Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. UVON DER KULTUB BELECKT." The first great change in our ideally simple aspect of life was brought about by the Diamond Fields. True, they had been lost to the Republic; but the influx of population, which seemed to us—in those pre- Johannesburg days—all but miraculous, created markets such as the Boer had never dreamed of, and of which he was not slow to take advantage. He thought nothing of the journey of weeks in his slow but sure ox-waggon, if he could dispose of his produce, his cattle, at such unprecedented prices. Even the last ten miles of bottomless sand did not deter him, though they broke many a yoke and skey, and the heart of more than one stalwart ox, for whose jaded powers this last final effort was too big a task. How strong the impression was of this unspeakable barrier guarding the " home of the gems " can best be shown by the comment of a Boer, who saw, for the first time in his life, a train start from Kimberley—start with much noise and escape of steam: " Ah, you are puffingand groaning already ! You wait a bit till you get into the yellow sand! " Up went the prices of agricultural products, but up also, unfortunately, went the price of labour. The native, who had been glad to work with the farmer or in the townlets for a calf or two per year, swarmed in thousands to the place where he received good hard money; and so the first of South African labour questions arose. But there were other dangers brought by this trek of black labour from the utmost boundaries of the Republic. The Kimberley shopkeeper was by no means inclined to let the native depart with well-lined pockets, without a resolute attempt to relieve him of some of the responsibility which the possession of wealth is believed to carry with it. With gaudy blankets, multi-coloured ...