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CHAPTER XI
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THE DIAMOND MINES OF SOUTH AFRICA
IN
writing the history of any important movement in the world's affairs,
it is difficult to find the beginning of it. A turn of the lever will
set a machine in motion if there is sufficient steam back of it.
Similarly, the momentous results which sometimes follow a trivial
action, would not happen but for preparatory conditions. The discovery
of the African diamond fields, which has not only founded the fortunes
of thousands throughout the world, but has also become a potent factor
in the creation of a new empire, is usually ascribed to the chance
finding of a diamond among a Boer child's playthings, and as the
circumstance that first gets into print, or being in print, happens to
be most widely quoted, becomes history, this will probably be accepted
as an historical fact.
As
the story goes, the little son of a Boer woman living near Hopetown on
the Orange river, was in the habit of gathering the pretty stones lying
in the fields thereabouts, to play with. One of them attracted his
mother's eye and she spoke of it one day to a neighbor, Van Niekirk by
name, when he stopped in passing, to gossip. As he seemed interested,
she looked for it among the child's treasures, but it was gone. She
found it, however, in the grounds outside, where he had thrown, or left
it in his play. Van Niekirk offered to buy it.
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