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2017 OK Publishing
ISBN 978-80-272-2336-7
musaicumbooks@okpublishing.info
2017 OK Publishing
ISBN 978-80-272-2336-7
“GO on, I am listening.”
“I have the honor to ask you for your daughter’s hand.”
“Alice?”
“Yes. My request seems to surprise you. Perhaps you will forgive me if I have some difficulty in understanding why it appears so strange. I am twenty-six years old; my name is Victor Cyprien; I am a mining engineer, and left the Polytechnic as second on the list. My family is honest and respected, if it is not rich. The French consul at Capetown can answer any questions about me you are likely to ask, and my friend Pharamond Barthes, the explorer, whom you — like everybody else in Griqualand — know right well, can add his testimony. I am here on a scientific mission in the name of the Academy of Sciences and the French Government. Last year I gained the Houdart prize at the Institute for my researches on the chemistry of the volcanic rocks of Auvergne. My paper on the diamantiferous basin of the Vaal, which is nearly finished, is sure of a good reception from the scientific world. When I started on my mission I was appointed Assistant-Professor at the Paris School of Mines, and I have already engaged my rooms on the third floor at No. 104 of the Rue Université. My appointments will, during the first year, bring me in two hundred pounds. That is hardly an El Dorado, I know, but with my private work I can nearly double it. My wants being few, I have enough to be happy on. And so, Mr. Watkins, I have the honor to ask you for your daughter’s hand.”
From the firm, decided tone of this little speech it was easy to see that Cyprien was accustomed to go straight to the point in what he did, and to speak his mind freely.
His looks did not belie his words. They were those of a young man habitually occupied in the abstrusest problems of science, and only giving to worldly vanities the time that was absolutely necessary. All about him showed an earnest and serious disposition, while his clear, keen glance proclaimed an untroubled conscience. He was by birth a Frenchman, but he spoke English as well as if he had lived all his life beneath the British flag.
Seated in his arm-chair, with his left leg thrust out on to a stool, and his elbow resting on the table, Mr. Watkins listened to Cyprien’s speech and puffed away at his pipe. The old man wore white trousers, a blue linen jacket, and a yellow flannel shirt, and had neither waistcoat nor cravat. His huge felt hat seemed to be screwed on to his gray head. The red, bloated face was cut into by a bristly beard, and lighted up by two little gray eyes that spoke of anything but patience and good-nature.
As some excuse for Mr. Watkins, it may be mentioned that he was a terrible sufferer from the gout — hence his bandaged leg; and the gout in Africa, as elsewhere, is not calculated to soften the asperities of a man’s character.
The scene is at Watkins’ Farm, in lat. 290 S. long. 250 E. on the western border of the Orange Free State, and nearly five hundred miles from Capetown. On the older maps the surrounding district bears the title of Griqualand, but for the last dozen years it has been better known as the Diamond Fields.
The parlor in which the interview is in progress is as remarkable for the luxury of some of its furniture as for the poverty of the rest. The floor is simply the natural earth leveled and beaten flat, and this is covered here and there with thick carpets and precious furs. The walls are destitute of paper or paint, and yet .they are decked with a magnificent candelabrum, and valuable weapons of various kinds hang side by side with gorgeously colored lithographs in resplendent frames. A velvet sofa stands next to a plain deal table, such as is generally found in kitchens. Arm-chairs direct from Europe offer their arms in vain to Mr. Watkins, who is taking his ease in a solid construction of his own design. On the whole, however, the heap of objects of value, and the numerous furs — panther-skins, leopard-skins, giraffe-skins, and tiger-cat- skins, that cover nearly every article of furniture, give the room a certain air of barbarous wealth.
The ceiling shows that the house is not built in stories; it can only boast of a ground floor. Like all the rest in the neighborhood, its walls are of planks and clay, and its roof of corrugated iron.
It is obviously a new house. From its windows, to the right and left of it, can be seen five or six abandoned buildings of the same order of architecture, but of different ages, in various stages of decay. These are the mansions that Mr. Watkins has successively built, inhabited, and deserted as he built up his fortune, and now serve to mark the several steps of his progress to affluence.
That farthest off is a hut of sods. Next to it comes one with walls of clay. The third has walls of clay and wood. The fourth rejoices in a little zinc.
The group of buildings is situated on a gentle rise that commands the junction of the Vaal and the Modder, the two principal tributaries of the Orange. Around, as far as the eye can see, there stretches the bare and dreary-looking plain. The Veld, as this plain is called, has a reddish soil, dry, barren, and dusty, with here and there at considerable intervals a straggling bush or a clump of thorn- shrubs.
The total absence of trees is characteristic; and as there is no coal, owing to the communication with the sea being so difficult and lengthy, the only fuel for domestic purposes is that yielded by the sheep’s droppings.
