CELEBRATED DIAMONDS	95
	the character which comes of rumor. Men who had such stones, frequently had also serious reasons for wish­ing to hide the fact from public knowledge. Some who had them, stole them; others bought them knowing that they were stolen. It is told that one fine diamond crystal of upwards of 200 carats was bought by a dealer of a Kaffir for £15. The early history of many noble gems is enshrouded to hide the knavery which escorted them from the mine to the cutting wheel. Those who knew, would not tell of the interval between the disappearance of Louis XIV's blue diamond from the Garde-Meuble and the appearance of the blue diamond called the " Hope." Nor would those who know, dare to let it be publicly known, whence some of the great African diamonds came, and how from hand to hand they passed to the cutter. There are enough large diamonds known to have come from the Cape, however, from the early working of the mines onward, to show how prolific of large stones those fields are. The climax was thought to have been reached when on June 30, 1893, a Kaffir picked up a crystal, while loading a truck in the Jagersfontein mine, weighing 971-3/4 carats. The man contrived to secrete it without being observed by the white overseer standing near by, but delivered it to the manager him­self later. Immediately the whole civilized world was informed of the great discovery. After five centuries, the boast of India was eclipsed, and the " Great Mogul," to which every writer on the subject had referred as the greatest diamond of the world, was relegated to second place in the history of gems. The enormous and precious crystal, at once estimated to be worth fabulous