Big Hole

But over the 1870s, interest grew.

It would eventually lead to the creation of the famous Big Hole Mine.

At Kimberley, there were some disputes about who owned it and who had rights on it and so forth.

It didn't create the stir that you might think.

So let's start with what the first diamond mine in South Africa was.

It became known as the Big Hole.

We've talked a little bit about how diamonds are formed, but they come up in a kimberlite pipe, which is a reverse pyramid-shaped upheaval of Earth that after the initial diamonds can be scraped from the surface or found in riverbeds, those lucky few that are actually on the surface, you have to dig into the earth and then process the soil, the resulting clay firmament, to find the specific pieces of diamond, which of course, as we'll get into, are pretty intensely manufactured in order to actually result in the beautiful diamonds that we associate with today.

But these minds, after the initial findings on the surface, are... reverse pyramid-shaped holes in the ground.

Previously, in these mines, the Kimberley Mine, the Great Mine in South Africa, there was a 10-claim limit.

But in 1876, that limit was abolished and a race to consolidate all of these disparate mines began.

Rhodes intended on owning the big hole.

There's a lot of speculation as to why Rhodes became this colossus, this accumulator of power with a void inside of him that could not be filled except by more power and more money.