so as to enhance the difficulties, and force the Government to purchase. The Government was obliged to buy and paid the enormous sum of £100,000 for the farm. Many stories could be told of the almost inextricable complexities which attended the settlement of claims to property while the diggers were arming and drilling and declaring that they would take the law into their own hands if they were interfered with in their industry.
In 1872 the population had become so great,—and, as was natural in such circumstances, so unruly,—that the Governor of the Cape Colony, who is also High Commissioner for all our South African territories, was obliged to recommend that a separate Lieutenant Governor should be appointed, and Mr. Southey who had long held official employment in the Cape Colony was sent to fill the place. Here he remained till 1875, encumbered by hardships of which the difficulty of raising a sufficient revenue to pay the expenses of the place was not the least. Diamonds were being extracted worth many millions, but the diamonds did not come into the pocket of the Government. In such localities the great source of revenue,—that which is generally most available,—is found in the Custom duties levied on the goods consumed by the diggers. But here, though the diggers consumed manfully, the Custom duties levied went elsewhere. Griqualand West possessed no port and could maintain no cordon of officers to prevent goods coming over her borders without taxation. The Cape Colony which has been so slow to annex the land got the chief advantages from the consumption of the Diamond Fields, sharing it, however, with Natal. Mr.