Through this dismal and monotonous plain there flow the two rivers, with their banks so low and sloping that it is difficult to understand why the water does not break its bounds and flood the country.
Eastward the horizon is cut by the distant outlines of two mountains, the Platberg and the Paardeberg, at whose base the dust and smoke and the little white spots of huts and tents denote a busy human colony.
It is in this Veld that the diamond mines are situated — Dutoit’s Pan, New Rush, and perhaps the richest of all, Vandergaart Kopje. These dry diggings, as mines open to the sky are called, have since 1870 yielded about 16,000,000l in diamonds and precious stones. They are all close together, and can be distinctly seen with a good glass from the windows of Watkins’ Farm, about four miles away.
Farm, by-the-bye, is rather a misnomer. There are no signs of cultivation in the neighborhood. Like all the so-called farmers of this part of South Africa, Mr. Watkins is rather a master shepherd, an owner of flocks and herds, than an agriculturist.
But Mr. Watkins has not yet replied to the question put to him so clearly and politely by our hero. After giving himself three minutes for reflection, he decided to remove his pipe from his lips. Then he made the following observation, which would seem to be but very distantly connected with the subject at issue.
“I think we shall have a change in the weather! My gout never worried me more than it has done since this morning.”
The young engineer frowned, and turned away his head for a moment. It was only by an effort that he concealed his disappointment.
“It might do you good if you were to give up your gin, Mr. Watkins,” replied he, very dryly, pointing to the jug on the table.
“Give up my gin! Well, that’s a good ‘un!” exclaimed the farmer. “Is it the gin that does it? Oh! I know what you are driving at. You mean the medicine the Lord Mayor was recommended when he had the gout. Whose was it? Abernethy’s? If you want to be well, live on a shilling a day and earn it.’ That’s all very fine. But if you have to live on a shilling a day to be well, what’s the use of making a fortune? Such rubbish is unworthy of a sensible man like you. So don’t say any more about it. I’ll do as I please. I’ll eat well, drink well, and smoke a good pipe when I am worried. I have no other pleasure in this world, and you want me to give it up, do you?”
“It is a matter of no consequence,” answered Cyprien; “I only dropped a hint that I thought might be of use to you. But let it pass, Mr. Watkins, if you please, and get back to the special object of my visit.”
The farmer’s flow of eloquence came to a sudden pause. He relapsed into silence and puffed away at his pipe.
And now the door opened, and a young lady entered, carrying a glass on a salver.
And very charming she looked in her neat print dress and large white cap, such as is always worn by the ladies of the Veld. Aged about nineteen or twenty, with singularly clear complexion, fair, silky hair, pure blue eyes, and gentle, thoughtful face, she was quite a picture of health, grace, and good-nature.
“Good morning, Mr. Cyprien.”
“Good morning, Miss Watkins!” answered Cyprien, rising and bowing.
“I saw you come in,” said Alice, “and as I know you don’t care for papa’s horrible gin, I have brought you some orangeade, which I hope you will find to your taste.”
“It is very kind of you, I am sure.”
“Of course it is! Now, what do you think my ostrich Dada gobbled up this morning? The ivory ball I darn the stockings on! Yes, my ivory ball; and it is of good size, as you know. Well, that greedy Dada swallowed it as if it had been a pill. I know he will give me serious trouble some day.”
As she said this the laughing look in her eyes did not betray much alarm at the anticipated sorrow. In an instant, however, there was a change. With quick intuition she noticed the constraint that her father and Cyprien felt at her presence.
“I am an intruder, I see,” she said. “I am sorry I should have interrupted you, particularly as I have no time to lose. I must study my sonata before I begin to look after the dinner. I am sure no one could complain of your talkativeness today, gentlemen. I leave you to your conspiracies.”
She had reached the door, when she turned around and gravely said, as if the subject were of the deepest importance, “When you wish to talk about oxygen, Mr. Cyprien, I am quite prepared for you. Three times have I read over the chemical lesson you gave me to learn, and ‘the gaseous, colorless, scentless, and tasteless body’ has no longer any secrets from me.”
And with that Miss Watkins dropped a slight curtsy and disappeared like a meteor. A moment later the notes of an excellent piano, heard from one of the rooms at some distance from the parlor, announced that the daughter of the house was engaged in her musical exercises.
“Well, Mr. Watkins,” said Cyprien, reminded of his request by this apparition — if it had been possible for him to forget it — ”will you give me an answer to the question I had the honor to ask you?”
Mr. Watkins removed his pipe from the corner of his mouth, expectorated with great majesty, abruptly raised his head, and looked at the young man with the air of a grand inquisitor.
“Was it by chance that you spoke about this to her?”
“Spoke about what? To whom?”
“What you have been talking about now; my daughter.”
“For whom do you take me, Mr. Watkins?” replied the young engineer, warmly. “I am a Frenchman, sir, and that is to say, that without your consent I should never think of speaking to your daughter about marriage.”
