independence;
it is, or at any rate was then, a poor place, with only a few tin mines
and some agricultural activity on which to support itself. This
argument gave signs of wearing out when, in 1930, geologists who had
been industriously prospecting West Africa found diamonds there. They
were good diamonds, too, occurring alluvially like those of the Congo
and the Gold Coast, but whereas most Congo diamonds are small and fit
only for industrials, Sierra Leone stones are often of gem quality.
However, the colony didn't become wealthy overnight. Nineteen thirty
was a bad year for finance. But conditions improved, and in a short
time—settling the matter in 1933—the Sierra Leone Selection Trust, a
subsidiary of the aforementioned Selection Trust, which I shall refer
to from now on as the S.L.S.T., moved in on the strength of a
far-reaching monopoly. The government agreed to terms whereby the
company owned all rights to diamond prospecting and mining, anywhere in
Sierra Leone, until 2033.
The
S.L.S.T. set to work and hired local labor. Getting out the diamonds
was nothing like so costly and difficult as it is in South Africa. It
was not a question of underground mining; it was more like
Nooitgedacht. The diamonds lie scattered very widely in topsoil. The
ground is dug up and washed in the good old way. "It's easier to find
diamonds in Sierra Leone than not," a man told me, exaggerating
slightly. "They're all over the place. They lie around on the ground.
All you have to do is pick them up and slip them into your pocket." It
isn't really as easy as that, but he made his point, which was that
such conditions rendered it just about impossible to protect the
company's interests. Strangely, however, the African workers were a
very long time discovering the benefits of I.D.B. For a long
