AFRICA’S FIRST DIAMOND.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 29 June 1927, Page 21

AFRICA’S FIRST DIAMOND.

Kimberley recently celebrated by means of a pageant tbe 60th. anniversary of the discovery of the first diamond in South Africa. In the year 1867 a trader named John O’-Reilly obtained possession of a “white stone,” the plaything of the children of a poor farmer living on the north side of the Orange Haver. To be strictly accurate, the first diamond was discovered in South Africa in 1866 by a Dutch child, Erasmus Stephanus Jacobs, who picked up the stone on a farm in the Hope Town district and retained it as a plaything. He and several other children were playing a game of alley-toss and commoners one day when O’lleilly strolled up to them. An old Boer who was standing alongside watching them, pointed out one stone prettier than the rest in the hand of a little Griqua servant boy and said: “Theres’ a pretty stone for a woman’s brooch.” o’lieilly had a diamond ring on his finger, ancl lie fancied he could see some resemblance to the cut stone. He tested it on glass and sent it to Grahamstown, where it was verified as a diamond, and was eventually sold to Sir Philip Wodehouse, the Governor of the Cape Colony, for £SOO, and lent to the Paris Exhibition. The little boy Jacobs who was instrumental in opening up this great treasure in South Africa is still living. He derived little benefit from his discovery ancl to-dav is a rider of transport with a donkey waggon, and lives in very indigent circumstances. He was, however, brought into Kimberley for the anniversary pageant, and a subscription fund was opened on his behalf and headed bv the mayor of the town with £5-