can
tell where the wash of ages has carried them, and how many yet lie
sleeping under the rocks and hills worn down to grains and deposited by
the water upon them as a new stratum. A few small holes in thousands of
square miles mark the discoveries of man in thousands of years. Now,
few diamonds are found in India except where the rivers wash them from
their places of concealment and carry them to light and the eye of man.
Nor is it strange, for the diamondiferous strata are thin deposits and
scattered. A few inches to a few feet thick at the most; sometimes near
the surface, sometimes twenty or thirty feet under it; nothing to
betray them except where they themselves appear on the surface,
thousands might look long and far and not find them. As the ancient
mines became exhausted, India as the land of diamonds was eclipsed by
Brazil, and now fades to a memory before the rising sun of Africa.