Mr. Watkins looked somewhat mollified, and his tongue seemed to move more freely. “So much the better, my boy. I expected no less of you,” answered he, in almost a cordial tone. “And now as I can trust you, you will give me your word of honor never to speak of it in the future.”
“And why, sir?”
“Because the marriage is impossible, and the best thing you can do is to drop all thoughts of it,” continued the farmer. “Mr. Cyprien, you are an honest young fellow, a perfect gentleman, an excellent chemist, a distinguished professor, and have a brilliant future; I do not doubt it at all. But you will never have my daughter, and that because I have quite different plans for her.”
“But, Mr. Watkins — ”
“Say no more; it is useless,” interrupted the farmer. “If you were an English duke, you might convince me; but you are not even an English subject, and you have just told me with perfect frankness that you have no money! Look you here; do you seriously think that, educating Alice as I have done, giving her the best masters of Victoria and Bloemfontein, I had intended to send her, as soon as she was twenty, to Paris, on the third floor at No. 104 of the Rue Université, to live with a man whose language I don’t even understand? Just give that a thought, and put yourself in my place. Suppose you were John Watkins, farmer and proprietor of Vandergaart Kopje Mine, and I was Victor Cyprien, on a scientific mission to the Cape; suppose that you here were seated in this chair, smoking your pipe; suppose that you were I, and I were you; would you for a moment think of giving me your daughter in marriage?”
“Certainly I would, Mr. Watkins,” replied Cyprien, “and without the slightest hesitation, if I thought you were likely to make her happy.”
“Oh! ah! Well, then, you would be wrong. You would act like a man unworthy of being the owner of Vandergaart Kopje, or rather, you never would have been the owner of it! For do you think I only had to hold my hand out as it came by? Do you think I wanted neither sense nor energy when I found it out and made it my property? Well, Mr. Cyprien, the sense I showed in that affair, I show and will show in every act of my life, and particularly in all that concerns my daughter. And so I say, drop it. Alice will never be yours.” And at this triumphant conclusion Mr. Watkins tossed off his glass.
The young engineer was silent, and the old man continued, “You Frenchmen are an astonishing lot! There is nothing very backward about you. You come here as if you had dropped from the moon into this out-of-the-way spot in Griqualand, call on a man who had never heard of you three months ago, and who has not set eyes on you a dozen times, and say to him, ‘John Stapleton Watkins, you have a nice daughter, well educated, everywhere known as the pride of the place, and, what is anything but a draw-back, the sole heiress of the richest diamond kopje in the world. I am Mr. Victor Cyprien, of Paris, an engineer with two hundred a year, and I should like you to give me your daughter, so that I can take her home, and you can never hear of her for the future, except by post or telegraph!’ And you think that is quite natural? I think it is consummate impudence!”
Cyprien rose, looking very pale. He picked up his hat and prepared to leave.
“Yes, consummate impudence!” continued the farmer.
“No gilded pills for me. I am an Englishman of the old sort, sir. I have been poorer than you — yes, much poorer. I have tried my hand at everything. I have been a cabin- boy on a merchant ship, a buffalo-hunter in Dakota, a digger in Arizona, and a shepherd in the Transvaal. I have known heat and cold and hunger and trouble. For twenty years I earned my crust by the sweat of my brow. When I married Alice’s mother, we hadn’t enough to feed a goat on. But I worked. I never lost courage. And now I am rich, and intend to profit by the fruit of my labors. I am going to keep my daughter to nurse me, to look after my gout, and to give me some music in the evening when I am tired. If she ever marries, she will marry here; and she will marry some fellow who lives here, a farmer or a digger like I am, and who will not talk to me of semi- starvation in a third floor in a country that I never had the slightest desire to go near. She will marry James Hilton or some fellow of that stamp. There will be no lack of offers.”
Cyprien had already reached the door.
“No animosity, my boy; I wish you no harm. I shall always be glad to see you as a tenant and a friend. We have got some people coming to dinner this evening. Will you make one?”
“No, thank you, sir,” answered Cyprien, coldly. “I have my letters to write for the mail.”
“One for the Frenchman!” chuckled Mr. Watkins.
WHAT most humiliated the young engineer in the answer he received from Mr. Watkins was the fact that, in spite of the rudeness in which it was couched, the decision was not unreasonable. When he came to think matters over, he was surprised at himself for not having seen the farmer’s very obvious objections.
But the fact is, that up till then he had never dreamed of the difference of fortune, race, and education between the young lady and himself. Accustomed for the last five or six years to regard minerals merely from their scientific point of view, diamonds were in his eyes but specimens of carbon adapted for exhibition in the museum of the School of Mines. In France he had moved in quite a different social circle from what he did here, and he had quite lost sight of the commercial value of the rich mine possessed by the farmer. The thought that there was a difference in station between the daughter of the owner of Vandergaart Kopje and himself had never entered his head.
