Page:Seven Years in South Africa v1.djvu/257

 direction, the chaos, however, being of such extent as to demonstrate how large the settlement at the diggings formerly had been. Hundreds of shallow hollows in the ground contributed their testimony to the number of workers who once had busied themselves in searching for the precious crystals. Thousands of tons of rubble were left that had once been grubbed out by mere manual labour, and still attested what must have been the multitude of hands that had sifted and resifted it in eager expectation of a prize; and yet out of the host of diggers perhaps scarcely two succeeded in making a fortune, and hardly one in a dozen did more than cover his expenses.

Not only did Hebron fall to decay as rapidly as it arose; its decline was even more rapid than the fall of Klipdrift, and many other diamond-mines. Its true geological character had been misunderstood. In the alluvial deposit where the diamonds were found, there was to be discerned a variety of particles washed down from the surrounding hills, or from districts higher up the river; besides fragments of greenstone, both large and small, there were bits of quartz of various kinds (milk-quartz, rose-quartz, quartzite, and quartzite porphyry); and besides these again there were pecuhar oblong cakes of clay-slate of a yellow or pale green colour, covered with a black incrustation, probably caused by the decomposition of the outer surface; these clay-slate blocks, when broken, exhibited some beautifully-marked colours ranged in concentric bands, and were