<h2> <SPAN name="ch69" id="ch69"></SPAN><br/> <br/> CHAPTER LXIX. </h2>
<p><small><i>An Absorbing Novelty—The Kimberley Diamond Mines—Discovery of
Diamonds—The Wronged Stranger—Where the Gems Are—A
Judicious Change of Boundary—Modern Machinery and Appliances—Thrilling
Excitement in Finding a Diamond—Testing a Diamond—Fences—Deep
Mining by Natives in the Compound—Stealing—Reward for the
Biggest Diamond—A Fortune in Wine—The Great Diamond—Office
of the De Beer Co.—Sorting the Gems—Cape Town—The Most
Imposing Man in British Provinces—Various Reasons for his Supremacy—How
He Makes Friends<br/> <br/> <br/></i></small></p>
<p><i>The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid
prejudice.</i></p>
<p>—Pudd'nhead Wilsons's New Calendar</p>
<p><i>There isn't a Parallel of Latitude but thinks it would have been the
Equator if it had had its rights.</i></p>
<p>—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.</p>
<p>Next to Mr. Rhodes, to me the most interesting convulsion of nature in
South Africa was the diamond-crater. The Rand gold fields are a stupendous
marvel, and they make all other gold fields small, but I was not a
stranger to gold-mining; the veldt was a noble thing to see, but it was
only another and lovelier variety of our Great Plains; the natives were
very far from being uninteresting, but they were not new; and as for the
towns, I could find my way without a guide through the most of them
because I had learned the streets, under other names, in towns just like
them in other lands; but the diamond mine was a wholly fresh thing, a
splendid and absorbing novelty. Very few people in the world have seen the
diamond in its home. It has but three or four homes in the world, whereas
gold has a million. It is worth while to journey around the globe to see
anything which can truthfully be called a novelty, and the diamond mine is
the greatest and most select and restricted novelty which the globe has in
stock.</p>
<p>The Kimberley diamond deposits were discovered about 1869, I think. When
everything is taken into consideration, the wonder is that they were not
discovered five thousand years ago and made familiar to the African world
for the rest of time. For this reason the first diamonds were found on the
surface of the ground. They were smooth and limpid, and in the sunlight
they vomited fire. They were the very things which an African savage of
any era would value above every other thing in the world excepting a glass
bead. For two or three centuries we have been buying his lands, his
cattle, his neighbor, and any other thing he had for sale, for glass beads
and so it is strange that he was indifferent to the diamonds—for he
must have picked them up many and many a time. It would not occur to him
to try to sell them to whites, of course, since the whites already had
plenty of glass beads, and more fashionably shaped, too, than these; but
one would think that the poorer sort of black, who could not afford real
glass, would have been humbly content to decorate himself with the
imitation, and that presently the white trader would notice the things,
and dimly suspect, and carry some of them home, and find out what they
were, and at once empty a multitude of fortune-hunters into Africa. There
are many strange things in human history; one of the strangest is that the
sparkling diamonds laid there so long without exciting any one's interest.</p>
<p>The revelation came at last by accident. In a Boer's hut out in the wide
solitude of the plains, a traveling stranger noticed a child playing with
a bright object, and was told it was a piece of glass which had been found
in the veldt. The stranger bought it for a trifle and carried it away; and
being without honor, made another stranger believe it was a diamond, and
so got $125 out of him for it, and was as pleased with himself as if he
had done a righteous thing. In Paris the wronged stranger sold it to a
pawnshop for $10,000, who sold it to a countess for $90,000, who sold it
to a brewer for $800,000, who traded it to a king for a dukedom and a
pedigree, and the king "put it up the spout."—I know these
particulars to be correct.<br/> <br/></p>
<div class="fig"> <ANTIMG alt="p700.jpg (5K)" src="images/p700.jpg" width-obs="100%" /><br/></div>
<p><br/></p>
<p>The news flew around, and the South African diamond-boom began. The
original traveler—the dishonest one—now remembered that he had
once seen a Boer teamster chocking his wagon-wheel on a steep grade with a
diamond as large as a football, and he laid aside his occupations and
started out to hunt for it, but not with the intention of cheating anybody
out of $125 with it, for he had reformed.</p>
<p>We now come to matters more didactic. Diamonds are not imbedded in rock
ledges fifty miles long, like the Johannesburg gold, but are distributed
through the rubbish of a filled-up well, so to speak. The well is rich,
its walls are sharply defined; outside of the walls are no diamonds. The
well is a crater, and a large one. Before it had been meddled with, its
surface was even with the level plain, and there was no sign to suggest
that it was there. The pasturage covering the surface of the Kimberley
crater was sufficient for the support of a cow, and the pasturage
underneath was sufficient for the support of a kingdom; but the cow did
not know it, and lost her chance.</p>
<p>The Kimberley crater is roomy enough to admit the Roman Coliseum; the
bottom of the crater has not been reached, and no one can tell how far
down in the bowels of the earth it goes. Originally, it was a
perpendicular hole packed solidly full of blue rock or cement, and
scattered through that blue mass, like raisins in a pudding, were the
diamonds. As deep down in the earth as the blue stuff extends, so deep
will the diamonds be found.</p>
<p>There are three or four other celebrated craters near by—a circle
three miles in diameter would enclose them all. They are owned by the De
Beers Company, a consolidation of diamond properties arranged by Mr.
