DEATH IN AFRICA

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 26, 31 July 1933, Page 6

DEATH IN AFRICA

DIAMOND DISCOVERER

Erasmus Stephanus Jacobs has died at his farm near Coventry, poor and obscure, and 82 years old. Much had happened in his world since the day in 1866 when, at his play, he came- upon tho "blinkio klippie" or shiny stone, Africa's first-known diamond (says the "San Francisco Chronicle").

The farm on which tho first diamond was found did not belong to Erasmus's father, a yoor man, a squatter in fact, on the prVierty of a. somewhat richer Boor, Schulk Van Niekerk. A hind ■surveyor, Yon Ludwig, came about 1565 to measure* Crown lands along the Orango River, which was then . thefrontier of Cape Colony. Every weekend ho spent on Van Niekerk'3. farm, and thero .met the mother of Erasmus.

Yon Ludwig, strangely enough, had brought with him a book on precious stones (they were as yet entirely unsuspected in Africa), ."lid one day when he had doscribed an uncut, unpolished diamond, Mrs! Jacobs said her boy had something like that.

Erasmus was told to bring out the box in which he kept his treasures, and half as a joke Van Nickerk offered to buy it. When an Irish trader, with his ox wagon full of native truck, camo by a week or two later, Van Niekerk told him about the strange stone. O'Reilly agreed to take it to the nearest town, Colesburg, to have it tested for genuineness, and the outcome was that Sir Philip Wodehouse, Governor of Capo Colony, bought tho "pebble" for £.500, of which Erasmus's mother got one-third.

Sinco littlo Erasmus made his discovery, 300 tons of diamonds worth .€300,000,000 havo been mined. And most of the pioneers have died poor.