Diamond fields

“ In the South African diamond fields it has been found that if the diamond-bearing sand is taken in a stream of water over a smooth surface covered with a suitable coating of grease, the diamonds will adhere to the grease while the sand does not. ”

“ The world’s supply of Diamonds has come almost wholly from three countries—India, Brazil and South Africa. Up to the beginning of the eighteenth century India was the only source of Diamonds known. The Diamond fields of India occur chiefly in the eastern and southern portions of the peninsula. ”

“ With very few exceptions—who do not often make fortunes—they belong to the chosen race.
The scraps of the conversation which one hears as one passes along the street generally relates to matters affecting the trade. That is a somewhat wide margin, for all public events, from a threatened European war to the death of some dusky potentate, more or less influence diamonds. But most of the talk is of the precious stones themselves and the mines in which they are found—of falls of reef in Kimberley, and of the price of glassy stones, cape whites, off-coloured stuff, and boart. ”

“ Timson looked at the diamond, a white stone of about ten carats in weight, and he felt that his fortune was made. The Kaffirs talked to each other in their own language about the diamond. “They think it is a rich place and there will be lots of diamonds for them to steal,” said Hardman. ”

“ He married a lady of good family and some property, who was fascinated by his good looks and his reputation as a hero. He is prosperous and respected, and he has almost forgotten all about the days when he seemed to be such a hopeless ne’er-do-well.
Story 3. Diamond Cut Diamond. It was a delightfully cool evening, after a hot dusty day on the Diamond Fields, and Mr Moses Moss, attorney-at-law of Kimberley, South Africa, was sitting under the verandah of his house, smoking a cigar, and sipping a cool drink as it was his custom to do before turning in for the night. ”

“ Mr Moss opened the safe, eyeing his visitor somewhat mistrustfully as he did so.
“Well, it happens I can buy the stone from you at once. I happen to have a hundred pounds—it’s a good bit of money to pay for one’s own property, for that diamond is my property; but there, it’s your luck. ”

“ As I suppose you already know, the largest and most valuable diamond ever found on these Fields was a really magnificent stone, a perfect octahedron, pure white, without a flaw, and weighing close on 500 carats. There's a photograph of it there on the mantelpiece. I've got another one by me; I'll give it you before you leave Kimberley. ”

“ From the names on the doors, however, one learns that the majority of their occupiers profess to be dealers in diamonds and precious stones, and those who know about diamonds will inform you that they do deal therein to a very considerable extent, and will have strange tales to tell of the huge quantities of precious stones which the merchant of that dingy thoroughfare have in their safes, and will hold until some long-looked-for turn in the market comes.
Its population is much given to gather in knots on doorsteps and at the corners of streets. ”

“ The places where Diamonds have been found in modern times are—the central and southern parts of India, the peninsula of Malacca, the Island of Borneo,and some mountainous districts in the kingdom of Brazil, more particularly Serro do Frio. In the latter place, which is peculiarly celebrated, they are found in rivers or rivulets, in the banks adjoining water courses, and in ravines. The Diamond is invariably found mixed with the alluvial soil. This soil constitutes a thin stratum of gravel, resting upon Granite. ”

“ While we cannot yet use the force that builds large white diamonds we can use the diamonds themselves. Set a number of them around a section of an iron tube, place it against a rock, at the surface or deep down in a mine, cause it to revolve rapidly by machinery, and it will bore into the rock, leaving a core. Force in water, to remove the dust and chips, and the diamond teeth will eat their way hundreds of feet in any direction; and by examining the extracted core miners can tell what sort of ore there is hundreds of feet in advance. ”

“ Hugh Miller—Yes, in size, purity and coloring, our planet possesses diamonds equal to the finest of these. Why not? The constituents of the two planets being exactly alike and conditions sufficiently similar, naturally the same causes that produced the crystallization of these beautiful gems, would be operative in the formation of the diamond and other gems of our planet. Yes, the diamond is pure carbon, and to my mind it is the most attractive of gems. ”

“ Very rarely a simple sifting with the fingers suffices to extract the jewel. In 1824 a region was discovered in the lower part of the table-land of Diamantina where the diamonds were scattered through the soil, accompanied only by a few bits of quartz. According to the popular expression, the crystals of the precious stone could be picked out of the roots of the grass when it was pulled up. A diamond of twenty-eight carats was found on the surface of the ground. ”

“ No substance in the Mineral Kingdom displays in miniature such beautiful variety of regular solids as the Diamond, which are as captivating to the connoisseur, as the finest brilliant can be to the wearer. ”

“ All authorities state that the diamond is intimately connected with gold and platinum, but I cannot find any record which convinces me of the diamond having been found in the matrix—that is to say, in the rock in which it was originally formed—as all the formation in which the diamond has been found appear to have been the detritus of older rocks, in which it by some means or other had become imbedded during the formation of the newer one. ”

“ The fire no doubt may smoulder in the dull and languid embers; it is when the external breeze sweeps over them, that they begin to sparkle and glow, and vindicate the vital element they contain. The diamond in the mine has the same internal properties in the darkness as in the light; it is not till the sun shines upon it, that it flashes on the eye its splendor. Look at a flower of any particular species ”

“ He examined the diamond-bearing earth, but observed nothing very peculiar in its formation. It seemed to be very red, and characterized by pebbles stained by iron and a great variety of quartz in broken fragments, chiefly white in color, or stained red in places, or dotted with black spots.
The miners who were then operating the mines assured the Doctor “that the generation of diamonds is always going forward, and that they have just as much chance of success in searching earth which has been fourteen or fifteen years unexamined as in digging in what has never been disturbed ”

