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PRECIOUS STONES.
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811
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vial
diggings at Christiana contributed a small portion. The production
from the alluvial diggings amounted to 1,387 carats, valued at £4,617.
The production at the Premier mine a for the year
ended October 31, 1908, amounted to 2,078,825 carats, an increase of
188,838 carats over 1907. The value of the output was £1,536,719, or
14s. 9d. per carat. The prices received were lower than in previous
years, due in part to the poor market for diamonds and in part to a
slight deterioration of the quality of the output. The contract with
the Diamond Buying Syndicate has been broken, but the company has
established sales offices in London, and the price of diamonds is not
to be lowered indiscriminately.
Orange River Colony.b—The
production of diamonds in the Orange River Colony during the fiscal
year ending June 30, 1908, is given by Burnett Adams as 505,452 carats,
valued at £1,069,942, as compared with 398,700 carats, valued at
£1,222,202, in 1907. The yield in carats per 100 loads washed was 10.38
in 1908 as compared with 10.19 in 1907. The average price per carat
fell from 60s. 6-1/2d. to 42s. 1d. through the unstable condition of
the diamond market. The production came principally from the
Jagersfontein, Koffyfontein, Voorspoed, and Roberts Victor mines, with
a smaller part from prospecting and developing work at the Ebenezer,
Lace, and Monastery mines. The yield from the Vaal River alluvial
diggings amounted to 5,447 carats, valued at £18,217, or 66s. 10-1/2d.
per carat. The largest diamond found in the alluvial diggings during
the year weighed 591 carats and was valued at £385. That the prospects
of the Roberts Victor mine are good is shown by the declaration of a 25
per cent dividend c in March, 1909. The projection of an
intrusion of nondiamond-bearing ground into the diamond-bearing area
was found to be local and offered no serious drawback to the
operations- of the mine. The Lace diamond mine has been purchased by
the Crown Diamond Mining and Exploration Company d and is expected to be actively worked under the new management.
German Southwest Africa.—Considerable
interest has arisen from the discovery of a now diamond field in German
Southwest Africa during 1908/ The diamond deposit occurs in a belt
about 1 mile wide and stretching in an arc from Luderitz Bay southward
30 miles to Elizabeth Bay. The diamonds occur in a coarse sand
associated with agates and the more valuable forms of quartz. They are
generally in fairly perfect octahedral crystals ranging from one-fifth
to three-fourths of a carat in weight. No large stones are found. The
quality of the stones is good and the color generally pure white,
though some have a yellow shade.f
Consul
Thomas H. Norton, Chemnitz/ reports that up to December 31, 1908,
about 40,000 carats of diamonds had been found, whose estimated value
was $269,000. It is the policy of the German Government to hold a
monopoly over these diamond deposits and to regulate development in
such a way as to assure proper protection of mining interests and to
prevent uneconomic methods of exploitation.
"EnR. and Min. Jour., April 24, 1909.
'Mines Dept. Orange River Colony, Fifth Ann. Kept., 1908, Bloemfontein.
c Min. Jour., London, March 20, 1909.
dMin. Jour., London, February 6,1909.
« U. S. Daily Cons. Repts., April 2, 1909.
/Eng. and Min. Jour., December 19, 1908.
(/Idem.
13250—M K 190S, pt 2------52
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