Diamond Mines: The Discovery Page 155



	116 THE DIAMOND MINES OF SOUTH AFRICA charming home on the banks of the Indus in search of diamonds, and, finally, beggared and starving, casting himself into the river which flowed by his house, while the diamonds of Gol-conda were lying in his own garden sands. It is probable that the diamonds of India were trodden under foot for thousands of years before the first precious stone of the Deccan was stuck in an idol's eye or a rajah's turban. It is known that the Brazilian diamond fields were washed for many years by gold placer diggers without any revelation of diamonds to the world, although these precious stones were often picked up and so familiarly handled that they were used by the black slaves in the fields as counters in card games. If this be true of the most famous and prolific of all diamond fields before the opening of the South African placers and mines, any delay in the revelation of the field in the heart of South Africa may be easily understood. For it was not only necessary to have eyes bright and keen enough to mark one of the few tiny precious crystals which were lying on the face of vast stretches of pebbles, boulders, and sand, but the observer must prize such a crystal enough to stoop to pick it up if it lay plainly before his eyes. To the naked native a rough diamond had no more attraction than any other pretty pebble. There were millions of other white crystals and many colored pebbles on the river shores which were equally precious or worthless in his eyes. The roving hunters were looking sharply for game bounding over the veld, and only glanced at a pebble-strewn bank to mark the possible track of their prey. The stolid Boer pioneers would hardly bend their backs to pick up the prettiest stone that ever lay on the bank of an African river, even if it were as big as the great yellow diamond so jealously guarded by the Portuguese crown.¹ It might be thought that some visitor to the fields would be more expert in judging its character than natives, hunters, and farmers; but there were few trained mineralogists in South ¹ "The Gold Regions of Southeastern Africa," Thomas Baines, F.R.G.S., London, 1877.