THE DIAMOND.

Waikato Times, Volume 105, Issue 17606, 10 January 1929, Page 4

THE DIAMOND.

ITS LUSTRE SPREADS. FIELDS COMPETE FOR MARKETS. GEM EMPIRE IN SOUTH AFRICA. Out on the dust-swept veldt, under the torrid blue of the South African sky, sentries trudge back and forth. Behind and before them stretch sandy wastes, studded with brown patches of rock and thorn bush. Yet they keep a vigilant eye. For buried in that unpromising earth lies treasure as precious perhaps as that in the vaults of the Bank of England, and for the present at least, equally forbidden to the common reach. Newly found acres of diamonds lie closed to prospectors. South Africa is protecting herself against her own riches. She is locking up her latest treasures of the surface sands to shield the .world from the glitter of too many—and too cheap —diamonds. She is safeguarding her old deep mines half a mile below ground, from which for half a century her chief diamond wealth has sprung. She legislated against too many diamonds. Even so, up Mn his lonely grave on a rocky hilltop, Cecil Rhodes must rest uneasily. For the first lime since he formed the empire of the South African diamond mines, their supremacy is threatened. Not only out of the neighbouring sands of their own country, but out of the steaming river basins of the Belgian Congo and the Gold Coast are arising now diamond kingdoms. Across the ocean the diamond fields of British Guiana twinkle ominously. Doled Out by Agreement.

Where before the war more than three-quarters of the world's production of diamonds came from the big South African mines, to-day they yield but a third. In 1927, according to George F. Kunz, an authority in these matters, the newly-opened South African surface fields almost equalled them, and the rest of the world, led by the Belgian Congo, supplied the other third.

Where even a year ago diamonds were doled out to the world by agreement of a few big mining companies, to-day thousands of small owners who raced across the veldt in the rushes of recent years to slake their claims, represent an equal share. But for the restrictions of the South African Government they might swanp the market. Already within and without South Africa, a revolution has crept into the producing figures. One way or another, legally or illegally, in spite of the dams set up at destination and at source, the main stream of the vist diamond tide from South Africa beats ultimately upon the shores of the United States. Part of the ancient lure of the diamond was its rarity. Whether it could maintain its prestige if uncontrolled production made it cheap and abundant is an interesting speculation. But the fact remains that half a century ago, when the world’s supply was suddenly multiplied many times by the South African finds, diamonds were apparently even more eagerly sought than before. For in spite of their long history, diamonds as a common possession of the masses are but two generations older than, for instance, the motor car. Before that, their story was all of monarchs and nobles. Individual stones, like the Koh-i-noor, the Orloff, and the Sancy, had as institutional a character as the Pyramids and the Parthenon. And their record was no less spectacular.

Dug From the Riverbeds.

All the diamonds of the world had up* to the eighteenth century been dug from the riverbeds of India. Lowcaste labourers crushed them from the gravel, washed and sifted and sorted them. Then from the markets of Golconda, by the slow and devious ways of sailing ship and caravan, they sometimes penetrated to the courts of Europe. Roman emperors had them, and great uncut diamonds adorned the clasps of Charlemagne’s cloak. Indian diamonds were set in the rings with which Queen Elizabeth and Sir Walter Raleigh scratched verses to each other on window glass. But through all these centuries diamonds were still mainly the treasure of Indian potentates themselves, and most of the famous ones have come to Europe only in the last 200 years. The court of the Great Mogul at Delhi blazed with them. There stood the famous throne with its peacocks of the diamond eyes. There glistened bouquets of all precious jewels. And there, like a star, shone out the famous Koh-i-noor,- the “mountain of light,” one of the foremost treasures of the world.

Again and again the Koh-i-noor formed the chief tribute exacted by a victor. Again and again the conquered endured any tortures rather than part with it. One dethroned prince allowed himself to be blinded and his head to.be covered with boiling oil. Another stayed doggedly in prison, hiding it in the plaster of his cell. Finally, after centuries of Persian and Indian capture, it fell to the British in the Indian Mutiny. A messenger was despatched with it to Queen Victoria, and since 1850 it has gleamed, as a symbol of sovereignty over India, in the British crown.

