Over the rolling ground the prospectors pressed rapidly to the diamond-fields and soon reached the river-border where the plains ran into the barrier of ridges of volcanic rocks. Jolting heavily over these rough heaps and sinking deeply in the red sand-wash of the valleys, the heavy ox-wagons were slowly tugged to the top of the last ridge above Pniel, opposite the opened diamond-beds of Klip-drift, where the anticipated Golconda was full in sight. Here the Vaal River winds with a gently flowing stream, two hundred yards or more in width, through a steeply shelving oblong basin something over a mile and a half in length and a mile across. A thin line of willows and cotton-woods marked the edge of the stream on both banks. On the descending slope toward the river stood the clustering tents and wagons of the pilgrims waiting to cross the stream.
In the dry season the Vaal was easily fordable by ox-wagons at a point in this basin, and the ford, which the Boers call "drift," gave the name to the shore and camp opposite Pniel -- "Klip-drift" ("Rockyford").
How stirring were the sights and sounds from the ridge at Pniel to every newcomer while the swarming diamond-seekers were crossing the river and spreading out over the northern bank -- the confused clustering at the ford -- the rambling of stragglers along the shore -- the gravel cracking and grinding under the hoofs of the horses and ponies racing along the bank and rearing, plunging, and bucking at the check of the bits and prick of the spurs -- the outspanning and inspanning of hundreds of oxen -- the swaying and creaking wagons -- the writhing, darting lash of the cracking whips of the drivers -- the sulking, balking oxen, driven into long, straining lines that dragged the ponderous canvas-arched "prairie-schooners" through the turbid water and over the quaking sands -- the whistling, shouting, yelling, snoring, neighing, braying, squeaking, grinding, splashing babel -- the scrambling up the steep Klip-drift bank -- the scattering of the newcomers -- the perching of the white-topped wagons and the camp-tents like monstrous gulls on every tenable lodging-place on bank, gully, and hillside -- the scurrying about for wood and water --the crackling, smoking, flaming heaps of the camp-fires -- the steaming pots and kettles swinging on cranes -- the great placer-face, pockmarked with holes and heaps of reddish sand, clay, and gravel -- the long stretches of the miners' rockers and troughs at the water's edge -- and chief of all in interest, the busy workmen, sinking pits and throwing out shovelfuls of earth, filling buckets and hauling them up with ropes, loading and shaking the rockers, driving carts full of heavy gravel to the water-troughs, returning for new loads, scraping and sorting the fine, heavy pebbles on tables or flat rocks or boards spread on the ground!
No labored, crawling recital can compass and picture in print any approach to the instant impress on the eye and car of the moving drama on the banks of the Vaal. Observer after observer groped vainly for graphic comparison. "Klip-drift is a swarm of bees whose hive is upset," said one; "a bank lined with ant-hills," wrote another, prosily; "a wild-rabbit warren scurried by a fox," ventured a third; an insane-asylum turned loose on a beach," sneered a fourth. It was a mushroom growth of a seething placer-mining camp in the heart of the pasture-lands of South Africa. To old Australian and American miners it had a patent likeness to familiar camps and diggings, but its local coloring was glaringly vivid and unique.
“What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?”
– Matthew 16:26