Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 41.djvu/476

460 diamond merchants of Europe. The size of a parcel varies from a few thousand to tens of thousands of carats; in one instance, two years ago, nearly a quarter of a million of carats were sold in one lot to one buyer."

The company sustain a considerable loss annually, estimated now at from 10 to 15 per cent, by diamonds being stolen from the mines. To check this loss, extraordinary precautions have been resorted to. The natives are engaged for a period of three months, during which time they are confined in a compound surrounded by a high wall. On returning from their day's work, they have to strip off all their clothes, which they hang on pegs in a shed. Stark naked, they then proceed to the searching-room, where their mouths, their hair, their toes, their armpits, and every



portion of their bodies are subjected to an elaborate examination. White men would never submit to such a process, but the native sustains the indignity with cheerful equanimity, considering only the high wages which he earns. After passing through the searching-room, they pass, still in a state of nudity, to their apartments in the compound, where they find blankets in which to wrap themselves for the night. During the evening the clothes which they have left behind them are carefully and minutely searched, and are restored to their owners in the morning. The precautions which are taken a few days before the natives leave the compound, their engagement being terminated, to recover diamonds which they may have swallowed, are more easily imagined than described. In addition to these arrangements, a law of exceptional rigor punishes illicit diamond buying, known in