metaphor
to call those thumping great beautiful stones that wouldn't go into a
water bottle ugly ducklings, but sometimes one's got to strain
metaphors.
Besides,
it was hard for some of the older Syndicate directors to alter their
methods of thinking. They had watched the industry grow up as the
original South African mines deepened into great craters, and in their
minds the real diamonds, the diamonds that counted, came out of
those holes in the ground. They felt that alluvials were only an
annoying flash in the pan. As things were to turn out, they were wrong,
and very glad to be wrong at that, but for the time being it looked
bad. Hardly had they swallowed the bitter fact of Merensky's great
windfall, when yet more diamonds were found not far from his area.
"The Consolidated Diamond Mines again found it necessary to restrict production," as a short company history in Optima, the
Anglo American house organ, glumly put it, "but, at the same time, it
directed its attention to geological formations north of the Orange
River, similar to those at Alexander Bay, and in 1928 found
diamond-bearing, marine terraces only a few hundred yards from the
prospecting pits unsuccessfully dug in 1912. A careful geological
survey showed that, under a blanket of sand, often 30 feet deep, these
diamond terraces extend northwards for many miles. By 1930 it was
estimated that 2,500,000 carats of gem stones of exceptional quality
lay waiting to be mined in a strip stretching 25 miles north of the
Orange River. Similar terraces were found round Bogenfels, 106 miles
from the Orange River."
Then
came the depression of 1929, which demanded a reorganization of the
whole diamond industry. Some of the old-timers were badly frightened
and they were relieved to pass
