The sale by the prisoner was of course duly proved. Judge Dwyer, however, directed the jury that as the purchaser had been guided in his opinion by his friend, it was a question for them to decide whether he had been misled or not by the statement of the accused. The jury, as I said before, acquitted the prisoner.
It is certainly a curious phase in this glass, or in thieves Latin “snyde diamond,” question, or, as I term it, in this internecine struggle for unlawful gain, that in this province neither the manufacturer nor the possessor of these spurious articles can be brought to justice. It is simply with them a game of “heads I win, tails you lose.”
The arts and sciences were also called into play to forward the ends of this nefarious trade.
The science of chemistry was even as far back as 1872 requisitioned by both legal and illegal sellers of diamonds. It had been discovered that the boiling of yellow stones in nitric acid would give them a frosted white appearance, and by this means increase their apparent value by twenty to forty shillings a carat, according to the size of the diamond operated upon.
Many very knowing ones were taken in by this at the time, the diamond buyer of the day, one Moritz Unger, even falling a victim to the deception. During the past thirteen years this imposition has been spasmodically revived, although at the time (1872) it was thought that the exposure would once and forever warn the diamond burner that his “little game was up.”
Although no community can hope to succeed whose prosperity depends upon unlawful enterprise, yet it is a fact that this new law, although it has failed to diminish diamond stealing one iota, has yet driven away the very men who formerly used to extravagantly patronize the retail stores, hotels, and theatres of the place, whilst Capetown and Port Elizabeth until quite recently (session of 1885) reaped the profits of this disgraceful and debasing trade.
Immediately on the promulgation of this law (48, 1882) the detective department was stimulated to fresh energy, which was shown by rash and indiscreet action. For a month or two the passenger coaches leaving for Port Elizabeth and Capetown were searched at Alexandersfontein, a noted hostelry about five miles distant from Kimberley, and the luggage of the passengers overhauled. On one occasion this indignity was thrust upon the Bishop of the Free State, the Bishop of the Transvaal and the Hon. A. Stead, who were all traveling by the same coach to Capetown. I believe I am correct in stating that only on one occasion was any arrest ever made. This outburst of detective enthusiasm, however, soon exhausted itself, and passengers now leave Kimberley as heretofore, without let or hindrance, either by coach or rail. At this time, the passage to the Colony being dangerous, and the outlet through the Free State being considered insecure, the illicit trade was removed to Christiana, in the Transvaal, and diamonds run in that direction were shipped through Natal.
When the judges in the Free State, however, gave a decided opinion that their law extended only to acknowledged diggings, and trapping was abolished by the Volksraad in that country, the trade was again brought to our very door, just as suddenly to recede when the Free State passed, in the last session of their Volksraad, a diamond law containing the onus probandi clause.
A new village called Free Town sprang up on the boundary, a mile or two distant from Du Toit’s Pan, inhabited chiefly by men whose acquaintance with the diamond law of Griqualand West had been of too intimate a character, while both there and at Oliphansfontein, another Free State village close by Griqualand West, diamonds were openly bought and sold. One or two Dutch homesteads in the neighborhood over the border, within easy reach of our mines, were rented by gangs of Griqualand West illicits in order to ply their trade with ease and impunity.
The detective department was again seized with another fit of zeal, and many mounted men patroled the roads to these villages, searching all comers and goers, whether male or female, whom they suspected of connection with this traffic. In spite of this diamonds were “run the blockade” in large quantities. The I. D. B. fraternity were not lacking in devices. The book post conveyed many a parcel. A large hole was cut in the pages of some novel or ready reckoner and the space filled with diamonds carefully packed. The parcel being properly wrapped and posted attracted no attention from the postal authorities.