those
of India, as important, in books published in the early part of the
nineteenth century, and it was estimated that the production amounted
at times to several hundred thousand dollars to upwards of two million
dollars in value per annum. Evidences remain that numerous claims were
worked, but as in India, the diamondiferous material is an alluvial
deposit, and as these long known deposits have been worked for ages and
no new discoveries made, they are nearly exhausted. A point was
reached some time ago where the cutters of Borneo could buy diamonds
from Australia and the Cape for less money than the natives could dig
them in the home country, and to-day most of the diamonds cut in
Borneo are imported from those countries. About 16,000 carats, worth
$200,000, are imported from Africa annually.
Borneo
cuts for Java, Singapore and Siam, sending the white stones to the
latter countries and the yellow and colored ones to Java.
The
principal diamond fields of Borneo are situated in the Landak district
near Pontianak, the capital of Dutch Borneo, on the west coast, and in
the neighborhood of Martapura on the south coast to the east of the
island. They are found also along the Sarawak river north of the
Pontianak or Landak district, in the northwestern part of the island,
on the rivers Sikajam and Meran in the same section, and at Kusan on
the eastern side. In 1904 some excitement in the diamond trade of
London was produced by the announcement that an engineer in the
employment of the British North Borneo Company had discovered in that
part of the island a clay or rock similar to the kimberlite of the
African chimneys. His report of the occurrence there of material
