"DIAMOND JOHN"

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23997, 21 June 1941, Page 16

"DIAMOND JOHN"

rpuE only diamond mine in the United .States is to be reopened after twenty years of idleness. It lies in Arkansas. During the last war an American corporation worked with profit to itself a 44-acre diamond field near Murfreesboro, producing some 10,000 stones, valued at £30,000. Then in 1920 came the slump, and the market for the home-produced diamond was ruined. Even during its eight years of production the results were not very prolific, but the blue peridotite rock goes down 200 feet and resembles the famous kimberline of South Africa. The romance of the American diamond iield is that the finder of its first stone is still alive; 82-year-old ,Toll n Huddlestone. In 1907 he was striving to make a living from poor farm land, and doubtless saying bitter things about a rainstorm which was washing away the little soil that would feed his crops. Suddenly his eyes alighted on a bright object glinting on the blue mud. He took it home to his wife, who scrubbed it with a hairbrush. Mrs. Huddlestone was not greatly impressed, but the farmer took it to town and had it examined by an expert,

who assured him that his find wss a two-and-three-eighths carat diamond. Eventually he sold his farm for a few thousand 'pounds and retired to spend it all. To-day, Diamond John leads a lonelv life on a State pension of five dollars a month, his only consolation being his fame as the finder of the first diamond in the Tnited States of America.