rock crystals.1
From this party-colored bed the children picked whatever caught their
eye and fancy, and filled their pockets with their chosen pebbles. So a
poor farmer's child found playthings scattered on a river bank which a
little prince might covet, and the boy might have skimmed the face of
the river with one little white stone that was worth more than his
father's farm. Fortunately for the future of South Africa, he did not
play ducks and drakes with this particular stone, which he found one
day in the early spring of 1867, but carried it home in his pocket and
dropped it with a handful of other pebbles on the farmhouse floor.'2
A
heap of these party-colored stones was so common a sight in the yard or
on the floor of a farmhouse on the banks of the Orange and Vaal, that
none of the plodding Boers gave it a second glance. But when the
children tossed the stones about, the little white pebble was so
sparkling in the sunlight that it caught the eye of the farmer's wife.
She did not care enough for it to pick it up, but spoke of it as a
curious stone to a neighbor, Schalk van Niekerk. Van Niekerk asked to
see it, but it was not in the heap. One of the children had rolled it
away in the yard. After some little search it was found in the dust,
for nobody on the farm would stoop for such a trifle.
When
van Niekerk wiped off the dust, the little stone glittered so prettily
that he offered to buy it. The good vrouw laughed at the idea of
selling a pebble. " You can keep the stone, if you want it," she said.
So van Niekerk put it in his pocket and carried it home. He had only a
vague notion that it might have some value, and put it in the hands of
a travelling trader, John O'Reilly, who undertook to find out what kind
of a stone the little crystal was, and whether it could be sold. He
1
"The Diamond Diggings of South Africa," Charles Alfred Pavton, London,
1872. "South Africa Diamond Fields," Morton, New York, 1877. "Diamonds
and Gold of South Africa," Henry Mitchell of Kimberlev, London, 1889.
2 "Among the Diamonds," 1870—1871. "South Africa," Theal, London, 1888-1 893.
