CHAPTER XXII
_HOW THE PRECIOUS STONES ARE FOUND_
Then we settled down to steady mining. We built a shed for our tools, and we got the hand pump out, we prepared sieves for jigging and we made "Long Toms" and swinging sieves, washing troughs and all the necessary apparatus.
If you had happened to come across our outfit it would have seemed very crude to you. Rough washing boxes, rough troughs through which we turned water, shapeless holes in the ground partly filled with water, great heaps of worthless gravel, the dismal sucking sound of the old hand pump, and a clutter of boards, pans, shovels, and picks.
Yet we had one of the few good mines down there. The "pork knockers" have no mines; they journey from place to place up and down the river with pick and shovel and sieve, with a small quantity of food on their backs, and make shelter wherever they happen to be. They generally borrow money for the outfit, river traders bring up food and gin--I am sorry to say that it is generally more gin than food--and these pork knockers, niggers for the most part, exchange their few diamonds for the strong drink and food and keep on. They generally come out at the end of the dry season with enough, or about enough, to square their debts and leave a little over to live on until next season when they borrow again and once more set out.
They have to give a certain percentage of their diamonds to the British Government for the privilege of mining. We had to pay $25 for every 250 carats, which was not excessive at all, when you figure that 250 carats of diamond are worth around $2,000 these days.
We sunk a shaft sixty feet, which was remarkable in that locality as the gravel is loose and washes in with rains. We propped it up with planks but had to keep constant watch of it. Finally water seeped through faster than our hand pump could get it out.
Some of the jiggers are so expert that, impossible as it seems, they can jig a baby--to use their own expression--so that the diamonds, heavy as they are, will actually come to the top. They then pick off the biggest ones and then go on jigging as usual. But they do not get away with many. A close watch is kept on the jiggers and if they are caught stealing they are fined a month's pay or more. We had some trouble but not much. These men are bound out to us by the British Government and must work. If they run away they are outcasts and cannot get more work to do. On the other hand we must feed them according to the law and work them only so many hours.
One day we were watching the results of a jigging from the "Long Tom" and suddenly there sparkled before us a large, brilliant stone.
It weighed more than seven carats!
This was the largest stone we found. But all together we cleaned up, in only a few months of actual mining, more than $20,000 worth of diamonds!
Rough diamonds are mostly of odd shapes. Seldom do you find them in the almost perfect form that we find quartz crystals. Once in a while I have picked out a small diamond that looked as though it had come directly from a skilled lapidary, so perfect in form it seemed to be.
The largest diamond known to have been found in these fields weighed fourteen carats. A pork knocker named "London" found it. He was a giant of a black man, noted for his lawlessness, and greatly feared. He was working for another man at the time and, strange to say, he turned it over. The reason was that he knew he could not sell so large a gem without being caught.
There is also much gold in that region, but we did not go after it. Having come for diamonds, and finding them in paying quantities, we stuck to it.
Day after day Lewis took his eight or ten grains of quinine. Day after day I seemed to get along without it and I feared to take too much. The mosquitoes were there in plenty, the sort whose sting gives one the jungle fever, so deadly to white men, just as, at home, they cause malarial fevers.