STRANGE GAME

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 124, 28 May 1930, Page 19

STRANGE GAME

MARBLES WITH DIAMONDS

FINDS WORTH MILLIONS

There is romance in the story of the discovery of Africa's diamond fields. It is, in fact, one of the most fascinating episodes in history,'says the London "Sunday

Express." 'Seventy years ago the man who was bold enough to/suggest that a solitary diamond could be found iv the whole of South Africa would have been scoffed at as a lunatic.- He could have bought as many square miles as he pleased of the barren veldt which to-day comprises the De Beers, Dutoitspan, and Bultfontein mines for a few shillings an acre; and every acre, not many years later, would have been valued in millions. A £10 note would have purchased the homestead under which the Kimberley treasures lay concealed^ treasures which were to yield £20,000,000 within a score of years. The first scene in the drama opened one autumn evening in 1867, when a trader s wagon, drawn by weary and slow-footed oxen, lumbered heavily up to the homestead of Schalk Van Niekerk, an isolated farmhouse/in the wastes of the Hopetown district, in the far north of Cape Colony. Through the long scorching day the oxen had crawled laboriously over the dreary veldt, and one may be sure they were no less pleased than their master, John O'Eeilly, when, at sunset, they came to their night's rest and the . hospitality of the Boer farmhouse. After he bad refreshed himself with a substantial meal, O'Eeilly strolled out of the house a new man, to find his host, whose name was Van Niekerk, engaged in a noisy game of marbles with his sons, the marbles being, pebbles which the lads had picked up at odd times in their wanderings. QUEER! "Queer kind of marbles!" said the trader as he picked up one of the roughly rounded stones, with the' appearance of clouded glass, from which, as he turned it, darted flashes of vari-coloured light. "Why," he exclaimed, "I should not wonder now if it was a diamond"—a suggestion -which was greeted with shouts 01 laughter. . . , But O'Eeilly was by no means satisfied that his surmise was wrong; and, after submitting the "marble" to Dr. Atherstone, in Grahamstown, was delighted, but not altogether surprised, to receive the following report from the expert:— "The stone you have sent me is a diamond. It weighs over 21 carats, and is worth about £500. There is no doubt about this, as I have submitted it to every known test. It has spoilt the files of all the jewellers in Grahamstown who have been filing at it. Where that stone came from there will be heaps more, you : may be sure." Thus it was to a chance game of, marbles and to the trader O'Reilly's keen eyes that South Africa owned the first discovery of her rich treasure of gems. Although the most exhaustive search failed to unearth a second "pebble"- in the district, Van Niekerk's appetite for precious stones was so whetted by his half-share in O'Reilly's "marble" that he knew no peace until he had found one much, more valuable. He, remembered that, months earlier, he had seen in the possession o£ a Hottentot a similar but larger*.stone; and, with Boer tenacity, he never rested until he had tracked the Hottentot and secured the treasure in exchange for his farm and cattle. And he had little reason to repent his bargain, for she quickly found a purchaser willing to pay £10,000 for the stone, which to-day is famous the world over as the Star of Africa. WONDERFUL FINDS. The second act in this drama was ushered in by two scenes at least as romantic. In one we see one of Farmer Van Wyk's children picking out a small pebble from, the mud with which his house was roughly plastered, and carrying it triumphantly to-his father to show the "pretty lights" that flashed from it. His curiosity aroused, Van Wyk made a close examination of the walls of his house. He found similar small crystals flashing back the sun's rays' in their dark setting, and awoke to the astonishing discovery that the walls of his humble farmhouse were literally encrusted with diamonds. In the next scene we see a young man called Hawstone out for a day's sport with his gun, flinging himself down for rest in the shade of a thorn bnsh: As he dreamily brushes the hot veldt sand aside with his hand he uncovers a pebble alive with rainbow tints under the glow of the sun, and with an exclamation of delight realises that in his idle siesta he has discovered' a diamond of ■uncommon size and lustre.'But in his wildest elation he could little have dreamt of the amazing consequences that were to follow this discovery—that beneath his feet was a trea-sure-chamber which was to yield diamonds to the value of £20,000,000 in little more than a- dozen years! •,'"■ ■ x