The sharp reprimand he had received from Watkins awoke him from his illusion. Cyprien had too much sense not to appreciate the farmer’s reasons, and too much- honesty to be angry at a decision which he admitted was, in the main, a just one.
But the blow was none the less severe, and now that he had to give up Alice he found how dear she had become to him in those three months. For only three months had elapsed since his arrival in Griqualand.
How far off it all seemed!
Landing with his friend Pharamond Barthes — an old schoolfellow who had come out to South Africa on his third hunting and exploring expedition — he had separated from him at the Cape. Barthes started for Basutoland to engage an escort; Cyprien secured a seat in the heavy, lumbering, fourteen-horse wagon — the stage-coach of the Veld — and set out for the Diamond Fields.
Five or six huge cases — a complete chemical and mineralogical laboratory, from which he was very loath to part — formed the luggage of the youthful scientist; but the coach only allowed a hundredweight of luggage to each passenger, and he had consequently been obliged to entrust his precious cases to the tender mercies of a bullock cart.
The “coach” held twelve passengers. It was covered with a canvas tilt, and had four enormous wheels constantly wet from crossing the fords. The horses, which were occasionally replaced by mules, were harnessed in pairs, and driven by two coachmen seated side by side on the front bench. One held the reins, while the other manipulated a tremendously long bamboo whip, not unlike a huge fishing-rod, and used it to guide the horses as well as to urge them on.
The road goes by Beaufort, a pleasant little place at the foot of the Nieuwveld Mountains, across the hills to Victoria, then to Hopetown on the Orange, and thence to Kimberley and the principal diamond centers, which are but a few miles away from it.
It is a wearying, monotonous journey across the Veld, and takes from eight to nine days. The landscape is most miserable — red plains, scattered stones like moraine rubbish on the surface, and gray rock cropping out from below, half-starved-looking bushes, and here and there a stunted sickly plant At long intervals a few dilapidated farms doing duty for inns. The hospitality of these inns is somewhat rudimentary. The “good accommodation for man and beast” comprises neither a bed for the man nor litter for the beast, and the provisions are tinned ones that have gone the round of the world, and sell at the buyer’s risk for their weight in gold.
There being nothing for the horses at the farms, the teams are unharnessed and allowed to wander about in search of their own food. They have to be caught again before a start can be made, and the loss of time thus occasioned may be imagined.
Great is the jolting of the primitive coach along the still more primitive roads. The seats are the lids of the wooden lockers which hold the light luggage of the passengers, and on them for a week or more their possessors go thump-jump, like so many forge hammers, as the wagon rolls along. Impossible to read, impossible to sleep, nay, even impossible to talk!
Cyprien’s fellow-travelers were fairly representative of the floating population peculiar to gold and diamond fields. There was an ungainly Neapolitan, with long black hair, a face like parchment, and a pair of glittering treacherous- looking eyes, who said his name was Annibale Pantalacci; a Portuguese Jew named Nathan, an expert in diamonds, who kept himself quiet in a corner and looked upon humanity like a philosopher; a tall collier, Thomas Steel, with a red beard and broad shoulders, who had left his native Lancashire to try his fortune in Griqualand; a German, Herr Friedel, who spoke like an oracle, and knew everything about diamonds and diamond digging — in theory; a thin-lipped Yankee, who reckoned to open a canteen and persuade the miners to waste their hard-earned wealth; a farmer from the Hartz; a Boer from the Orange Free State; an ivory trader on his way to Namaqualand; two Transvaal colonists; and a Chinaman named Li — like every other Chinaman — made up the most heterogeneous, noisy, and disorderly company in which it was ever given to a man to find himself.
At first Cyprien was amused, but not for long. There was only Steel, with his massive strength and loud laughter, and Li, with his gentle catlike ways, in whom he continued to take the slightest interest. To the Neapolitan, with his spiteful buffooneries, he felt the strongest aversion.
One of the most popular jokes of this personage consisted in his tying on to the Chinaman’s pigtail, whenever he got an opportunity, a collection of miscellaneous objects, such as bundles of greens, cabbage-stalks, a cow’s tail, and a horse’s bladebone, picked up on the road.
The Chinaman unconcernedly removed the articles from his appendage, and neither by word, look, nor gesture showed that he considered the pleasantry beyond the bounds of propriety. His yellow face and little almond eyes were as unalterably placid as if he were quite a stranger to what was passing around him. In fact it seemed as though he understood not a word of all that was spoken in this Noah’s Ark bound north for Griqualand.
And Annibale Pantalacci, in his broken English, was profuse in his very vulgar witticisms on the same subject, and kept the travelers in a roar of laughter. What made the laugh all the longer was that the Boers invariably took some time to see the joke, and burst out noisily about three minutes after everybody else.
