for more. The " Dewey" was found at Manchester, Virginia, in 1855, by a laborer at work on one of the streets.
Diamonds
were discovered in Africa in 1867. Later developments showed that they
had long been seen and handled by many without being recognized.
Children had played with them, and they were in the mud plaster of
farm-house walls. The discovery came about in this way. The son of a
Boer woman, Mrs. Jacobs, often amused himself by gathering and playing
with the curious and pretty stones on and in the neighborhood of his
mother's farm near Hopetown, on the Orange River. One of these with
which her son was playing attracted Mrs. Jacob's eye, and some days
later, in talking with a neighbor, Schalk van Niekirk, she spoke of it.
He was interested, and asked to see it. Although cast aside, the boy
succeeded in finding it, and Van Niekirk offered to buy it. Mrs.
Jacobs, laughing at the idea of taking money for a stone, gave it to
him. He showed it later to a friend named O'Reilly, who, on going to
Grahamstown, submitted it to Dr. Guibon Atherstone. He pronounced it a
diamond. The crystal weighed twenty-one and three-sixteenths carats,
was exhibited at the Paris Exposition, and afterwards sold to Sir
Philip Woodhouse, governor of Cape Colony, for £500.
The
fact that a diamond had been found becoming noised abroad, search began
along the Orange River, and also on the Vaal. By 1869 about one
thousand persons were seeking diamonds.
In
December, 1870, diamonds were found south of Barkly West, on the Vaal,
towards the Modder River, on the Voo-ruitzigt farm. The children had a
lot of small stones gathered without knowing what they were. Farmer Van
Wyk, living on the Du Toits Pan farm, found a number of them in the
walls of his house, whi^h he had plastered with mud from a neighboring
pond. This led to the discovery of the Du Toits Pan, the first of the
four celebrated mines. Thousands
