terrible
desolation. And the more remote and inaccessible the country described
by the stories, the more Cornell felt himself drawn to investigate. He
had an itching foot for uncomfortable terrain. However, prospectors
aren't often well enough fixed to indulge their ambitions
independently, and Cornell had to take on jobs and bide his time.
He
was in Kimberley, the heart of the Diamond Fields, when he got news of
the definite finds at Lüderitz. For a long time diamonds had been
trickling from there in the hands of natives, who found them while
working on a German railroad. After a few unlucky Africans were
apprehended in Cape Town for trying to sell them—the authorities would
not believe they hadn't filched the stones from South African diggings
and thus rendered themselves liable to prosecution under the I.D.B.
laws— the boys stopped bringing them down there, but now the early
victims were exonerated: there were diamonds at Lüderitz,
outside the jurisdiction of De Beers. Cornell saw a bottle of them,
very small but numerous. At about the same time, however, he was shown
a big diamond which its owner declared came from elsewhere, from
Prieska, near Upington in British territory, south of the Orange and
in a region not usually suspected as diamondiferous. He felt tempted to
take the untraveled road. Everybody else was going to Lüderitz, so
Cornell went to Prieska. He drew blank. After that he bowed to public
opinion and like everybody else proceeded to Lüderitz, but he didn't
like it. Lüderitz was not an attractive spot. The crowd apart, he found
the cold Atlantic repellent, and he was awed as well as bothered by the
sandstorms that often swept the dune-filled coast. "When this
prevailing wind reaches a certain violence, the whole country
practically gets up and walks." Humanity
