Page:Seven Years in South Africa v1.djvu/92

 or carmine tint, and occasionally blue or yellow; it covers the district between Bloemhof and Hebron, and is known distinctively as Vaal-stone. But besides greenstone, tbe rubble includes a number of other elements; it consists partially of fragments of the trap-dyke that is characteristic of the district between Hebron and the mouth of the Harts, as well as of nearly all the hills in the east of Cape Colony, in the Orange Free State, and in Griqualand; it contains likewise a certain proportion of milk-quartz, clay-slate, sand yielding magnetic iron, and numerous pyropes; these vary in size from that of a grain of millet to that of a grain of maize, and were awhile mistaken for garnets and rubies; moreover, it contains portions of the limestone that extends both ways from the Vaal, though not forming the actual valley of the river; it is a stone in which I never discovered any fossils.

The diggers, after obtaining their portion of diamond rubble from the “claims,” as the parcels of ground allotted them by the authorities were called, had first to convey it down to the river; they had next to sift it from the heavier lumps of stone, and then to wash it in “cradles,” three or four feet long and about one and a half wide, until they had entirely got rid of the clay. In the residuum they had finally to search carefully for the treasure. The stones found in this locality were, as a general rule, very small, but their colour was good and their quality fine; they were called “glass-stones,” whilst the larger and more valuable brilliants obtained in