to spend most of my days, and sought new and more
lonely pastures.

But game had now become so scarce that I usually left my gun at home.
Early one afternoon, when I was herding my cattle on that ridge which
runs south-east from Kimberley in the direction of Du Toit's Pan, I
noticed a stream of men flowing from De Beers towards the north-west,
and at once correctly inferred what had happened. Diamonds had been
discovered by the Ortlepp party, and a "rush" was in progress. Leaving
the cattle to fend for themselves, I started at a run across the veld
towards the objective of the rushers. My burrow! on that my thoughts
were centered; I longed to reach the spot before any one else had
pegged it out. Three or four tunes I paused to take breath, and each
tune I managed to pause in the vicinity of some patch of scrub, so that
I could therefrom cut pegs wherewith to mark out my "claim." When I
reached the kopje which, by the way, never was a kopje at all men were
swarming over it like ants over a heap of sugar. But I noticed with
delight that my burrow and the area immediately surrounding it were
still unappropriated. Accordingly I got in my pess, enclosing a square
with sides measuring approximately thirty one feet six inches (or
thirty Dutch feet), the burrow being exactly in the middle. Then I fell
to the ground, panting from exhaustion.

I remained on my claim until darkness fell. One by one I watched the
prospectors depart; I was not going to risk being dispossessed of my
burrow, so stuck to my post as long as a human being was in sight. I
had managed to get a message through to Brown, some time before sunset,
asking him to send David out to look for the oxen. When I reached the
camp I was roundly pitched into for my foolishness in abandoning the
cattle and running after "wild cat." However, my blood was now up, so I
told Brown that for the present I would do no more cattle herding, as I
meant to return next morning to my claim. Brown forbade my doing this,
and ordered me to resume charge of the cattle, but I defied him.

The stars were still shining; there was, in fact, no hint of dawn in
the sky when I reached my claim next morning. I was first in the field,
having reached my destination some time even before the fire was lit in
the Ortlepp camp. I brought with me a pick, a small circular sieve, a
piece of plank about eighteen inches square for use as a sorting-table,
and a small iron "scraper" an instrument used in th