driven into the Boer's heart an intense intolerance of religious thought to which the isolation of the veldt added an almost incomprehensible ignorance. ”

“ The capture of Kimberley and the duty of holding in check the British troops at the Orange River station were assigned to Free State levies composed of the Fauresmith, Jacobsdal, Bloemfontein, Ladybrand, Boshof and Hoopstad commandos, the first two of these corps being assembled at Boshof and the remainder at Jacobsdal. Their total strength was probably about 7,500; a Transvaal detachment, about 1,700 strong, composed of the Fordsburg and Bloemhof commandos, was concentrated at Fourteen Streams, ready to join hands with the Free Staters. ”

“ It is impossible to speak of South Africa without awarding to Cecil Rhodes the tribute which unquestionably is due to his strong personality. Without him it is possible that the vast territory which became so thoroughly associated with his name and with his life would still be without political importance. Without him it is probable that both the Diamond Fields to which Kimberley owes its prosperity and the Gold Fields which have won for the Transvaal its renown would never have risen above the importance of those of Brazil or California or Klondyke. ”

“ From the day of this battle until February 11, the opposing forces continued in the positions occupied by them before the engagement, Methuen upon the north bank of the Modder, Cronje holding the ranges at Magersfontein and Spytfontein. The great comparative mobility of the Boers, with their more numerous and seasoned horses, enabled them to maintain the investment of Kimberley, and yet retain the power to concentrate betimes at any threatened point from this interior position. Here between the two bodies of the enemy, between Methuen and Kekewich, was the bulk of their army. ”

“ In Natal the Volunteers who had been called out, and the special service corps enrolled since the war, numbered in all 6,700 men, and efforts were being made to raise another 700. Including, therefore, the 4,000 colonial and local troops besieged in Kimberley, the 1,000 defending Mafeking, and 1,500 Southern Rhodesians, there were at this time 20,000 South African colonists employed in the defence of their country, and arrangements were being made to augment this total to about 25,000 men. The men who thus served their Sovereign were not all of British descent. ”