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One of the De Beers mines has been worked to a depth of about two thousand feet with no diminution in the quantity or quality of the diamonds. The "pipe" or plug of blue-stuff shows no signs of giving out.
Now these huge funnels, or pipes, are nothing more or less than extinct volcanic craters. The walls, or casings, of these pipes are chiefly of shale and basalt filled with hard earth, yellow near the surface and bluish deeper down. The latter is called "blue-stuff" and is very prolific in diamonds.
So, in order to effect more economical methods of working, a consolidation of claims began to take place. At the Kimberley mine a double platform with staging was built around the pit, and a series of wires running from the different claims served as trackways on which buckets of the blue-stuff were drawn up by means of ropes and windlasses located on these platforms.
"I'd gie him a gude washin' first of a', Jamie. He leuks like some puir, gaen-aboot dog." And she drew her short, blue-stuff gown back from Bobby's grateful attentions. Mr. Brown slapped his corduroy-breeked knee and nodded his grizzled head. "Richt ye are. It's maist michty, noo, I wadna think o' that.
Many of the miners found it desirable to employ the native Kafirs to work in the pits, since neither the scorching sun nor clouds of dust seemed to trouble them. The deeper the pits were sunk the greater the difficulty became in raising the blue-stuff.
The diamonds found outside the rim wall must have been washed out of the craters or perhaps were thrown out by the eruption. At first it was customary to pulverize the blue-stuff at once, but experience showed that a more satisfactory way to work it was to expose it for several months to the action of the weather. By this process it readily crumbled.
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