'Well, the natives are queer up thereaways. There's some
kind of a holy place which every Kaffir from Algoa Bay to the
Zambesi and away beyond knows about. When I've been
hunting in the bush-veld I've often met strings of Kaffirs from
hundreds of miles distant, and they've all been going or coming
from Blaauwildebeestefontein. It's like Mecca to the Mohammedans,
a place they go to on pilgrimage. I've heard of an old
man up there who is believed to be two hundred years old.
Anyway, there's some sort of great witch or wizard living in
the mountains.'

Aitken smoked in silence for a time; then he said, 'I'll tell
you another thing. I believe there's a diamond mine. I've often
meant to go up and look for it.'

Tam and I pressed him to explain, which he did slowly after
his fashion.

'Did you ever hear of I.D.B. - illicit diamond broking?' he
asked me. 'Well, it's notorious that the Kaffirs on the diamond
fields get away with a fair number of stones, and they are
bought by Jew and Portuguese traders. It's against the law to
deal in them, and when I was in the intelligence here we used
to have a lot of trouble with the vermin. But I discovered that
most of the stones came from natives in one part of the
country - more or less round Blaauwildebeestefontein - and I
see no reason to think that they had all been stolen from
Kimberley or the Premier. Indeed some of the stones I got
hold of were quite different from any I had seen in South