“ These, in my hand, look as if they had been swept down with the gravel and gold; only we can trace the gravel and gold to their native rocks, but not the diamonds. Read the account given of the diamond in any good work on mineralogy;--you will find nothing but lists of localities of gravel, or conglomerate rock (which is only an old indurated gravel) . Some say it was once a vegetable gum; but it may have been charred wood; but what one would like to know is, mainly, why charcoal should make itself into diamonds in India, and only into black lead in Borrowdale. ”

“ In order to produce the most beautiful effect, diamonds are usually cut into one or another of three different forms, namely, rose, table, and brilliant, the shape and size of the stone determining which form is best. The double-cut brilliant is the most common form at the present day. The general form of rough, crystallized diamonds is that of two square pyramids joined at their bases. The crystals are oftenest found octahedral and dodecahedral—that is, eight and twelve sided, and the diamond-cutter takes advantage of these forms in shaping the diamond. ”

“ I may here interpolate a few remarks as to the mistakes that were made, especially by the early diggers, as to the nature of the stone unearthed. Men unused to digging came and took out claims, especially in the Du Toit’s Pan mine, a mine which has from the first been renowned for large diamonds, and also for a considerable output of “crystals,” which are of no commercial value. A large crystal, showing all the angularity of the diamond and otherwise closely resembling it, often raises hopes soon doomed to be disappointed. ”

“ As time has progressed, the mode of obtaining the diamonds has gradually become more skilled and scientific. As the diggers at first worked in their allotments with the assistance of what hired labourers they could get, Hottentots, Kaffirs, and Bechuanas, their apparatus was of the rudest character. It consisted only of a stake, driven into the ground at the upper edge of the pit, with an iron or wooden pulley attached, enabling them to draw up the buckets of diamond-earth by hand. ”

“ The aspect of the land is diamantiferous; [Footnote: I hear with the greatest pleasure that a syndicate has been formed for working the diamond-diggings of Golconda, a measure advocated by me for many years. Suffice to say here that the Hindús rarely went below 60 feet, because they could not unwater the mine, and that the Brazilian finds his precious stones 280 feet below the surface. Moreover the Indian is the only true diamond: the Brazilian is a good and the Cape a bad natural imitation.] and it has been noticed that a crystal believed to be a diamond has been found in auriferous gravel. ”

“ The world’s largest diamond deposits are in Africa, and names such as Congo, Sierra Leone, and the Union of South Africa bring to mind colorful legends of fabulous discoveries of diamond. Smaller deposits are found in South America—in Brazil, British Guiana, and Venezuela—and in Asia. Even in the United States some diamonds have been found. ”

“ The diamond is widely dispersed over the earth, and undoubtedly occurs in countries where its existence is not now suspected. The difficulty of detection has restricted its geographical area in history, yet enough is known to regard its deposition as almost universal, or at least quite as frequent as that of gold. In some countries the deposits are very limited, while in others, like those of Africa, Brazil, and India, they stretch away over immense distances. ”

“ The Newlands Mine, West Griqualand, about 40 miles north-west of Kimberley, is interesting on account of the occurrence of diamond in what the Reverend Professor Bonney considers to be its true matrix. The workmen occasionally come across well-rounded, boulder-like masses of eclogite, a rather coarsely crystalline rock, sometimes more than a foot in diameter. ”

“ The power of absorbing sunlight or artificial light and then giving it off in the dark is only possessed by certain diamonds. These are Brazilian stones, slightly milky in tint, or blue-white as they are often termed, and it is an included substance and not the diamond itself that possesses the power of storing up light and then giving it out. ”

“ The same facility may be applied to the natural crystals of other gems, but it cannot be established as a fixed or general rule. The diamond “placers,” distinct and well defined, are far more numerous on the earth’s crust than is generally believed.
A thousand plausible and often ingenious theories on the geological character of the diamond have been advanced in modern times or within a century past; and a great variety of rocks or mineral substances extending from itacolumite to xanthophyllite have been affirmed to be the parent mineral. ”

“ These legends may be explained by the fact that in the Ural Mountains, on the east of Europe, in South America, in South Africa, and in other localities, the Drift gravels contain gold and precious stones.
The diamond is found in drift-gravels alone. It is pure carbon crystallized. Man has been unable to reproduce it, except in minute particles; nor can he tell in what laboratory of nature it has been fabricated. It is not found in situ in any of the rocks of an earth-origin. ”

“ German South West Africa furnishes a considerable output of very small diamonds, which are found in dry sand far from any present rivers. These diamonds cut to splendid white melee and the output is large enough to make some difference in the relative price of small stones as compared to large ones. The South West African field seldom yields a stone [186] that will afford a finished quarter-carat diamond. ”

“ It is true that I have not found diamonds actually in the little veins of quartz that traverse these beds, nor in the schists, the decomposition of which has produced the diamond-bearing clays with these same crystals of oligist iron and rutile. But hardly one diamond exists to a million crystals of oligist iron; more than thirty thousand pounds of clay have furnished only ten little diamonds weighing about a carat. ”

“ Now, this “grading” was also a feature of the diamonds themselves, for they were of a remarkably uniform size, and in this respect differed entirely from those of any other known deposit; for at Kimberley, or on the Vaal River Diggings, one of the fascinations of the precarious profession of diamond-digging lies in the fact that big and little stones are found together, and the next spadeful of ground may bring the digger a stone the size of a pea, or one the size of a potato. ”

“ It is hardly possible to believe that, whilst the diamond has been found in spots scattered over the enormous area, say, of five hundred direct geographical miles in depth, bounded north by the Mahanadi and south by the Krishna, the mineral resources of vast and almost unexplored tracts, like the highlands of Orissa, should continue to be neglected. ”