Was without enthusiasm that I accepted an invitation to spend a holiday in Kimberley.
In my early childhood, I had listened with bated breath to tales told by my father of a journey, he had made to the diamond fields of Kimberley in the days of his youth. Railways were unheard of and they trekked over the vold in ox waggons, taking several months to reach their destination. The country teemed with game and there were swollen rivers to be crossed, and a hundred other adventures of which I never tired of hearing, says Vern Van Der Bijl in "The 1820."
But in later years, in the course of hurried motor trips between the Transvaal and the Cape, I had passed through Kimberley on several occasions and it had been a disappointment to find that the place which had supplied the background for those exciting, bedtime stories was merely a flat, dusty town.
1, therefore, was prepared to spend 2 dull and somewhat boring holiday. However, the following weeks proved contrary to my expectations. It was winter-time, but the sky was intensely blue and the sun beat down on a town which is admittedly flat and with streets of amazing width, but there was a prevailing clean-lines and neatness. Many houses were framed by big orange and lemon trees, laden with glowing fruit.
On the evening of my arrival, as frequently happens, the temperature dropped below freezing point, and when we were settled around a blaze ing fire my host and hostess told me more about the early days in Kimberley, and once again I found myself lost in the romance of diamonds,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.