first the searchers confined themselves chiefly to the river bed and to the small confluents of the river, scraping up into their mining cradles the shingles and dirt they had collected, and shaking and washing away the grit and mud, till they could see by turning the remaining stones over with a bit of slate on a board whether Fortune had sent on that morning a peculiar sparkle among the lot.
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; and, if I do not mistake, one of them had two storeys. There was an hotel,—quite full although the place is deserted,—and clustering round it were six or seven idle gentlemen all of whom were or had been connected with diamonds. I am often struck by the amount of idleness which persons can allow themselves whose occupations have diverged from the common work of the world.
When at Barkly we got ourselves and our provisions into a boat so that we might have our picnic properly, under the trees at the other side of the river,—for opposite to Barkly is
