The Shiny Stone

This report was a revelation that transformed the despised karrooland as the grimy Cinderella was transfigured by the wand of her fairy godmother.

Continuing Diamonds Discovered in South Africa,
our selection from The Diamond Mines of South Africa by Gardner F. Williams published in 1902. The selection is presented in eight easy 5-minute installments. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Previously in Diamonds Discovered in South Africa.

Time: 1867
Place: Orange River, South Africa

One of the trekking Boers, Daniel Jacobs, had made his home on the banks of the Orange River near the little settlement of Hopetown. He was one of the sprinklings of little farmers who were content with a bare and precarious living on the uncertain pasture-lands of the veld. Here his children grew up about him with little more care than the goats that browsed on the kopjes.

His boys and girls had never seen a doll or a toy of any kind but the instinct of childhood will find playthings on the face of the most barren karroo, and the Jacobs children were luckily close to the edge of a river that was strewn with uncommonly beautiful pebbles, mixed with coarser gravel.

Here were garnets with their rich carmine flush, the fainter rose of the carnelian, the bronze of jasper, the thick cream of chalcedony, heaps of agates of motley hues, and many shining rock-crystals. From this party-colored bed the children picked whatever caught their eye and fancy, and filled their pockets with their chosen pebbles. So, a poor farmer’s child found scattered on a river-bank playthings that a little prince might covet, and the boy might have skimmed the face of the river with one little white stone that was worth more than his father’s farm. Fortunately for the future of South Africa, he did not play ducks and drakes with this particular stone, which he found one day in the early spring of 1867, but carried it home in his pocket and dropped it with a handful of other pebbles on the floor.

A heap of these party-colored stones was so common a sight in the yard or on the floor of a farmhouse on the banks of the Orange and the Vaal that none of the plodding Boers gave it a second glance. But when the children tossed the stones about, the little white pebble sparkling in the sunlight caught the eye of the farmer’s wife. She did not care enough for it to pick it up but spoke of it as a curious stone to a neighbor, Schalk van Niekerk. Van Niekerk asked to see it, but it was not in the heap. One of the children had rolled it away in the yard. After some little search it was found in the dust, for nobody on the farm would stoop for such a trifle.

When Van Niekerk wiped off the dust, the little stone glittered so prettily that he offered to buy it. The good vrouw laughed at the idea of selling a pebble. “You can keep the stone if you want it,” she said. So, Van Niekerk put it into his pocket and carried it home. He had only a vague notion that it might have some value and put it in the hands of a travelling trader, John O’Reilly, who undertook to find out what kind of stone the little crystal was and whether it could be sold. He showed the stone to several Jews in Hopetown, and in Colesberg, a settlement farther up the Orange River Valley. No one of these would give a penny for it. “It is a pretty stone enough,” they said, “probably a topaz, but nobody would pay anything for it.”

Perhaps O’Reilly would have thrown the pebble away if it had not come under the eye of the acting Civil Commissioner at Colesberg, Lorenzo Boyes. Mr. Boyes found on trial that the stone would scratch glass. “I believe it to be a diamond,” he observed gravely. O’Reilly was greatly cheered up. “You are the only man I have seen,” he said, “who says it is worth anything. Whatever it is worth you shall have a share in it.” “Nonsense,” broke in Dr. Kirsh, a private apothecary of the town, who was present; “I’ll bet Boyes a new hat it is only a topaz.” “I’ll take the bet,” replied Mr. Boyes, and at this suggestion the stone was sent for determination to the foremost mineralogist of the Colony, Dr. W. Guybon Atherstone, residing at Grahamstown. It was so lightly valued that it was put into an unsealed envelope and carried to Grahamstown in the regular post-cart.

When the post-boy handed the letter to Dr. Atherstone the little river stone fell out and rolled away. The doctor picked it up and read the letter of transmission. Then he examined the pebble expertly and wrote to Mr. Boyes: “I congratulate you on the stone you have sent me. It is a veritable diamond, weighs twenty-one and a quarter carats, and is worth five hundred pounds. It has spoiled all the jewelers’ files in Grahamstown, and where that came from there must be lots more. May I send it to Mr. Southey, Colonial Secretary?”

This report was a revelation that transformed the despised karrooland as the grimy Cinderella was transfigured by the wand of her fairy godmother. The determination was so positive and the expertness of the examiner so well conceded that Sir Philip Wodehouse, the Governor at the Cape, bought the rough diamond at once, at the value fixed by Dr. Atherstone and confirmed by the judgment of M. Henriette, the French consul in Cape Town. The stone was sent immediately to the Paris Exhibition, where it was viewed with much interest, but its discovery, at first, did not cause any great sensation. The occasional finding of a diamond in a bed of pebbles had been reported before from various parts of the globe, and there was no assurance in this discovery of any considerable diamond-deposits.

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