His modest capital, which he had hoped to increase in this new Diamondopolis, had vanished within a few weeks of his arrival, swallowed up by shares in diamond-fields that existed only in the vivid imagination of the swindling "company-promoters" or so-called "prospectors," who infested the place; and when his illusions of easily-made wealth had vanished also, and he had tried to obtain a billet, he had failed utterly.
— from A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari And Other Tales of South-West Africa by Frederick Carruthers Cornell