In Kimberly, Cecil John Rhodes came to rely mostly on a young Jewish diamond buyer from Hamburg named Alfred Beit; said to have the best Jewish traditions behind him, writes Dr Michelina Andreucci.

THE richness of the alluvial deposits of the Vaal and Orange Rivers of South Africa eventually led to the discovery of kimberlite and the famous workings around Kimberley, establishing kimberlite as the primary volcanic host of diamonds.
From that point, exploration techniques centred on the best ways to find diamondiferous kimberlite using modern scientific methods.
In October 1871, Cecil John Rhodes arrived on horseback with his oxen-drawn cart to join his brother at the ‘New Rush’ (Kimberley), shortly after the territory came under British colours.
Having crossed the Drakensberg Mountain range, passed Bloemfontein, the small Boer capital of Jan Brand’s republic; he descended down to the Vaal where he observed the river diggers working.
Here, Rhodes found a conurbation a few months old; built of tent cloth and corrugated iron with some 40 000 people, without a tree, building or roads.
Rhodes made his way through the waste on the periphery of the town; through the evil-smelling carcasses and skeletons of oxen and horses, Boer wagons, mud huts and the rising mountains of gravel and white sand excavated from the diggings, which the committee, profiting by its experience at Dutoitspan (Dutoit’s Pan Farm), had ordained that: “All waste matter removed from the mine was to be sorted beyond its limit.”
The place was growing like Jack’s proverbial beanstalk.
Along the single street stores, canteens, little houses of wooden framework and canvas were being erected all around and diamond dealers bid actively against one another.
The mine was the centre of interest.
The wonderful mine that was to transform Rhodes from a penniless boy to a great power in the world, was already transforming South Africa from an almost penniless and bankrupt country to a centre of wealth, speculation, business and political activity.
Let me describe the mine as it was in the early days.
The kopje, with its gravel and boulders had been physically cleared away; beneath was the soft white diamond-bearing rock.
It had the form of a circular pipe some nine acres in extent, with a regularly defined edge of talcose shale all round it like an outer wall.
The diamonds being mined from kimberlite and lamproite volcanic pipes, originating deep within the earth where high pressures and temperatures enable them to form; the diamond crystals are then ‘carried’ to the surface within these pipes.
This was the character of the Kimberley Rush.
Although the claims outside the digs were considered to be very valuable, no one could tell how far the ‘pocket’ or ‘pipe’ reached down, that was the gamble of the mine!
The soft grey rock inside the encircling cliff was all diamondiferous, with diamonds scattered through it thinly.
As the miners dug down, the roads became gangways, which also crumbled and fell and sometimes buried the diggers below.
The ‘waste’ became growing mountains of white sand; the soft rock or hard clay, which contained the diamonds disintegrated in the open air into sand, so fine and light, that it floated like dust in the air and when a wind blew, it drifted like snow.
As the mine went down, it became increasingly difficult to haul the debris out to the breakers and sorters working round the edge beside the growing mountains of sand.
A framework of timber was built, tier below tier around the edge of the oval-shaped cauldron.
On the floors of the growing ‘hole’ improvised winches were rigged up with ropes passing to the claims below.
The claims were of various depths according to the energy and resources of their owners; some claims had even been divided into halves, fourths and even sixteenths.
The bottom of the mine was a rough, uneven, checkerboard of squares; crisscrossed by countless ropes like a spider’s-web above the diggers.
Below, the gangs worked loading the buckets; above, they worked at the creaking winches.
As the buckets emerged at the top, they were passed on to the pounders and sorters who worked at tables in the open air with the drifting sand.
Gangs of indigenous men did the rough work, while the owners supervised and sorted at the open tables.
The mine soon came to be known as the Big Hole; eventually becoming one of South Africa’s most iconic mines.
The Big Hole operated for 43 years (1871-1914).
When mining activities at Kimberley’s Big Hole were exhausted in 1914, 2 722 kilogrammes of diamonds had been extracted from 22,5 million tonnes of excavated earth; producing an unparalleled 14,5 million carats of diamonds, among them the famed 128,53 carat Tiffany Yellow Diamond.
Until the early 20th Century, finding new diamonds, including the celebrated Koh-i-Noor Diamond, the Hope Diamond and the Cullinan Diamond, was all by accident, in alluvial or surface deposits.
At that time, diamonds were sold either to the merchants in their offices or, in an easier way of doing business, to diamond buyers known as ‘kopje wallopers’ who threaded their way from table to table or from tent to tent, scornfully mocking the diggers.
In Kimberley, Rhodes met up with Charles Dunell Rudd, a Harrow and Cambridge man several years his senior.
With immense energy and perseverance, together they used all means to their ends, pursuing such ventures as selling ice to the thirsty prospectors, removing waste ground or pumping out surplus water flooding the mines which had become a serious technical problem, for which they had obtained contracts from three of the main mines.
Rhodes came to rely mostly on a young Jewish diamond buyer from Hamburg named Alfred Beit; said to have the best Jewish traditions behind him.
Beit helped him through all the delicate operations of finance. Rhodes was said to be the mind that conceived and rough-hewed the schemes; Alfred Beit the man who helped him through all the subtle procedures of finance.
When the hard blue was reached 15-18 metres below the surface, some diggers believing ‘the bottom was knocked out of the mine’ left for their old diggings under the breezy trees by the cool waters of the Vaal in loathing.
Others were discouraged by the flooding or the crumbling fall of a gangway and yet others left sickened by the glare and the dust.
During this time, diggers came and went.
Some retired with fortunes, others drank and gambled; there was abundant room for speculation, both in the value of a single stone and in the value of whole claims.
One day Herbert Rhodes left to trek north, never to return; but Cecil remained and from digging, he took to dealing in claims.
As early as 1873, the firm of Rhodes, Rudd, and Alderson was busy merging claims in a small way.
Dr Michelina Rudo Andreucci is a Zimbabwean-Italian Researcher, Industrial Design Consultant and Specialist Hospitality Interior Decorator. She is a published author in her field.
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