Uncut,
the Cullinan—four inches long, two and a half high, and two broad—was
not by any means the ideal diamond-shaped or octahedral crystal of
textbook specifications, which looks like two pyramids joined at the
base. (Tavernier called any good example of this ideal crystal shape a "pointe naive.") The
Cullinan was a mere portion of this form; it had three natural faces of
the right outline and one large face that might or might not have been
a "cleavage," i.e. the plane left by splitting off from a larger stone.
Many diamond people among miners and buyers and admirers insist that
the huge stone was indeed a fragment, that what it broke off from must
still exist, and that the rest of the Cullinan still waits somewhere to
be discovered, buried in alluvial sands perhaps, or possibly in an
African witch doctor's regalia. Others, less romantic, point out that
except for its size the Cullinan was a quite ordinary crystal,
imperfect, but of a shape often found, for diamonds do not by any means
always present ideal octahedra. The joy killers, however, are heavily
outnumbered, and the glittering dream of finding the other half of that
outsize brilliant has spurred on many a prospector. If they are right
it is hard to imagine what the two pieces put together would look
like—in real life, that is to say. I have handled a life-size model of
the Cullinan, and it made me wonder how even the most experienced mine
manager could have dared to believe he had found what he had found.
Like
the Kimberley mines, the Premier went through a number of depressions
and was closed down more than once, when diamond mining didn't pay.
Between 1931 and 1944 it wasn't worked at all. Until that closing,
because of its great size, it had been worked only by opencast methods,
and by then the pit was more than six hundred feet deep. Meanwhile, it
had passed
