DIAMOND DISCOVERER

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 3, Issue 613, 18 August 1933, Page 3

DIAMOND DISCOVERER

ERASMUS STEPHANUS JACOBS DIES ON AFRICAN FARM. Erasmus Stepha.nus Jacobs. has died at his farm near Coventry, poor and obscure, and 82 years old. Much had happened in his world since the day in 1866 when, at his play, he came upon the "blinkie klippie' 'or shiny stone, Afr.ica's first-known diamond (says the San Francisco Chronicle). The farm on which the first diamond was1 found did not belong to Erasmus father, a poor man, a squatter in f-act, on the property of a somewhat richer Boer, Schalk Yan Nierkerk. A land surveyor, Von Ludwig, came about 1865 to measure Crown lands along the Orange River, which was then the frontier of Cape Colony. _ Every weekend he spent on Yan Niekerk's farm, and there he met the mother of Erasmus. Von Ludwig, strangely enough, had hrought with him a hook on precious stoones (they were as yet unsuspected in Africa), and one day when he had described an uncut, unpolished diamond, Mrs._ Jacobs said her boy had something like that. Erasmus was told to bring out the box in which he kept his treasures, and half as a joke Van Niekerk off ered to huy it. When an Irish trader, with his ox waggon full of native truck, came hy a week or two later*, Van Niekerk told him about the strange stone. O'Reilly agreed to take it to the nearest town, Colesburg, to . have it tested for genuineness, and the ■outcome was that Sir Philip Wodehouse, Governor of Cape Colony, bought the "pebble" for £500, of which Erasmus' mother got one-third. Since little Erasmus made his discovery 300 tons of diamonds worth £300,000,000 have been mined. And most of the pioneers have died poor.