and
a town of 30,000 inhabitants had come into existence there among the
wilds two years later. Since then others have been built and now,
where wild beasts roamed at will with a few drifting tribes of savages
in a country remote from civilization, one can see the most modern
equipments for business and the household, and the best and most
scientific mining machinery that the world could devise and build. In
twenty-five years the diamond did more to build a new empire, than the
pioneers of the most vigorous and tenacious races the earth has ever
known, had succeeded in doing in over three hundred years.
The
lure of the diamond in Africa has raised a new generation of wealthy
men, begun a new empire, ground together a number of antagonistic
individuals into a coherent nucleus for a new people; it has
encouraged scientific research, stimulated engineering skill,
developed great natural resources and uncovered others. By its magic,
hitherto almost inaccessible stretches of the earth have been added to
the habitable world, thousands of savages are brought to a better
understanding of life and made amenable to the laws of civilization,
and as the precious pebbles pass from one to another until they bring
delight to the final possessor, from the Hottentot laborer in the
Compound, to the fair hand of plighted troth, they leave in the passing
a betterment of conditions to all.
Another
commercial phase is their value as a concentrated form of wealth.
Somewhat of the Oriental idea of diamonds as a safe and enduring value
prevails with most people. Comparatively few of the general public, in
buying them, lose sight entirely of their