Rhodes twelve or fourteen years ago. The De Beers owns other craters; they
are under the grass, but the De Beers knows where they are, and will open
them some day, if the market should require it.</p>
<p>Originally, the diamond deposits were the property of the Orange Free
State; but a judicious "rectification" of the boundary line shifted them
over into the British territory of Cape Colony. A high official of the
Free State told me that the sum of $400,000 was handed to his commonwealth
as a compromise, or indemnity, or something of the sort, and that he
thought his commonwealth did wisely to take the money and keep out of a
dispute, since the power was all on the one side and the weakness all on
the other. The De Beers Company dig out $400,000 worth of diamonds per
week, now. The Cape got the territory, but no profit; for Mr. Rhodes and
the Rothschilds and the other De Beers people own the mines, and they pay
no taxes.<br/> <br/> <br/> <br/></p>
<div class="fig"> <ANTIMG alt="p702.jpg (18K)" src="images/p702.jpg" width-obs="100%" /><br/></div>
<p><br/> <br/> <br/> <br/></p>
<p>In our day the mines are worked upon scientific principles, under the
guidance of the ablest mining-engineering talent procurable in America.
There are elaborate works for reducing the blue rock and passing it
through one process after another until every diamond it contains has been
hunted down and secured. I watched the "concentrators" at work big tanks
containing mud and water and invisible diamonds—and was told that
each could stir and churn and properly treat 300 car-loads of mud per day
1,600 pounds to the car-load—and reduce it to 3 car-loads of slush.
I saw the 3 carloads of slush taken to the "pulsators" and there reduced
to a quarter of a load of nice clean dark-colored sand. Then I followed it
to the sorting tables and saw the men deftly and swiftly spread it out and
brush it about and seize the diamonds as they showed up. I assisted, and
once I found a diamond half as large as an almond. It is an exciting kind
of fishing, and you feel a fine thrill of pleasure every time you detect
the glow of one of those limpid pebbles through the veil of dark sand. I
would like to spend my Saturday holidays in that charming sport every now
and then. Of course there are disappointments. Sometimes you find a
diamond which is not a diamond; it is only a quartz crystal or some such
worthless thing. The expert can generally distinguish it from the precious
stone which it is counterfeiting; but if he is in doubt he lays it on a
flatiron and hits it with a sledgehammer. If it is a diamond it holds its
own; if it is anything else, it is reduced to powder. I liked that
experiment very much, and did not tire of repetitions of it. It was full
of enjoyable apprehensions, unmarred by any personal sense of risk. The De
Beers concern treats 8,000 carloads—about 6,000 tons—of blue
rock per day, and the result is three pounds of diamonds. Value, uncut,
$50,000 to $70,000. After cutting, they will weigh considerably less than
a pound, but will be worth four or five times as much as they were before.</p>
<p>All the plain around that region is spread over, a foot deep, with blue
rock, placed there by the Company, and looks like a plowed field. Exposure
for a length of time make the rock easier to work than it is when it comes
out of the mine. If mining should cease now, the supply of rock spread
over those fields would furnish the usual 8,000 car-loads per day to the
separating works during three years. The fields are fenced and watched;
and at night they are under the constant inspection of lofty electric
searchlight. They contain fifty or sixty million dollars' worth' of
diamonds, and there is an abundance of enterprising thieves around.</p>
<p>In the dirt of the Kimberley streets there is much hidden wealth. Some
time ago the people were granted the privilege of a free wash-up. There
was a general rush, the work was done with thoroughness, and a good
harvest of diamonds was gathered.</p>
<p>The deep mining is done by natives. There are many hundreds of them. They
live in quarters built around the inside of a great compound. They are a
jolly and good-natured lot, and accommodating. They performed a war-dance
for us, which was the wildest exhibition I have ever seen. They are not
allowed outside of the compound during their term of service three months,
I think it is, as a rule. They go down the shaft, stand their watch, come
up again, are searched, and go to bed or to their amusements in the
compound; and this routine they repeat, day in and day out.<br/> <br/>
<br/> <br/></p>
<div class="fig"> <ANTIMG alt="p704.jpg (28K)" src="images/p704.jpg" width-obs="100%" /><br/></div>