Cyprien at last became indignant at the dead set thus made against the unfortunate Li, and told Pantalacci that he ought to be ashamed of himself. The Neapolitan would probably have made some insolent rejoinder, but a word from Steel put a sudden check on him.
“No,” said the Lancashire man, regretting that he had laughed with the others, “it isn’t fair play to keep on like that at a chap who doesn’t even understand your lingo.”
Here the matter dropped for a time. But a few minutes after, Cyprien was surprised to see the quietly ironical look of thanks with which the Chinaman regarded him, and which made him think that Li knew rather more English than he gave him credit for.
But it was in vain that at the next halt he tried to engage the Chinaman in conversation. Li remained mute and impassible. Henceforward the young engineer looked upon him as an enigma whose key might be found with perseverance, and made a constant study of the smooth yellow face, the mouth like a sword-cut opening on to the row of very white teeth, the short, broad nose, the large forehead, and the slanting eyes, always cast down, as if to hide the latent malice in their look.
What age was Li? Fifteen or sixty? Impossible to say. If his teeth, his eyes, and his hair, black as soot, made him look quite young, the wrinkles in his forehead, his cheeks, and even around his mouth, gave him the appearance of an old man. He was short and of slight active build, and seemed to be rather a good sort of fellow than otherwise.
Was he rich or poor? Another dubious question! His gray trousers, yellow blouse, plaited string hat, felt-soled shoes, and stockings of immaculate whiteness, might have belonged to a mandarin of the first class or to a man of the people. His luggage consisted of a solitary red box with an address in black ink, —
“H. Li, “From Canton to the Cape.”
The Chinaman was the very pattern of neatness, never smoked, nor drank anything but water, and took advantage of every halt to carefully shave his head. Cyprien found he could make nothing of him, and soon gave him up as a mystery.
The days went by, and the miles were slowly rolled off. Sometimes the horses would cover the ground in fine style, at others it seemed impossible to move them. Little by little the journey was completed, and one fine day the coach reached Hopetown. Another long spell and then Kimberley was passed. Then a few wooden huts appeared on the horizon. It was New Rush.
There the diggers’ camp differed but little from the temporary towns which spring from the ground, as if by enchantment, in all new countries — wooden huts of no great size and roughly built, a few tents, a dozen coffee bars or canteens, an alhambra or dancing-saloon, several “stores,” and the usual johnny-all-sorts shops.
In the shops were clothes and furniture, boots and glasses, books and saddles, weapons and drapery, brushes and brooms, blankets and cigars, green vegetables and patent medicines, wheel plows and toilet soaps, hair- combs and condensed milk, frying-pans and cheap lithographs — everything, in short, but buyers.
For the whole population of the camp was now at work at the mine, which is about a quarter of a mile from New Rush.
Cyprien, like the other fresh arrivals, hastened off thither, while dinner was being got ready at the Continental Hotel.
It was about six o’clock in the afternoon. Already the sun had begun to veil the horizon in a thin cloud of gold. Once again the engineer noticed the enormous apparent diameter assumed by the sun as well as the moon in these latitudes, a phenomenon of which no sufficient explanation has yet been advanced — the said diameter being about double as large as in Europe.
But a spectacle of much greater novelty for Cyprien awaited him at the Kopje, that is to say, at the diamond diggings. Before the opening of the works the site of the mine was an elliptical knoll, the only elevation in a plain as level as the sea. But now an immense gap with sloping sides, a sort of circus, oval in form and about forty yards across, had taken the place of the hill. The surface was cut up into three or four hundred “claims,” or concessions, each thirty-one feet long.
The ground, consisting chiefly of reddish sand and gravel, was being excavated by pickaxe and spade, and sent to the surface. Thence it was taken to the sorting- tables, to be washed, crushed, sifted, and, finally, examined with extreme care to see if it contained any of the precious stones.
The claims, having been excavated independently of each other, formed ditches of varying depths. Some went down for a hundred yards or more, others for thirty, twenty, or even fifteen. To give room for working and intercommunication, each holder is officially required to leave untouched on one of the sides of his claim a space of seven feet. This space, with that left by his neighbor, serves as a sort of gangway or embankment flush with the original level of the ground. On it joists are placed so as to overhang the claims for about a yard on each side, and by this means sufficient width is obtained to allow a couple of carts to pass abreast.
Unfortunately for the solidity of this hanging way and the safety of the miners, the holders of the claims gradually work in as the wall goes down, and as in some cases the depth is two or three hundred feet, the result is that the partition becomes a reversed pyramid, standing on its apex. The consequences can be guessed. The walls fall in, particularly during the rainy season, when, owing to the abrupt changes of temperature, the surface is seamed with cracks, and the sides split off along them. Nevertheless, the periodic recurrence of these disasters has no effect on the miners, and they persist in excavating their claims up to the very farthest limit of the dividing line.
