362 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 196 



I put the pebble in my pocket and later gave it to my younger sister who put 

 it with her playthings. Some months later my brother and I were playing 

 a game called "Five Stones" and one of the stones was the diamond. Van 

 Niekerk arrived during the game and greatly admired the stone and tried to 

 scratch a windowpane with it. My mother noticed that van Niekerk had taken 

 quite a fancy to this white stone and gave it to him, 



Schalk van Niekerk, who lived in a house on the Jacobs's property, 

 was a divisional councilor; a sort of welfare officer appointed by the 

 farmers of the Hopetown district. It is exasperating not to know 

 whether Van Niekerk was on the lookout for diamonds or not or if 

 this one just happened to catch his eye. Plis attempt to scratch the 

 windowpane leads one to think that he believed the stone was a dia- 

 mond; on the other hand, he sold it to O'Reilly for only a few pounds. 



Jack O'Reilly was a pedlar, a hunter, and a famous shot. Wliether 

 or not Van Niekerk knew he was selling a diamond is not clear ; what 

 is certain is that O'Reilly was convinced that he was buying one. 

 He wrote his name on a windowpane, as seemed to be traditional, and 

 sent the stone to Atherstone, a mineralogist living in Grahamstown. 

 Atherstone seems to have consulted various people, including the 

 Catholic Bishop, Richards, who wrote his name on a windowpane with 

 the stone. Atherstone and Bishop Richards next tried a file which 

 left the stone untouched, and they told O'Reilly that he really had a 

 diamond. Eventually it was sold to the Governor of the Cape Colony, 

 Sir Philip Wodehouse, for £500. Sir Philip had it shown at the 

 Paris exhibition of 18G7. It is remembered as a clear blue- white stone 

 of 211/4 carats, but what happened to it after Sir Philip's death is 

 not kno^vn. 



O'Reilly's discovery was soon noised abroad and people all over 

 South Africa began looking for diamonds. In time further discov- 

 eries were made, and by 1869 the diamond rush was on. 



The diamond discovered by Jacobs was an alluvial stone. Water 

 had carried it from its original source to its place of discovery. It 

 probably had come a long way, because diamonds are formed only in 

 the presence of great heat and great pressure : in fact, in the sort of 

 conditions that occur in the crater or pipe of a volcano. A mass of 

 molten rock released from the earth's core produces a number of min- 

 erals as it cools and these crystallize out in concentrated form. Car- 

 bon is one of these minerals, and under suitable conditions of tempera- 

 ture and pressure it may crystallize to form diamonds. That a 

 diamond is nothing more than carbon may be proved by heating one 

 in an atmosphere of pure oxygen. It will burn to carbon dioxide 

 without any residue. Under slightly different conditions these self- 

 same carbon atoms may crystallize into graphite instead of into 

 diamond. The two forms, diamond and graphite, are said to be poly- 



