Diamonds Discovered in South Africa

This series has eight easy 5-minute installments. This first installment: Here Be Diamonds.

Introduction
The story of the Kimberley diamond-field is one of the romances of the industrial world . Any chemist can tell us that the diamond is pure crystallized carbon but the wisest geologist cannot make even a reasonable conjecture as to its origin or say how it came to be where it is found. By a bold figure the diamond might be called the comet of the mineral kingdom. The most experienced prospector cannot count upon any “indications,” and the child of an ignorant herder may pick up a gem that would found a college. The great production of diamonds in recent years has not diminished their market value — partly because there is an increased demand for them in some of the mechanic arts, but more because human vanity of adornment may always be trusted to grow by what it feeds on.

In the volume from which this chapter is taken, Mr. Williams has produced not only the most complete and interesting account of diamonds generally and of the great African diamond discovery and the resulting camps and mining operations but a beautifully and profusely illustrated book.

This selection is from The Diamond Mines of South Africa by Gardner F. Williams published in 1902. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Gardner F. Williams (1842`-1922) was the first properly trained mining engineer to be appointed in South Africa. His reformed the mining operations using proper and relatively safe mining methods.

Time: 1867
Place: Orange River, South Africa

Nearly two hundred years had passed since the memorable expedition of Van der Stel made known to geographers the Groote River, which, a hundred years later, was christened the Orange. Before Great Britain took the Cape, the daring Van Reenen had penetrated to Modder Fontein, unconsciously skirting the rim of a marvelous diamond-field. Since the beginning of the century scores of roving hunters had chased their game over a network of devious tracks, traversing every nook of the land between the Orange and the Vaal and often camping for days upon their banks. Then the trekking pioneer graziers and farmers plodded on after the hunters, sprinkling their huts and kraals over the face of the Orange Free State, but naturally squatting first on the arable lands and grazing-ground nearest the water-courses. So, in the course of years, in the passage the Great Trek, thousands of men, women, and children had passed across the Orange and Vaal, and up and down their winding valleys, and hundreds, at least, had trodden the river-shore sands of the region in which the most precious gems were lying.

On the Orange River, thirty miles above its junction with the Vaal, was the hamlet of Hopetown, one of the most thriving of the little settlements; farms dotted the angle between the rivers. Along the line of the Vaal, for some distance above its entry into the Orange, were some ill-defined reservations occupied by a few weak native tribes — Koranas and Griquas — for whose instruction there were mission-stations at Pniel and Hebron.

After the discovery there arose, it is true, an imposing tale of an old mission-map of the Orange River region, drawn as early as the middle of the eighteenth century, across whose worn and soiled face was scrawled: “Here be diamonds.” Even if this report were true, there was no evidence to determine the date of the scrawl, which might more credibly be a crude new record than a vague In any event, it does not appear that there was even a floating rumor of the probable existence of a South African diamond-field at the time of the actual discovery of the first identified gem.

There is nothing surprising in this oversight. When a spectator beholds a great semicircle of artfully cut gems sparkling on the heads, necks, and hands of fair women massed in superb array and resplendent in the brilliant lights of an opera-house, or when one views the moving throng glittering with jewels in grand court assemblies, it is hard for him to realize how inconspicuous a tiny crystal may be in the richest of earth-beds. No spot in a diamond-field has the faintest resemblance to a jeweler’s show tray. Here is no display of gems blazing like a mogul’s throne or a queen’s tiara or the studded cloak of a Russian noble. Only in the marvelous valley of Sindbad are diamonds strewn on the ground in such profusion that they are likely to stick in the toes of a barefooted traveler, and can be gathered by flinging carcasses of sheep from surrounding precipices to tempt eagles to serve as diamond-winners.

It needs no strain of faith to credit the old Persian tale of the discontented Ali Hafed roaming far and wide from his charming home on the banks of the Indus in search of diamonds, and, finally, beggared and starving, casting himself into the river that flowed by his house, while the diamonds of Golconda were lying in his own garden-sands. It is probable that the diamonds of India were trodden under foot for thousands of years before the first precious stone of the Deccan was stuck in an idol’s eye or a raja’s turban. It is known that the Brazilian diamond – fields were washed for many years by gold-placer diggers without any revelation of diamonds to the world, although these precious stones were often picked up and so familiarly handled that they were used by the black slaves in the fields as counters in card-games.

If this be true of the most famous and prolific of all diamond fields before the opening of the South African placers and mines, any delay in the revelation of the field in the heart of South Africa may be easily understood. For it was not only necessary to have eyes bright and keen enough to mark one of the few tiny precious crystals that were lying on the face of vast stretches of pebbles, bowlders, and sand, but the observer must prize such a crystal enough to stoop to pick it up if it lay plainly before his eyes.

Nobody that entered the Vaal River region conceived it to be a possible diamond-field or thought of searching for any precious stones. Probably, too, there was not a person in the Orange Free State, and few in the Cape Colony, able to distinguish a rough diamond if he found one by chance, or likely to prize such a crystal. For the discovery of diamonds under such conditions it was practically necessary that prospectors should enter it who would search the gravel-beds often and eagerly for the prettiest pebbles. Were such collectors at work in the field?

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