As Cyprien approached the mine, he could see nothing but the carts moving about on the hanging roads; but when he had got near enough to peer into the depths of the curious quarry, he beheld a busy crowd of diggers of every nation, every color, and every costume at work in the claims. Negroes and whites, Europeans and Africans, Mongols and Celts — most of them in a state of semi- nudity, or wearing cotton drawers, flannel shirts, and straw hats, decked in many instances with ostrich plumes.
All were engaged in throwing the soil into leather buckets and sending them to the bank along wire ropes by means of cowskin halliards working over drams of open woodwork. There the buckets were emptied into the carts, and then sent down to the bottom of the claim to be returned with a fresh load.
These long iron ropes, stretched diagonally across the rectangular chasms, give a peculiar look to all dry diggings or diamond mines, and resemble the threads of a gigantic spider’s web, whose weaving has been suddenly interrupted.
For some time Cyprien amused himself with contemplating this human ant-hill. Then he returned to New; Rush, where the dinner-bell rang almost immediately after his arrival. There during the evening he had the pleasure of hearing of the wonderful finds that had been made, of miners poor as Job suddenly becoming rich men by finding a solitary diamond, of others ever down on their luck, of the greed of the brokers, of the dishonesty of the Kaffirs employed in the mines, who stole the best stones, and of many other technical matters. The talk was of nothing but diamonds, carats, and hundreds of pounds.
Every one seemed the picture of misery, and instead of the happy digger noisily calling for his champagne to wet his luck, there were a dozen lanky, long-faced fellows drinking nothing but small beer.
Occasionally a stone would be passed around the table to be weighed, examined, valued, and returned to its owner’s belt. That dull grayish pebble, with no more sparkle than a fragment of quartz rolled in a torrent, was a diamond in its gangue!
At night the coffee bars filled, and the same conversation, the same discussion which had occupied the dinner- hour, began again.
Cyprien went to bed early in the tent next to the hotel which had been assigned to him. There he soon fell asleep, despite the noise of a ball in the open air among the Kaffir diggers close by, and the piercing brays of a B-flat cornet from a neighboring dancing-saloon, in which the whites were amusing themselves with a few energetic lessons in choreography.
To his honor, be it said, the young engineer had not come to Griqualand to spend his time in an atmosphere of greed, drunkenness, and tobacco smoke. His object was to make sundry topographical and geological surveys of certain parts of the country, to collect specimens of the rocks and diamantiferous gravels, and to conduct a few delicate analyses on the spot. His first care, therefore, was to procure a quiet dwelling-place, where he could set up his laboratory, and which would serve as the center of his explorations in the mining districts.
The knoll on which Watkins’ Farm was situated soon attracted his attention as a site particularly favorable for his work, far enough away to suffer but little from the noisy proximity of the camp, and at the same time within an hour’s walk of the farthest kopjes, for the diamond field is not more than ten miles in circumference. And so it happened that in the course of a single afternoon he had selected one of the houses abandoned by Mr. Watkins, agreed to take it, and installed himself therein. The farmer was most agreeable. At heart he was thoroughly tired of being alone, and highly pleased to find a young man anxious to take up his quarters close by, and break into the wearisome monotony.
But if Mr. Watkins expected to find in his tenant a mere table-companion or a partner in his assaults on the gin-bottle, he was very much mistaken. Almost before he had taken up his quarters with his retorts, furnaces, and reagents, almost before the chief articles of his laboratory had arrived, he was out on his geological excursions. Coming home in the evening nearly knocked up with fatigue, with rock specimens in his satchel, in his pockets, and even in his hat, he had much more inclination to go to sleep than to listen to the sub-fossil yarns of Mr. Watkins. Besides, he smoked very little, and drank much less; and take him altogether, he was hardly the jolly companion that the farmer had anticipated.
Nevertheless, Cyprien was so straightforward and considerate, so simple in his manner and speech, so well informed and so modest, that it was impossible to meet him frequently without liking him. And Mr. Watkins soon held him in more respect than any other man he knew.
“If he only knew how to drink! But what are you to do with a man who will not touch the least drop of gin?” Thus did the farmer conclude his frequent disquisition on his tenant’s merits.
Miss Watkins, for her part, found herself suddenly placed on a footing of unrestrained friendship with the young scientist. Finding in him a distinction of manner, an intellectual superiority which she had hardly met with before in her usual circle, she had taken advantage of the unexpected opportunity to complete experimentally, the varied chemical knowledge she had obtained by reading scientific works.
The young engineer’s laboratory, with its strange-looking apparatus, interested her greatly. She was above all things anxious to learn what she could about the nature of the diamond, that precious stone which played so important a part in the conversation and commerce of the country. In fact, Alice had almost come to look upon the gem as a worthless pebble. Cyprien, she could not but see, held much the same opinion on the subject as she did, and this community of sentiment had had no little influence on the friendship which speedily grew up between them. We may say without fear of contradiction that these two were alone in Griqualand in thinking that the sole object of life did %n%o%t% consist in finding, cutting, and selling the little stones so keenly coveted among the nations of the earth.
