180 SYSTEMATIC DESCRIPTION OF PRECIOUS STONES 



by the owners of the South African mines, the output from BraziHan, and especially from 

 Indian, mines being so insignificant in comparison that their eiFect on the market is 

 inappreciable. 



The first exact scientific account of the Cape diamond-fields is due to Professor Emil 

 Cohen, who visited the region in 1872, and his observations are still of gi-eat importance. 

 Numerous other inquirers have continued his investigations and have cleared up many details, 

 but no essentially novel theories have been advanced. Comprehensive accounts of these 

 deposits have been published by Moulle, Chaper, Boutan, Reunert, Stelzner, and others, and 

 the details given below are taken from the original works of these and other investigators. 

 A map of the South African diamond-fields is given in Fig. 37. 



Diamonds were first found in this region in the year 1867, reported discoveries at dates 

 preceding this — for example, in the eighteenth century — being, for the most part, unfounded. 

 Many versions of the circumstances under which the first discovery was made are in existence. 

 According to one, a traveller of the name of O'Reilly saw a child playing with a bright and 

 shining stone in the house of a Boer by name Jacobs, whose farm, " De Kalb," was situated 

 a little to the south of the Orange River, and not far from Hopetown. This stone the 

 traveller showed to Dr. W. Guybon Atherstone at Grahamstown, who determined it to be 

 a diamond crystal weighing 21^"^ carats. After being exhibited at the Paris Exhibition of 

 1867 it was purchased for .fSOO by Sir Philip E. Wodehouse, then Governor of Cape 

 Colony. O'Reilly obtained from the same Boer a second stone weighing 8^ carats, which 

 had also been accidentally found on his farm ; this also passed into the possession of the 

 Governor of the Colony at a price of .iPSOO. 



According to another version, the diamond of ^I^t carats, the Boer child's plaything, 

 first passed into the hands of Schalk van Niekerk, a Boer who was otherwise connected with 

 the history of the discovery of diamonds in South Africa, since in 1869 he obtained from a 

 Kaffir a stone of 83J carats, which came into the market under the name of the " Star of 

 South Africa." Schalk van Niekerk is said to have handed over the stone previously 

 obtained to O'Reilly for determination. In any case, it seems to have been the latter who 

 took the initiative in identifying the stones, and thus firml}' establishing the occurrence of 

 the diamond in South Africa, so that to him is due all the credit of the discovery. 



Scarcely had these events been made known, when the Boers living in the neighbourhood 

 of Hopetown commenced a vigorous search for diamonds. They were rewarded by the 

 discovery of a few scattered stones, but there was no rich, continued yield such as is 

 characteristic of a regular deposit. The searchers soon extended themselves over a wider 

 area, and in the year 1868 the workings on the Vaal River were commenced, and here the 

 yield was much greater. The first actual diamond deposit was met with in 1869, in the 

 neighbourhood of the places now bearing the names of Pniel and Barkly West. 



In the years which followed, news of the finds of diamonds gradually spread in Cape 

 Colony, and soon diamond-diggers from the four corners of the earth congregated on the 

 banks of the Orange and Vaal Rivers. Reported rich discoveries attracted miners to the 

 spot in still larger numbers, in spite of the long and toilsome journey across the arid Karoo 

 region, where, in the dry winter season, the region is more than ordinarily barren and 

 inhospitable, and the route is marked out by the bodies of beasts of burden which have 

 perished by the way. Two years after the first discovery of diamonds, namely, in 1869, 

 this previously uninhabited district became peopled by a white population of 1000 souls. 

 These settled on the Vaal River at Pniel and Klipdrift, the latter now known as Barkly 

 West. Here they washed the surface sands of the river for diamonds, and some time elapsed 

 before any systematic digging operations were undertaken. 



