"Smith, Wilbur - Ballantyne 02 - Men of Men" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Wilbur)

barren hard-scrabble little farm on which rose another bald stony little
kopje, just like ten thousand others, that studded the plains.

The kopje was that same day in the bleak, dry winter of 1871 named
"Colesberg" kopje, for Colesberg was Fleetwood Rawstorne's birthplace,
and De Beer's New Rush came swarming out of the dusty sun-bleached
distances towards it.

It was almost dark when Fleetwood reached the kopje, only just ahead of
his followers. His horse was blown, lathered with sweat and white froth,
but the Hottentot servant clung to the stirrup leather still.

Master and servant flung themselves from the heaving staggering animal
and ran at the slope. Their scarlet caps bobbing above the scrub thorn
could be seen from a half mile distance, and a hoarse excited cheer went
up from the ragged column that pursued them.

On the crest of the hill, the Hottentot servant had burrowed a shaft ten
feet into the hard earth, a tiny scratch when compared to what was to
follow. Frantic with haste, casting fearful glances down the hillside at
the horde that raced up towards him, Fleetwood drove the centre line of
his claim pegs across the narrow mouth of the shallow prospect shaft.

Night fell over a battlefield on which brawny diggers cursed each other
and swung punches and pick-handles to clear the ground and drive their
own claim pegs. By noon the next day, when farmer De Beer rode across
from his primitive two-roomed dwelling to begin writing out the
"briefies", which was taal for "letters", the entire kopje was covered
with claim pegs; even the flat plain for a quarter of a mile below the
slopes was bristling with pegs.

Each claim was thirty feet square, its centre and corners marked with a
sharpened wood stake cut from a camel-thorn branch. On payment of an
annual fee of ten shillings to farmer De Beer, the digger received his
written "briefie" which entitled him to hold and work the claim in
perpetuity.

Before nightfall that first day the lucky diggers who had pegged the
centre of the new rush had merely scratched the stony earth, but had
turned up over forty stones of the first water; and already horsemen
were away southwards carrying the word to the world that Colesberg kopje
was a mountain of diamonds.

When Zouga Ballantyne's single wagon creaked the last few miles down the
rutted red earth track towards Colesberg kopje, it was already half
demolished, eaten away as though by the maggots in a rotten cheese, and
men still swarmed over what remained. On the dusty plain below it were
encamped almost ten thousand souls, black and brown and white. The smoke
from their cooking fires blurred the high china-blue sky with dirty
grey, and for miles in each direction the diggers had almost denuded the