Not
until the discovery of diamonds in Africa, however, did Europe acquire
freely stones of a size sufficiently large to have them recorded among
the celebrated. Now the monster gems of the Orient that have long
ranked among the world's wonders are fast becoming insignificant among
the numerous larger ones furnished by the empire of Britain in Africa,
and the last of the great diamonds found, taken from the New Premier
mine, is now the world's greatest diamond. Here is the story of the
discovery.
Out
in the Transvaal, one evening late in January, 1905, where the faith
and energy of Tom Cullinan, as his familiars called him in those days,
had transformed an old-fashioned Boer farm in the wilds, into a mining
camp, and broken the calm and silence of a solitude by the click of
picks, the whiz and whir of machinery, the stir and bustle of many
workmen, and the constant tremor of expectation, a bluff, genial-faced
man might have been seen leisurely picking his way down the rough
broken surface of an open working in the Premier diamond mine. He was
the mine manager, Cap. Frederick Wells. His eye roved as he walked, for
the rugged, desolate-looking waste, though devoid of the green things
which cover the earth's nakedness and grow to the pleasure of the eye,
was not altogether barren. That rough hole in the ground was the hiding
place of gems, and from the habit of years he looked always that
perchance he might discover one. Suddenly a gleam from the rough face
of the jagged slope he was descending, caught his eye. He turned, and
stooping down, picked from its bed in the rock, a huge crystal. It
looked like a piece of ice; it was a diamond. After turning it over
