THE DAMARALAND DIAMONDS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 53, 27 March 1909, Page 3

THE DAMARALAND DIAMONDS.

| GERMANY'S JEWELLED SANDS. N>me ten miles inland from the risj ing little town of Vniderity-zbucht, the southern seaport of Herman South-West Alrica, lie the recently discovered dianiomMiclds of DamaniJaml, which have aroused extraordinary interest among the public in South' Africa and have caused a turmoil of excitement among those directly or indirectly interested in diamonds. The extraordinary profusion of diamonds lying strewn on the surface of the ground, coming from no one knew where, presented at iir*t a geological puzzle extraordinary and altogether baffling, The secret has been discovered, after long and exhaustive investigation, by the most celebrated of South African economic geologists, Mr. M. E. Frames, F.G.S., of Johannesburg. His decision may be taken as final in matters of this sort. Jts scientilic aspect, for it is of absorbing interest from a mining and geological point 01 vrew, he alone is competent to deal with. I merely give Hie general result of his investigations. A DESOLATE COUNTRY.

The diamonds are lound in an inexpressibly desolate country over the piuface of which Death himself seems to brood. Jt is a veritable Land ot Desolation. No living thing existed there till there came the uiauionafleckers, for tiie land itself is dead. There is 110 water; there is never rain. .Mile after mile stretches, tossed i'lto irregular low hilis and valleys, a petrified ocean of sand and rock. Swirling up the shallow valleys frequently l'ages the fierce south-eastern wind, sweeping before it dense clouds of sand ami pebbles which are checked by, and deposited 011, the slopes of the rocky hillocks.

hi one of these, irregular depressions, about one mile broad by some thirty long, stretching in ail are from Luderitzbuclit Lay to Elizabeth Hay, are found (the diamonds. They lie 011 or near the surface, as a rule not more than sia inches below it. They are small, and of a usually uniform size, averaging four or live to the carat; but they are o» such remarkable purity and lustre while in the rough that it was at first believed they would not ill many cases need cutting. They are uoi scattered indiscriminately or uniformly over the surface, but in patches of such extraordinary richness that 011 one of them between two and three hundred carats of diamonds have been simply picked up from the surface by a few "boys," working under a white overseer, in a angle day. The" average value of these stones was about 27s (id a curat. UOW THE .DIAMONDS ARE "WORKED."

The usual method of working is simplicity itself. A few spadefuls of small gravel, screened from the sand, are turown into a hand sieve, whicn is then gently shaken, with a circular motion, in a tin tub of water. Thms any diamonds present fall to the bottom of the sieve. The latter is then overturned on Lo a table and tiie diamond* picKed out from what is now the surface of tiie contents.

Comparatively few of these -rich patches are jet being worked, and in this rough-and-ready method there must be many stones lost by oversight and theft, and yet considerably over 10UU carats of diamonds a day are now bring collected. Fortunes, ut least on paper, fiave been made in a few weeks; syndicate shares that cost £3 3s have been sold for £2UOU; men. yesterday semibankrupt, to-day account themselves millionaires; and the fascination of this extraordinary natural treasure-trove lired everyone's imagination.

HOW TIIE DIAMOND CAME. But, alas, there is no pipe! Mr. Frame's investigations and his opinion are absolutely conclusive. ' These diamonds are derived from lissurcs of Kimberite, now possibly in the bed of the ocean. They arc not wind-transported, save as being blown with other small pebbles a few yards from one warm to another.

What lias happened is this: At the time when the land was under water these diamonds lay in fissures in the bed of the ocean. The land slowly rose, and for a long geological period and a comparatively recent one tiie long depression was a shallow arm of the sea. From the south, where now is Elizabeth Hay, swept a strong current to the northern outlet, and in the shallow water the action of this current and of the waves deposited the diamonds in the sands. The land then rose above the surface. The high winds have since blown the line particle* away, and the present gravel deposits where the diamonds are found represent the concentrated result.

The conclusion is, of course, that while for some years to come the Dumarakuid diamond-lields will go on producing enormous quantities of small and exceedingly good diamonds, there is little probability of, at any time, large stones being discovered and very few of over one carat—for fissure diamonds are invariably small and of uniform size,