CHAPTER XVII
OCCURRENCE OF DIAMOND
THE whole of the diamonds known in ancient times were obtained from the so-called Golconda mines in India. Golconda itself, now a deserted fortress near Hyderabad, was merely the mart where the diamonds were bought and sold. The diamond-bearing district actually spread over a wide area on the eastern side of the Deccan, extending from the Pinner River in the Madras Presidency northwards to the Rivers Son and Khan, tributaries of the Ganges, in Bundelkhand. The richest mines, where the large historical stones were found, are in the south, mostly near the Kistna River. The diamonds were discovered in sandstone, or conglomerate, or the sands and gravels of river-beds. The mines were visited in the middle of the seventeenth century by the French traveller and jeweller, Tavernier, when travelling on a commission for Louis XIV, and he afterwards published a careful description of them and of the method of working them. The mines seem to have been exhausted in the seventeenth century; at any rate, the prospecting, which has been spasmodically carried on during the last two centuries, has proved almost abortive. With the exception of the Koh-i-nor, all the large Indian diamonds were probably discovered not long before Tavernier’s visit. The diamonds known to Pliny, and in his time, were quite small, and it is doubtful if any stones of considerable size came to light before a.d. 1000.
India enjoyed the monopoly of supplying the world’s demand for diamonds up to the discovery, in 1725, of the precious stone in Brazil. Small stones were detected by the miners in the gold washings at Tejuco, about eighty miles (129 km.) from Rio de Janeiro, in the Serro do Frio district of the State of Minas Geraes. The discovery naturally caused great excitement. So many diamonds were found that in 1727 something like a slump took place in their value. In order to keep up prices, the Dutch merchants, who mainly controlled the Indian output, asserted that the diamonds had not been found in Brazil at all, but were inferior Indian stones shipped to Brazil from Goa. The tables were neatly turned when diamonds were actually shipped from Brazil to Goa, and exported thence to Europe as Indian stones. This course and the continuous development of the diamond district in Brazil rendered it impossible to hoodwink the world indefinitely. The drop in prices was, however, stayed by the action of the Portuguese government, who exacted such heavy duties and imposed such onerous conditions that finally no one would undertake to work the mines. Accordingly, in 1772 diamond-mining was declared a royal monopoly in Brazil, and such it remained until the severance of Brazil from Portugal in 1834, when private mining was permitted by the new government subject to the payment of reasonable royalties. The industry was enormously stimulated by the discovery, in 1844, of the remarkably rich fields in the State of Bahia, especially at Serra da Cincorá, where carbonado, or black diamond, first came to light, but after a few years, owing to the difficulties of supplying labour, the unhealthiness of the climate, and the high cost of living, the yield fell off and gradually declined, until the importance of the fields was finally eclipsed by the rise of the South African mines. The Brazilian mines have proved very productive, but chiefly in small diamonds, stones above a carat in weight being few in comparison. The largest stone, to which the name, the Star of the South, was applied, weighed in the rough 254½ carats; it was discovered at the Bagagem mines in 1853. The quality of the diamonds is good, many of them having the highly-prized bluish-white colour. The principal diamond-bearing districts of Brazil centre at Diamantina, as Tejuco was re-named after the discovery of diamonds, Grão Magor, and Bagagem in the State of Minas Geraes, at Diamantina in the State of Bahia, and at Goyãz and Matto Grosso in the States of the same names. The diamonds occur chiefly in cascalho, a gravel, containing large masses of quartz and small particles of gold, which is supposed to be derived from a quartzose variety of micaceous slate known as itacolumite. The mines are now to some extent being worked by systematic dredging of the river-beds.
Early in 1867 the children of a Boer farmer, Daniel Jacobs, who dwelt near Hopetown on the banks of the Orange River, picked up in the course of play near the river a white pebble, which was destined not only to mark the commencement of a new epoch in the record of diamond mines, but to change the whole course of the history of South Africa. This pebble attracted the attention of a neighbour, Schalk van Niekerk, who suspected that it might be of some value, and offered to buy it. Mrs. Jacobs, however, gave it him, laughingly scouting the idea of accepting money for a mere pebble. Van Niekerk showed it to a travelling trader, by name John O’Reilly, who undertook to obtain what he could for it on condition that they shared the proceeds. Every one he met laughed to scorn the idea that the stone had any value, and it was once thrown away and only recovered after some search in a yard, but at length he showed it to Lorenzo Boyes, the Acting Civil Commissioner at Colesberg, who, from its extreme hardness, thought it might be diamond and sent it to the mineralogist, W. Guybon Atherston, of Grahamstown, for determination. So uncertain was Boyes of its value that he did not even seal up the envelope containing it, much less register the package. Atherston found immediately that the long-scorned pebble was really a fine diamond, weighing 213/16 carats, and with O’Reilly’s consent he submitted it to Sir Philip Wodehouse, Governor at the Cape. The latter purchased it at once for £500, and dispatched it to be shown at the Paris Exhibition of that year. It did not, however, attract much attention; chimerical tales of diamond finds in remote parts of the world are not unknown. Indeed, for some time only a few small stones were picked up beside the Orange River, and no one believed in the existence of any extensive diamond deposit. However, all doubt as to the advisibility of prospecting the district was settled by the discovery of the superb diamond, afterwards known as the ‘Star of South Africa,’ which was picked up in March 1869 by a shepherd boy on the Zendfontein farm near the Orange River. Van Niekerk, on the alert for news of further discoveries, at once hurried to the spot and purchased the stone from the boy for five hundred sheep, ten oxen, and a horse, which seemed to the boy untold wealth, but was not a tithe of the £11,200 which Lilienfeld Bros., of Hopetown, gave Van Niekerk.
PLATE XV
KIMBERLEY MINE, 1871
PLATE XVI
