NEW DIAMOND FIELD.

Colonist, Volume LI, Issue 12468, 18 February 1909, Page 1

NEW DIAMOND FIELD.

TW discovery of diamonds- in GerSS?« h f*,™* n,Y™ apparently ?v«rf CCldentaL The first stones were come upon as men engaged in laying a raihv a y „-^B £ in Private reports from Soutn Africa • n a ,F ons iderable boom in Luderltz Bay diamonds. "It is marvellous" says one visitor to fche field. "With lull of little diamonds, 'beautifully bright and glistening and at present prices worth 24s a carat. It is extremely curious that German .capital t a mwed so slowly and refused- so absolutely to give any help at the outset. It will be no wonder if other people rush in and skim off the cream. We shall have the same old "experience—the accursed Britisher snatching everything away before^ our eyes." Another report says that one company has been finding daily, on'an average stones worth-from £10D0- to £15(W, most of them requiring no cutting. As the labour expenses are very small those early in the field must have done very well before the German Government framed its drastic regulations. There is still no evidence that diamonds exist far below .the surface so the finds may soon be. exhausted. In the recent Reichstag debate upon this damond field, Herr Dernburg mentioned that stones lay visible on the bare ground. The statement was received with' derisive cheering. Herr Dernburg had to protest that he was not telling .fairy tales or quoting the "Arabian Nights." "I have picked them up myself!" he declared. Those who mocked must have been rather curiously ignorant of .the. subject un- ■ der discussion, says a writer in the "Pall Mall Gazette." All the "dry fields" of South Africa- have been discovered by men who . keep their eyes, about them when talking a walk. For eighteen months after the first discovery of diamonds in Souths Africa the stones were sought for only in the Vaal and Orange rivers. Then some diggers, driving to Dutoitspan on a holiday, to th.eir amazement" 6aw diamonds lying aboutthe veldt. While a number of people . wei-e having a meal in a mud hut of afriendof the writer,- some one noticed a diamond sticking in the wall, and picked it out with his table knife.- The same host's • native" servants i used to pick up dia- " monds as they went to and fro with the weekly washing to a neighhouring" dam. .'■■ ■■■■--".