SOUTH AFRICAN DIAMONDS
proceeds. This diamond was displayed in the Paris Exhibition of that year.
After
Van Nierkerk sold the diamond first found by the little girl he was on
the lookout for strange pebbles. Within a short time, 1869, a shepherd
showed him a stone weighing 83-1/2 carats that was found near the
Orange River. He promptly bought it from the shepherd boy for the sum
of 500 sheep, 10 oxen, and one horse. This stone was sold for the
enormous sum of eleven thousand two hundred pounds sterling in
Hopetown, and later the Earl of Dudley bought it for twenty-five
thousand pounds sterling and it became famous as the "Star of South
Africa". The news of this great find caused a rush of prospectors, and
discoveries were made over an extensive area.
The
finding of this diamond drew many to this place where numerous smaller
ones were found in the alluvial gravel on the banks of the Vaal.
Alluvial deposits form the surface ground on both sides of the river,
stretching inward for several miles. In some places the turns of the
stream are frequent and abrupt, and there are many dry water courses
which are probably old river channels. The flooding and winding of the
river partly accounts for the wide spreading of the deposits, but there
has been a great abrasion of the surface of the land, for the water
worn gravel sometimes covers even the tops of the ridges along the
course of the river.
The valuable diggings lie within a limited circuit of three and one-half miles diameter. The Kimberley and DeBeer
39