“The diamond,” said Cyprien to her on one occasion, “is only pure carbon. It is a fragment of crystallized coal; nothing more. You can burn it like a lump of coke, and it was its property of combustion that first led to the knowledge of its real nature. Newton, who observed so many things, noticed that the diamond refracted light more than any other transparent body; and as he knew that this property belonged to most combustibles, he, with his usual boldness, deducted from the fact the conclusion that the diamond ought to be combustible. And experience proved that he was right.”
“But, Mr. Cyprien, if the diamond is only carbon, why does it fetch such a price?” asked Alice.
“Because of its rarity,” answered Cyprien, “and because it has only as yet been found in small quantities. For a long time it came only from India, Brazil, and Borneo. And surely you can remember, when you were about seven or eight years old, how it was first discovered in South Africa.”
“Oh, yes! I remember!” said Miss Watkins. “Everybody seemed to go mad in Griqualand! There was nothing to be seen but people with pickaxes and shovels prospecting all over the place, changing the courses of the streams to examine their beds, and dreaming and speaking of nothing but diamonds. Young as I was, I can assure you that I was quite weary of it at times. But you say that the diamond is dear because it is rare. Is that its only merit?”
“Not entirely. Its transparency, its brilliancy when it has been cut so as to refract the light, even the difficulty of this cutting, and its extreme hardness, make it a very interesting body for the scientist, and, I should add, very useful in the arts. You know it can only be polished with its own dust, and that it is its peculiar hardness which has caused it to be used for many years for rock-boring purposes. Without its help, not only would it be very difficult to work in glass and other hard substances, but the boring of tunnels, mine-galleries, and deep wells would be much more difficult.”
“I understand now,” said Alice, who began to have a slight respect for the poor diamonds she had hitherto so despised. “But, Mr. Cyprien, this carbon. of which you say the diamond is composed, in a crystalline state — that is right, isn’t it? — this carbon, what is it?”
“A simple body, not a metal, and one of the most widely distributed bodies in nature,” answered Cyprien. “All organic matter without exception possesses it. Wood, meat, bread, vegetables, etc. all have it among their constituents!”
“How strange!” said Miss Watkins. “To think that those bushes, the grass, the tree, the flesh of my ostrich Dada, and my own, and yours, Mr. Cyprien, are all partly made of carbon — like diamonds! Is everything carbon in this world?”
“Well, some people have been suspecting something of the sort for a considerable time. And contemporary science is making rapid advances toward some such solution.. That is to say, the tendency is to reduce the number of simple bodies, and prove many of the old elements to be mere compounds. The spectroscope has lately thrown quite a new light on chemistry, and the sixty-two substances classed hitherto as elements would seem to be but forms of one — hydrogen perhaps — under different electric, dynamic, and calorific forms.”
“Oh! you frighten me, Mr. Cyprien, with your long words,” said Miss Watkins. “Let us only talk about carbon. Why do not you chemists crystallize it as you did the sulphur in those pretty needles the other day? It would be so much more convenient, surely, than having to dig among the rocks to find it.”
“People have often tried to do so,” replied Cyprien, “and attempted the manufacture of diamonds by the crystallization of pure carbon, and to a certain extent have succeeded. Despretz in 1883, and quite recently in England another experimenter, have produced diamond dust by employing a strong electric current in vacuo to act on carbon cylinders free from mineral substances, and prepared with sugar-candy. But up to the present, the problem has not met with solution that would bring it into trade. Notwithstanding, it may be only a question of time. Any day, perhaps at this very moment, the method of making diamonds may be discovered.”
It was thus they talked as they strolled along the sandy terrace which extended by the farm, or, seated under the veranda, watched the stars twinkling in the southern sky.
Sometimes Alice would leave the engineer and return to the house, at others she would take him to visit her flock of ostriches, kept in an enclosure at the foot of the knoll on which Watkins’ Farm was situated. Their small, white heads craning over their black bodies, and the bunches of yellowish feathers ornamenting their wings and tails, interested the young lady, who for a year or more had kept quite a poultry-yard full of the giants.
Ostriches are very seldom tamed, and the Cape farmers leave them in a half wild state, parked in an enclosure of vast extent, surrounded by wire fencing like that in many countries running alongside the railroad. There they live all the year around in a captivity they know not of, feeding on what they can find, and seeking quiet corners wherein to deposit their eggs, which very strict laws protect against marauders. It is only at moulting time, when they throw off the feathers so much in request by the ladies of Europe, that the beaters drive them into a series of enclosures, diminishing in size, until the birds can be easily seized and made to give up their plumage.