<p><br/> <br/> <br/> <br/></p>
<p>It is thought that they do not now steal many diamonds successfully. They
used to swallow them, and find other ways of concealing them, but the
white man found ways of beating their various games. One man cut his leg
and shoved a diamond into the wound, but even that project did not
succeed. When they find a fine large diamond they are more likely to
report it than to steal it, for in the former case they get a reward, and
in the latter they are quite apt to merely get into trouble. Some years
ago, in a mine not owned by the De Beers, a black found what has been
claimed to be the largest diamond known to the world's history; and, as a
reward he was released from service and given a blanket, a horse, and five
hundred dollars. It made him a Vanderbilt. He could buy four wives, and
have money left. Four wives are an ample support for a native. With four
wives he is wholly independent, and need never do a stroke of work again.</p>
<p>That great diamond weighs 97l carats. Some say it is as big as a piece of
alum, others say it is as large as a bite of rock candy, but the best
authorities agree that it is almost exactly the size of a chunk of ice.
But those details are not important; and in my opinion not trustworthy. It
has a flaw in it, otherwise it would be of incredible value. As it is, it
is held to be worth $2,000,000. After cutting it ought to be worth from
$5,000,000 to $8,000,000, therefore persons desiring to save money should
buy it now. It is owned by a syndicate, and apparently there is no
satisfactory market for it. It is earning nothing; it is eating its head
off. Up to this time it has made nobody rich but the native who found it.<br/>
<br/> <br/> <br/></p>
<div class="fig"> <ANTIMG alt="p705.jpg (18K)" src="images/p705.jpg" width-obs="100%" /><br/></div>
<p><br/> <br/> <br/> <br/></p>
<p>He found it in a mine which was being worked by contract. That is to say,
a company had bought the privilege of taking from the mine 5,000,000
carloads of blue-rock, for a sum down and a royalty. Their speculation had
not paid; but on the very day that their privilege ran out that native
found the $2,000,000-diamond and handed it over to them. Even the diamond
culture is not without its romantic episodes.</p>
<p>The Koh-i-Noor is a large diamond, and valuable; but it cannot compete in
these matters with three which—according to legend—are among
the crown trinkets of Portugal and Russia. One of these is held to be
worth $20,000,000; another, $25,000,000, and the third something over
$28,000,000.</p>
<p>Those are truly wonderful diamonds, whether they exist or not; and yet
they are of but little importance by comparison with the one wherewith the
Boer wagoner chocked his wheel on that steep grade as heretofore referred
to. In Kimberley I had some conversation with the man who saw the Boer do
that—an incident which had occurred twenty-seven or twenty-eight
years before I had my talk with him. He assured me that that diamond's
value could have been over a billion dollars, but not under it. I believed
him, because he had devoted twenty-seven years to hunting for it, and was
in a position to know.</p>
<p>A fitting and interesting finish to an examination of the tedious and
laborious and costly processes whereby the diamonds are gotten out of the
deeps of the earth and freed from the base stuffs which imprison them is
the visit to the De Beers offices in the town of Kimberley, where the
result of each day's mining is brought every day, and, weighed, assorted,
valued, and deposited in safes against shipping-day. An unknown and
unaccredited person cannot get into that place; and it seemed apparent
from the generous supply of warning and protective and prohibitory signs
that were posted all about, that not even the known and accredited can
steal diamonds there without inconvenience.</p>
<p>We saw the day's output—shining little nests of diamonds,
distributed a foot apart, along a counter, each nest reposing upon a sheet
of white paper. That day's catch was about $70,000 worth. In the course of
a year half a ton of diamonds pass under the scales there and sleep on
that counter; the resulting money is $18,000,000 or $20,000,000. Profit,
about $12,000,000.</p>
<p>Young girls were doing the sorting—a nice, clean, dainty, and
probably distressing employment. Every day ducal incomes sift and sparkle
through the fingers of those young girls; yet they go to bed at night as
poor as they were when they got up in the morning. The same thing next
day, and all the days.<br/> <br/> <br/> <br/></p>
<div class="fig"> <ANTIMG alt="p707.jpg (15K)" src="images/p707.jpg" width-obs="100%" /><br/></div>
<p><br/> <br/> <br/> <br/></p>
