diamonds has gradually become more skilled and scientific. As the diggers at first worked in their allotments with the assistance of what hired labourers they could get, Hottentots, Kaffirs, and Bechuanas, their apparatus was of the rudest character. It consisted only of a stake, driven into the ground at the upper edge of the pit, with an iron or wooden pulley attached, enabling them to draw up the buckets of diamond-earth by hand. This acted very well as long as the walls of the mine were perpendicular; but when they were at all on the incline, or when, as would sometimes happen, the earth had to be carried a hundred yards or more over the heads of other workers, one stake was driven in at the bottom of the pit and three at the top, and between two of these a cylinder, two or three feet in diameter, or a great wheel, was kept in motion, by natives turning handles at both ends; by this means the full buckets were lifted, and the empty lowered simultaneously; a rope of stout ironwire connected the third upright stake with the one at the bottom of the pit, and along this there ran two grooved iron rods, that supported a framework, provided with a hook to which the bucket could be attached. As the excavations grew deeper, and the diggers became the owners of more than one claim apiece, the expense of raising the larger quantities of earth, and the waste of time, began to be seriously felt, and led to the introduction of wooden whims—great capstans worked by horse-power. Many of these cumbrous machines are still in use; but the
