THE YEARS OF APPRENTICESHIP 65
prospecting
efforts, tried unsuccessfully to interest the Berliner
Handels-gesellschaft, the Berlin bank behind Lenz and Company, whose
employees they in effect were, to help them. News of this kind cannot
be kept secret, however, and it was not long before there was a 'rush'
to peg claims and to form syndicates. A legal situation of great
complexity very speedily developed, owing to the fact that the mineral
rights under which diamonds were to be won by the companies formed in
due course were different in different cases: a matter of mere
historical accident. The following points are the important ones in the
early history of diamond-mining in South West Africa. First, from
almost the beginning there was a heavy burden of royalties, selling
charges, and export duty, which varied in individual cases from 38-1/2
per cent to 56J per cent. Secondly, from an early date the sale abroad
of diamonds was entrusted to a company—'The Diamond Regie of South West
Africa', incorporated in Berlin in February 1909, on which originally
the producers were not represented. At any rate, the principle of
monopolistic sale was speedily recognized as necessary. Thirdly, the
output quickly assumed large dimensions: output which had been 560,000
metric carats in 1909-10 had risen to 1,570,000 carats in 1913-14.
Fourthly, by arrangements between the German Government and the German
Colonial Company, the former had become entitled to certain portions of
land along the railway line between Liideritz-bucht and Keetmanshoop;
these lands, or some of them, proving diamondiferous, gave the German
Administration a direct interest in diamond-mining. Fifthly, subject to
maintenance of pre-existcnt rig hts, the German Colonial Company became
entitled to a monopoly of mining in a defined area known as the 'closed
territory' ('Sperrgebiet') by virtue of an agreement signed on 28
January 1909. Lastly, within this closed territory a British firm,
Daniel de Pass, Spence and Company, possessed certain mineral rights
which ultimately passed to the Pomona Diamond Company. Here was a
'point of entry' of no little potential importance from the British
point of view.11
By
chance, news of the discoveries came to the ears of the Cape Premier,
who took alarm: 'A discovery of a new diamond field would be a hideous
calamity for us all.' On 18 July 1908, Francis Oats read
11 In
the light of the then international crisis and the difficulties of the
Diamond Syndicate, it was perhaps fortunate that a prospector of great
courage and perseverance, who was about this time painfully but
systematically surveying the possibility of Namaqualand as a source of
diamonds, failed, unhappily for him, to locate the beds which were to
make history some twenty-five years afterwards. Fred Cornell failed,
but he subsequently wrote an epic of prospecting (The Glamour of Prospecting, London, 1920). Had he succeeded an intolerable situation might well have arisen.
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