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Updated: May 14, 2025
The correspondent has to report, that 'the postal arrangements still continue unsatisfactory and vexatious, no post having been received from Bloem Fontein for the last two months; and, he indignantly adds, 'to make matters worse, the late magistrate's clerk and postmaster has resigned, owing to grave charges having been preferred against him by a party faction who would rule public opinion. But he consoles himself with the judicious reflection, that 'time and imported respectable intelligence will remedy this unhappy state of things, in the changes which small communities undergo. It is satisfactory to learn, that in spite of the machinations of faction, the citizens managed to enjoy themselves when a suitable occasion offered.
There was still "one more river to cross" before the diamond men of Kimberley could be relieved; and ere the thirst of the South African summer could be slaked on the banks of the Modder, a tract of twenty-five miles of veld, in which the absence of any homestead having "fontein" for its suffix declared the scarcity of water, must be traversed under the sun.
"There! What did I tell you? The news is out!" With a muttered exclamation of annoyance, Kenneth Traynor put down his coffee cup with a crash and, leaning over the table, pointed out to his wife a despatch from London, given prominence in the morning paper, which ran as follows: Advices from Cape Town report the finding on a farm near Fontein, a hundred miles north of here, of a diamond which in size is only second to the famous Koh-i-noor.
The diamond-cutting industry is confined chiefly to Amsterdam, where the work employs several thousand persons, mostly Hebrews, the craft having been handed down from father to son through several generations. Much fine cutting is now done in New York also. In this hot and semi-arid country a pan or fontein was a necessity to the Boer farmer, whose chief dependence was on his sheep and cattle.
An adventure of much the same nature befell a traveller in South Africa, who, in February 1850, attempted, while on his way from Bloem Fontein to Natal, to discover the newly-founded town of Harrismith. 'At length, he writes, 'having reached the eastern side of the mountain, I halted, and determined to go in search of this new-born town a future city in our vast empire.
But they then soon found their way thither, principally as traders, and settled in the new towns which quickly sprang up in the several districts. Bloem Fontein, the capital, is now almost wholly an English town.
Such magic resides in a British governor's proclamation! But the growth of Bloem Fontein, rapid as it has been, is not so striking as that of another town.
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