It is, unfortunately, certain that cases happened where diamonds were hidden surreptitiously among the effects of certain persons who had had the imprudence to say too loudly that they meant to expose the state of things existing in Kimberley; and in consequence innocent men were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment.
I heard one story in particular which, if true, throws a terrible light on the state of affairs in the Diamond City.

A young man of good connections, who had arrived from England to seek his fortune in South Africa, was engaged in Kimberley at a small salary by one of the big diamond mining concerns.

After about three or four months' sojourn he felt so disgusted that he declared quite loudly that as soon as he could put by sufficient money to pay his passage back to Europe he would do so, there to make it the business of his life to enlighten his compatriots as to what was going on in South Africa.

He threatened, too, to warn his countrymen against those who used to deluge England with prospectuses praising, in exalted terms, the wonderful state of things existing in South Africa and dilating upon the future prospects of Cape Colony.

Old residents warned him he would do better to restrain his wrath until he was out of reach of interested parties; he did not listen to them, with the result that one morning detectives appeared in the house where he lodged, searched his room, and--found some diamonds hidden in a flower pot of geraniums which was standing in his window and which the daughter of his landlady had given him that very morning.