Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/306

 *covered in South Africa in 1867, by some Dutch children playing on the Orange river. Three years later, the great Kimberley deposit was found, and now the output is twenty-seven million dollars a year. It is a saying around Kimberley that if the De Beers company should put on the market all the diamonds it has on hand and could produce, diamonds would sell at a shilling a gallon, but the De Beers company only sells as many as it can get a good price for. Diamond-mining, according to experts, will continue at Kimberley for at least a hundred years; it has not been thought necessary to make figures beyond that time. South Africa produces ninety-five per cent of the diamonds of the world, and the De Beers company is the principal factor in the diamond-production of South Africa. The De Beers company does not represent the De Beers family, but many noted English and French capitalists, with a sprinkling of Americans; the diamond trust is one great trust in which Americans have little interest Originally, the diamond mines at Kimberley were divided into thousands of claims, 31×31 feet, but Cecil Rhodes saw that diamonds would soon become very cheap unless conditions were changed; so by hook and by crook he formed the great De Beers trust, which now produces only as many diamonds as the world will pay high prices for. Prosperous America takes the greater part of the output, and dull times in America means dull times in Kimberley. Alpheus Williams, an American, is general manager of the De Beers company, and many of the officials under him are Americans. There are other diamond mines in South Africa, including alluvial diggings, and