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THE PEARL
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ence,
and now in this new western star of Empire the men who hold the vast
wealth of these United States in their hands, when they place their
consorts on the last plane of social eminence, buy pearls.
Before
the machine-like system of modern industry had combined ownership and
seized the vast natural reservoirs which hold the diamonds of Africa,
and brought the output to a known average yield of so many carats to so
many loads, and established the cost of mining, washing, shipping and
marketing, separately or together, to the fraction of a penny, there
was a fascination in the hunt for diamonds there, the charm of which
drew thousands to the fields.
From
the discovery of them as baubles in the hands of children and the
Hottentots, or plastered in the mud walls of Boer farmhouses, through
the search for them along the Vaal River, to the time where findings
led men to the kopjes, which capped the great chimneys of diamond
bearing clay, where they staked and worked their individual claims, the
ever present hope of finding a royal gem among
18
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