This industry has been thriving at the Cape for many years. Every ostrich reduced to slavery brings to his proprietor without further expense a revenue of from eight to twelve pounds, nothing very extraordinary when it is remembered that a large feather of good quality will fetch from two to three pounds, and that even the medium and smallest feathers are of considerable value.
But it was only for her private amusement that Miss Watkins had made pets of a dozen of these huge birds. It pleased her to see them with their eggs, and come up with their chickens to be fed as if they were fowls or turkeys. Cyprien often accompanied her to the ostrich-yard, and amused himself by stroking the best-looking of the lot, a certain black-headed ostrich with golden eyes — that very Dada who had swallowed the ivory ball which Alice used for darning on.
Little by little there had grown up in Cyprien a feeling of much depth and tenderness toward the young lady. He had persuaded, himself that never would he find a companion more simple-hearted, more intelligent, more amiable, or more accomplished in every way to share his life of labor and meditation. In fact, Miss Watkins, having lost her mother very early, had been obliged to take charge of her father’s house, and was an accomplished housewife, at the same time a true woman of the world. It was this curious mixture of perfect refinement and attractive simplicity that made her so charming. Having none of the silly scruples of so many of the young ladies of Europe, she was never afraid of soiling her white hands in the paste for the pudding, or of superintending the dinner, or keeping the linen in proper repair. And all this did not hinder her from playing Beethoven’s sonatas as well as, and perhaps better than, most people, from speaking two or three languages, from taking pleasure in reading, from appreciating the masterpieces in literature, and, finally, from being eminently successful at the little weekly assemblies among the rich farmers of the district.
Cyprien had seen all this, and now, alas, great was the fall in his hopes. For the first time he saw the almost impassable gulf which separated him from Alice, and heavy was his heart as he returned from the decisive interview. But he was not the man to give up to despair. He was resolved to fight his way in the world, and in his work he had a sure solace for his grief.
Taking his seat at the small table, he finished, in a quick, firm hand, the long, confidential letter which he had begun in the morning to his revered master, Mr. J , a member of the Academy of Sciences, and titular professor at the School of Mines.
“One thing,” he wrote, “I thought better not to put in my official memoir, because it is as yet only a hypothesis, and that is, the opinion I have been led by my geological researches to entertain on the subject of the diamond’s formation. Neither the hypothesis that assumes it to be of volcanic origin, nor that which attributes its appearance in the beds to violent disturbances satisfies me any more than it does you, my dear master, and I need not repeat the reasons which led us to abandon it. The formation of the diamond in situ by the action of fire is likewise too vague an explanation to satisfy me. What was the nature of this fire? and why did it not affect the limestones of all kinds which are invariably met with in diamantiferous deposits? The idea seems to me quite childish, and on a par with the theories of the vortices and hooked atoms.
“The only explanation which satisfies me, if not entirely, at least in a certain degree, is that of the transportation by water of the gem’s elements, and the subsequent formation of the crystal in position. I have been much struck with the peculiar outline, almost identical in all cases, of the different beds which I have noted and measured with great care. All more or less are in the general form of a basin, or rather, considering the shape of the overlying strata, that of a hunting-flask on its side. This appears to have been a reservoir of from thirty to forty thousand cubic yards in extent, in which there has been a deposit of sandy conglomerate, of mud, and of alluvial earth laid down, on the older rocks. This character is very marked at Vandergaart Kopje, one of the most recently discovered of the diggings, and, which belongs, by the way, to the owner of the house in which I am writing.
“When a liquid containing bodies in suspension is poured into a cup, what happens? The bodies arrange themselves at the bottom of the cup or around its sides. That is exactly what has happened in this kopje. It is at the bottom and in the center of the basin as well as around the outer edges that the diamonds are met with. And this is so well understood that the claims between rapidly fall to a lower value, while the central concessions or those bordering on the boundary enormously increase as soon as the shape of the deposit is made out.
“Besides, several circumstances that you find mentioned in my memoir tend to show the formation of the crystal in position rather than its transport thither in a perfect state. To mention only two or three, diamonds are nearly always found in groups of the same kind and color, which would hardly be the case had they been formed afar and brought thither by a torrent. Frequently two are found together, united but detachable at the least blow. How could they have resisted the grinding and jarring if brought down by water? Again, the larger diamonds are always found under the shelter of a rock, which seems to show that the influence of the rock — its radiation of heat, if nothing else — has helped on the crystallization. It is rare — very rare — that large and small diamonds are found together. Whenever a large specimen is discovered, it is almost always isolated. It is as if all the adamantine elements in the depression had been concentrated into a single crystal under the influence of special causes.
“These and many other reasons urge me to think that the diamond is formed in position, and that the elements of crystallization were brought down to the spot by water.
“But whence came the waters which bore down the organic detritus destined to be formed into diamonds? This I have not yet been able to determine in spite of my careful study of the district.