DIAMOND MINES CURIOUSLY DISCOVERED.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 17, 13 February 1909, Page 4

DIAMOND MINES CURIOUSLY DISCOVERED.

It now transpires that the now diamond mines in German .South-West Africa were, discovered /in the first instance bv natives.

For some time past blacks at Capetown and elsewhere have been occasionally found to be in possession of stoii'S that could have come either from Kia.berley or the Transvaal, and it was shrewdly suspected that they obtained them from some unknown mine in Herman territory. This surmise turns out to be correct'.

It is a curious fact that, unlike gold mines, nearly all the famous mines of precious stones have been originally located by the aborigines of the countries in which they are situated. ' Thus the new world-famous Jagersfontein diamond fields were accidentally stumbled upon by a Kaffir who was following up the spoor of a wounded buffalo. His story of the find was not believed, whereupon he went there again and returned with a stone weighing ovr 20U carats.

About the year 1871, again, another native prised up a big diamond while

d'ggiug with a knife for tubers on the veldt near Bulfontein. He told everybody he met of his find, and, the locality being easily accessible, there quickly sprang up a diggers' town, which was first christened "New Rush," then "Colesberg Kopje," and finally Kiniberley, after the then Colonial Secretary. Thou, too, there was the case of the famous liahia diamond mines, discovered by a native peon named Felix Gonzales. He was tending some sheep, when he uoliC'Oii that one of lheni refused to graze. He caught it and examined it? mouth, to trv a".id discover, if possible, the cause of'its refusal.

He found it in the shape of a diamond of exceptional size, which had become, fixed between the animal's two front teeth, cilice then more than ten million pounds' worth of tin! gems in question have been unearthed in the locality.