Merensky
was accustomed to study and figure and wonder what he would do if he
were a diamond being carried down the Orange River. Unlike Cornell he
already had some data to build on, garnered from the discoveries made
in the north. Whether or not his reasoning was correct—and scientists
are still thrashing the question out—he arrived at the right result.
He selected the coast south of the river mouth as the reasonable
location for the droppings of an overloaded stream suddenly released
into sea water, with the tide flowing south. The question still
remains, was there a river about where the Orange is now? Was the tide
flowing south then, and were the diamonds brought by river, anyway? . .
. But the important point is, the diamonds were there. With
the first few potholes Merensky sank, he found them. He came upon a
number of big stones lying all together, like a clutch of eggs in a
nest. He began to pick them up and realized he would need a container.
He had a water bottle; he emptied out the water and started to drop
the stones into it, but many of them wouldn't go: they were too big to
pass through the neck. He stopped to think about what to do; as he told
a friend later, he was trembling with excitement. Then he hit on a
solution to the agreeable problem. He was not far from the tent where
they were camping, and among his possessions was an Eno's Fruit Salts
bottle, which as most of the civilized world knows has a big, roomy
neck. He ran back and got the bottle and poured out the salts and
poured in the diamonds; into that vessel, big as they were, the stones
went easily. So far so good; Dr. Merensky emptied the nest and went on
to find more, and at least on that day the Eno's bottle sufficed.
However, as time passed he found himself getting notional. He trusted
his party not to talk—they were as
