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Ch. 5: South African Diamonds

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CHAPTER FIVE
SOUTH AFRICAN DIAMONDS
The most important places for diamonds have been: (1), in India where they were mined from the earliest times till the close of the nineteenth, century; (2), South America, where they have been mined since the middle of the eighteenth century; (3), South Africa, to which almost the whole of the diamond mining industry has been trans­ferred since 1870.
North Africa is a desert, Central Africa is a jungle and South Africa is one great mine. In a good year, such as 1929, South Africa can export some 440,000,000 dollars worth of goods. Of that, around 240,000,000 dollars come from gold and other minerals, 50,000,000 dollars from a single hard, white glistening gem—the diamond. Gold is a familiar metal found in many places. It has stood so long for money, a medium of exchange, that it belongs rather to the world than to any nation. But diamonds are the purest of all luxuries.
The first discovery of diamonds in South Africa was made in 1867 by Dr. W. G. Atherstone who identified as a diamond a pebble found by a child on a farm on the
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Ch. 4: Brazilian Diamonds Page of 153 Ch. 5: South African Diamonds
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