After the discovery there arose, it is true, an imposing tale of an old mission-map of the Orange River region, drawn as early as the middle of the eighteenth century, across whose worn and soiled face was scrawled: "Here be diamonds." Even if this report were true, there was no evidence to determine the date of the scrawl, which might more credibly be a crude new record than a vague old one. In any event, it does not appear that there was even a floating rumor of the probable existence of a South African diamond-field at the time of the actual discovery of the first identified gem.
There is nothing surprising in this oversight. When a spectator beholds a great semicircle of artfully cut gems sparkling on the heads, necks, and hands of fair women massed in superb array and resplendent in the brilliant lights of an opera-house, or when one views the moving throng glittering with jewels in grand court assemblies, it is hard for him to realize how inconspicuous a tiny crystal may be in the richest of earth-beds. No spot in a diamond-field has the faintest resemblance to a jeweller's showtray. Here is no display of gems blazing like a mogul's throne or a queen's tiara or the studded cloak of a Russian noble. Only in the marvellous valley of Sindbad are diamonds strewn on the ground in such profusion that they are likely to stick in the toes of a barefooted traveller, and can be gathered by flinging carcasses of sheep from surrounding precipices to tempt eagles to serve as diamond-winners.
It needs no strain of faith to credit the old Persian tale of the discontented Ali Hafed roaming far and wide from his charming home on the banks of the Indus in search of diamonds, and, finally, beggared and starving, casting himself into the river that flowed by his house, while the diamonds of Golconda were lying in his own garden-sands. It is probable that the diamonds of India were trodden under foot for thousands of years before the first precious stone of the Deccan was stuck in an idol's eye or a raja's turban. It is known that the Brazilian diamond-fields were washed for many years by gold-placer diggers without any revelation of diamonds to the world, although these precious stones were often picked up and so familiarly handled that they were used by the black slaves in the fields as counters in card-games.
If this be true of the most famous and prolific of all diamondfields before the opening of the South African placers and mines, any delay in the revelation of the field in the heart of South Africa may be easily understood. For it was not only necessary to have eyes bright and keen enough to mark one of the few tiny precious crystals that were lying on the face of vast stretches of pebbles, bowlders, and sand, but the observer must prize such a crystal enough to stoop to pick it up if it lay plainly before his eyes.
Nobody that entered the Vaal River region conceived it to be a possible diamond-field or thought of searching for any precious stones. Probably, too, there was not a person in the Orange Free State, and few in the Cape Colony, able to distinguish a rough diamond if he found one by chance, or likely to prize such a crystal. For the discovery of diamonds under such conditions it was practically necessary that prospectors should enter it who would search the gravel-beds often and eagerly for the prettiest pebbles. Were such collectors at work in the field?
One of the trekking Boers, Daniel Jacobs, had made his home on the banks of the Orange River near the little settlement of Hopetown. He was one of the sprinkling of little farmers who were content with a bare and precarious living on the uncertain pasture-lands of the veld. Here his children grew up about him with little more care than the goats that browsed on the kopjes.
“Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”
– Psalm 23:4