Scotland/Scots > Last years of Livingstone

APPENDIX I.
221
Already about Kopje is gathered a population of about
forty thousand people. The New Rush is eight hundred
yards wide, with eight parallel roads running through it,
along which the dirt from the excavations below is carted
away. At first there was no organization of the labour,
and no arrangement by which the private interests of
those engaged in it should be prevented from becoming
detrimental to the public welfare. In consequence, the
private excavations have been carried on so far, or in
some cases, farther, than either safety or a fair prospect
for profit dictated, and without any regard for preserving
the roads. In many cases, also, these roadways were left
so narrow that there was hardly room for two carts to
pass, and now they are really dangerous, having become
as they are, narrow causeways, seventy or eighty feet
high, and being unstayed and supported by any but the
most temporary appliances.
This place, New Rush, is the only one which is still
considered as a profitable spot for diamond digging. Other
places, as Hebron, Phiel,Klipdrift and Du Toit’s Pan, have
been chiefly exhausted, and diamond digging there
requires too much patience to suit such an adventurous
class as generally engage in speculative labour of this
kind.
The gold fields are about three hundred miles from the
banks of the Yaal, and the last town on the outskirts of
civilization is Pretonia, about one hundred and fifty miles
from Yaal. With the attention which has thus been