DIAMONDS BY THE HANDFUL!

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6808, 11 January 1929, Page 2

DIAMONDS BY THE HANDFUL!

SOUTH AFRICA YIELDS MARVELLOUS FORTUNES. EL DORADO REVEALED. There is a beach In Southern Africa where you can pick fistfuls of diamonds from the white, cold sea sand. No Sinbad's story this, but a fact that stands printed in Blue Books and other authoritative Government publications. Alexander Bay, on the shores of Namaqualand, has been classed as the nearest rival to the fabled El Dorado. Kimberly, Lichtcnburg, and Golconda are unproductive. cabbage patches since Morenskv and Renning, Africa’s newest millionaires, “struck it rich” some months back (writes Rosenthal, of Johannesburg). Just before the war there roamed amid the waste hills of North-western Cape Province near the desolate estuary of the great Orange river, a short, grey-moustached, sun-reddened adventurer called Fred Cornell. Among whisky-gulping frontiersmen, black with doctors, camel policetroopers, professional lion hunters, and others, Fred naturally heard astounding narratives, very many of which appeared blatantly untruthful. Yet some were too widely told, too circumstantial, too accurately fitted into definite data, to be entirely deserving of contempt. And the most picturesque was the one about Brydone, a Cape pioneer who in the nineteenth century had trekked to the unexplored lower course of tho Orange river, and who, somewhere, had come on diamonds in stupendous masses. “The gems are brighter, better, more numerous than anything we have seen in Africa,” said the taciturn old wanderer, showing a few samples that made his confidants jump excitedly. “Where are they! Good heavens, man, if you have enough of these, all other fields must close down. Where did you find tho stones?”

But the ol’d man stroked his groy heard, put on his dusty slouch hat and took his gun. “You'll find out later, boys,” he said, “when I conic back from the desert. I'll let you into the plan then.” When his massive-wheel-ed wagon quivered over the stones and a single nude Hottentot flashed the giraffe-hide whip Brydone moved back into Namaqualand. The “Baas’* Dies. Several months later the bleak-eyed, hungrv-faced little yellow servant walked back into the last village. “Baas Byrone is dead,” he reported. “He is dead and the oxen are dead, and the wagon fell over the krantz, only I, Ventvogel, am still living.” “Where are the diamonds?” called the white men. The short Mongolian' eyelids were screwed together. Was the Hottentot really so stupid? “Far away, bass, beyond the hills, far toward the sunset.” When the- Europeans wanted Ventvogel he had gone, and the mystery of Brydone's diamonds was never settled. Fred Cornell took up the diamond quest, tramping hundreds of miles through uninhabited country, through deserts and along the coast. He spent several years in this manner, _ but could not find the place where the old pioneer had uncovered his rich find, although ho knew its approximate location. Finally he died in London as the result of a motor cycle smashup. “Lucky” Merensky heard about tha alleged bonanza in 1927. The Johannesburg geologist, who possesses this attractive cognomen, had just made one fortune by finding a hundred milei of platinum reef in the leopard-swarm-ing thornbush mountains of tho Northern Transvaal. There lived another German scientist in a prosperous street of Johannesburg, and the venturer invited this friend to come in the motor car which should bear the expedition through tho wilderness. Dr. Keuning had caught Africa’s optimism fever. “It probably is a futile stunt,” he asserted while the stores wero being bought at the busy shops, “but one never knows. ” Deserted and obscure, half a thousand miles away from the settled areas, the cove came into sight. Merensky and Henning tan over the beach, their eves experienced through long years of tracing Africa’s innumerable minerals, swiftly surveying the shore. A curiosity was before them —a reef, a deposit, a bonanza of oyster shells. Oyster shells by the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions, as if all the world's good restaurants had been sweeping the patrons’ leavings together on this patch of the Black Continent.

What brought the shiny objects there cannot be stated, and the Gormans, with their friends, Inched time for abstract investigation. _ They were digging, sieving the dry soil behind the oysters, since they knew that this was tho right location for the gems. Presently the men cheered! El Dorado had been revealed. El Dorado! From a bucket of sand tho experts v/ero picking precious stones —live carats, seven carats, two carats, ton carats. They leaned over the little pit, only a few yards across, and started to shovel out fortunes. In the evening, when the daylight passed over the sea towards America, the Johannesburgors put away their containers, which held enough diamonds to keep therp through a long life. The diggers carried £200,000 worth of diamonds in their baggage when they returned to the Cape. Of course, such a bit of news could iiofc kept private very'' long. In

Africa rumours about the most mysterious things percolate from man to nion—perhaps because of natives who are in all settlements, perhaps by the inquisitiveness which folk exercise. Anyhow, Dr. Merensky knew he must secure the swag quickly, before the diamonds were rushed. So at Johannesburg, in the innermost offices of some mine-owners, ho founded a corporation now already famous, the H.M. Syndicate.