Machines and scaffolds, and washing-cradles and lifting apparatus
were now required to make the business a success; the simple old
gambling element was rapidly going out, and the capitalist was rapidly
coming up in its stead as master of the situation. So Granville
Kelmscott, being an enterprising young man, though destitute of
cash, and utterly ignorant of South African life, determined to
push on with all his might and main into the Barolong country, and
to rush for the front among the first in the field in these rumoured
new diggings on the extreme north frontier of civilization.
He started alone, as a Kelmscott might do, and made his way
adventurously, without any knowledge of the Koranna language or
manners, through many wild villages of King Khatsua's dominions.
Night after night he camped out in the open; and day after day
he tramped on by himself, buying food as he went from the natives
for English silver, in search of precious stones, over that dreary
tableland. At last, on the fourteenth day, in a deep alluvial
hollow near a squalid group of small Barolong huts, he saw a tiny
round stone, much rubbed and water-worn, which he picked up and
examined with no little curiosity.
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