of Southern Africa for over a millennium. By the 1860s, Whites, too, had
been extracting small outcrops of copper in the northwestern Cape Colony
and ofgold in the eastern Transvaal. There was flurry ofexcitement in 1867
when alluvial diamonds were found near the confluence of the Vaal and the
Harts rivers in arid country west of Bloemfontein. By late 1870, fivethou-
sand people were there, Whites and. Blacks, using picks and shovels to
extract promising soil and hand sieves to sift it, and forming a rugged
gambling, boozing, and whoring society like that of the mining camps in
North America. A few lucky ones were finding diamonds, which they sold
to local representatives of European merchants. Ayear later, the supply was
petering out, and the episode would have been yet another brief incident
had not more diamonds been discovered on sparsely populated land sever-
al miles from the river valleys.By 1872, twenty thousand Whites and thirty
thousand Blacks had converged onthe area. Within a few years, geologists
realized that the "dry diggings" were the outcrops of diamondiferous pipes
that extended far below the surface and contained the largest concentra-
tion of gem diamonds yet discovered. Kimberley, the diamond city, was