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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.