In an Indian temple at Mysore shone for uncounted years the still larger Orloff, as an idol’s eye. There, it is said, in the dead of night an eighteenth century grenadier, disguised as a worshipper, plucked it out. Stealing through the British lines, he made his way to Madras, where he sold it for £2OOO. Later the Russian Prince Orloff bought it in Amsterdam for fifty times that sum to win back the favour of Catherine the Great. For more than a century, in its elaborate rose-cutting it gleamed in the end of the sceptre of the Czars. Murdered for the Stone. Beside an Indian river in 1701, a slave dug up the then largest rough diamond. Gashing his skin deeply, he hid it in the cut. Then lie fled aboard an English merchant ship. But the oaptain discovered and coveted , the stone. Summarily he threw the slave overboard, and sold it to an Indian dealer. Finally it was bought by Sir Thomas Pitt, Governor of Port St. George at Madras. Day or night, it is said, he did not allow it out of his sight. In his fear of robbers he carried it from place to place, never sleeping twice under the same roof. But his care was rewarded, for he sold it to the Duke of Orleans, Regent of France, for a small fortune —four times what he had paid for it. In France the Bourbons kept it till thieves stole it during the Revolution. But afterward, apparently in terror, they tried to get rid of it by throwing it into a ditch in the Champs Elysees. And in France, known as the Regent, or Pitt, It remains to-day. But India, from whose sands through the centuries came all these —'* •' -- ~ .ydAidfl new

hoards to Europe. What diamonds are found in the present desultory digging in her river gravels stay in India. Even in the eighteenth century she was eclipsed as a world producer by Brazil. Since then Brazil has steadily sent her glittering cargoes to Europe, first as a Portuguese Grown monopoly, later in public ventures. Oddly enough, her most splendid diamond, the Star of the South, mined 75 years ago, now belongs to the Gaekwar of Baroda, a prince of her ancient mining rival, India. For 60 years the great diamond empire which has dwarfed all other dia-mond-producing areas in the world has been South Africa. The story of its diamonds has been its history, and to all intents and purposes the diamond history of the modern world. It was in 1867" that a Boer child playing on the bank of the Orange River picked up a pretty shining pebble and took it home to his mother. The pebble was diamond, worth £SOO. Almost immediately it was sold to the Governor at the Cape and sent to the Paris Exposition. But it was nearly a year before others were found, and then near the Orange and Vaal Rivers. One of these, known to-day as the Star of South Africa, picked up by a poor native shepherd, was sold to the Earl of Dudley for £25,000. Wide and Deep. After that the rush was on. Boers and blacks, Englishmen and sailors deserting from every ship in South African ports, took the weary journey across the barren, dust-swept karoo, almost without water, without fuel, and now and again struck in the frightful lightning storms that came without warning from a cloudless skj. By 1870 there were 10,000 miners camping along the Tiver- diggings and a diggers’ committee was apportioning the claims. Men washed diamonds from the stream beds much as the California miners had washed gold a generation before. But hardly were the camps established before on two farms in the middle of the plateau between the rivers diamonds were found. The men dug deeper, even below the surface soil and the limestone rock beneath, still the diamonds did not fail. lhey were all through “the yellow grounds,” which extended down some 50 feet. Below that was a hard, bluish-green rock, which the miners called “blue ground,” hut this too was found to contain diamonds. Here then was something totally unheard of in diamond deposits. Heic were great round elliptical areas often SOO feet in diameter, which contained diamonds however deep one dug U was soon apparent that the « "round” wan merely decomposed •S pound.” and that these whole ■uirv diggings” were vast pipes o volcanic rock, which, once molten, had veiled up through the grounding „„ )V , These were not auuum deposits washed loom other places H C re was the diamond in its original m After 40 years of uninterrupted supremacy the Consolidated # South rivalry 1 "pm'tho past two years the new aihwdat deposHs found mamltitn “Tin “tamond “htetorv.” the “voruSuSzM&