<p>They are beautiful things, those diamonds, in their native state. They are
of various shapes; they have flat surfaces, rounded borders, and never a
sharp edge. They are of all colors and shades of color, from dewdrop white
to actual black; and their smooth and rounded surfaces and contours,
variety of color, and transparent limpidity make them look like piles of
assorted candies. A very light straw color is their commonest tint. It
seemed to me that these uncut gems must be more beautiful than any cut
ones could be; but when a collection of cut ones was brought out, I saw my
mistake. Nothing is so beautiful as a rose diamond with the light playing
through it, except that uncostly thing which is just like it—wavy
sea-water with the sunlight playing through it and striking a white-sand
bottom.</p>
<p>Before the middle of July we reached Cape Town, and the end of our African
journeyings. And well satisfied; for, towering above us was Table Mountain—a
reminder that we had now seen each and all of the great features of South
Africa except Mr. Cecil Rhodes. I realize that that is a large exception.
I know quite well that whether Mr. Rhodes is the lofty and worshipful
patriot and statesman that multitudes believe him to be, or Satan come
again, as the rest of the world account him, he is still the most imposing
figure in the British empire outside of England. When he stands on the
Cape of Good Hope, his shadow falls to the Zambesi. He is the only
colonial in the British dominions whose goings and comings are chronicled
and discussed under all the globe's meridians, and whose speeches,
unclipped, are cabled from the ends of the earth; and he is the only
unroyal outsider whose arrival in London can compete for attention with an
eclipse.</p>
<p>That he is an extraordinary man, and not an accident of fortune, not even
his dearest South African enemies were willing to deny, so far as I heard
them testify. The whole South African world seemed to stand in a kind of
shuddering awe of him, friend and enemy alike. It was as if he were
deputy-God on the one side, deputy-Satan on the other, proprietor of the
people, able to make them or ruin them by his breath, worshiped by many,
hated by many, but blasphemed by none among the judicious, and even by the
indiscreet in guarded whispers only.</p>
<p>What is the secret of his formidable supremacy? One says it is his
prodigious wealth—a wealth whose drippings in salaries and in other
ways support multitudes and make them his interested and loyal vassals;
another says it is his personal magnetism and his persuasive tongue, and
that these hypnotize and make happy slaves of all that drift within the
circle of their influence; another says it is his majestic ideas, his vast
schemes for the territorial aggrandizement of England, his patriotic and
unselfish ambition to spread her beneficent protection and her just rule
over the pagan wastes of Africa and make luminous the African darkness
with the glory of her name; and another says he wants the earth and wants
it for his own, and that the belief that he will get it and let his
friends in on the ground floor is the secret that rivets so many eyes upon
him and keeps him in the zenith where the view is unobstructed.</p>
<p>One may take his choice. They are all the same price. One fact is sure: he
keeps his prominence and a vast following, no matter what he does. He
"deceives" the Duke of Fife—it is the Duke's word—but that
does not destroy the Duke's loyalty to him. He tricks the Reformers into
immense trouble with his Raid, but the most of them believe he meant well.
He weeps over the harshly-taxed Johannesburgers and makes them his
friends; at the same time he taxes his Charter-settlers 50 per cent., and
so wins their affection and their confidence that they are squelched with
despair at every rumor that the Charter is to be annulled. He raids and
robs and slays and enslaves the Matabele and gets worlds of
Charter-Christian applause for it. He has beguiled England into buying
Charter waste paper for Bank of England notes, ton for ton, and the
ravished still burn incense to him as the Eventual God of Plenty. He has
done everything he could think of to pull himself down to the ground; he
has done more than enough to pull sixteen common-run great men down; yet
there he stands, to this day, upon his dizzy summit under the dome of the
sky, an apparent permanency, the marvel of the time, the mystery of the
age, an Archangel with wings to half the world, Satan with a tail to the
other half.</p>
<p>I admire him, I frankly confess it; and when his time comes I shall buy a
piece of the rope for a keepsake.<br/> <br/> <br/> <br/></p>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />