Cecil Rhodes says: "So long as women are vain and men foolish there
will be no diminution in the demand for diamonds." He ought to know,
for he is called the "Diamond King."
Thirty years ago John O'Reilly found some children at a farm house in
South Africa playing in the evening with some beautiful stones that had
peculiar forms and brilliancy. He took the finest to town with him and
found it was worth $500.
People swarmed into the country where little children had rough
diamonds for playthings, and over $400,000,000 worth of these crystals
has been taken from Africa.
While the diamond excitement was still raging the people were inflamed
at finding there was gold about them in great quantities. The diamond
hunters in many instances became gold diggers, because there was even
more money to be made in gold digging than in hunting for diamonds.
Last year nearly $75,000,000 worth of gold was produced in that
country. That is more than we produced in the great gold fields of the
United States all taken together. We crushed from the rocks and dug
out of the dirt about $65,000,000 in gold. The famous gold fields of
Australia yielded about the same amount as our own country.
So much wealth in Africa has embittered the people. The Dutch farmers,
called boers, occupy the heart of the best country. They are not
progressive, the English say. Perhaps they mean that the boers do not
move away fast enough to suit the English. They have made trek after
trek to get out of the way of the English. Trek means journey. But when
they realized how much wealth there was about them in the country which
they had thought was so poor, they decided not to make any more treks
to let the British in.
These Dutch farmers withstood the English at Majuba Hill, Jan. 28,
1881, and killed off nearly all the British forces sent against them.
In this fight they lost but fourteen men in killed and wounded, while
wiping out their enemies. They celebrate this day as we do the Fourth
of July. It is their day of independence, and they do not wish to give
up the advantage it gave them. Sixty years ago less than five hundred
boers under Andries Pretorius defeated twelve thousand Zulus, killing
three thousand of them.
As the Dutch have such a good reason for trusting to their weapons
there is little wonder that the gold and the diamonds of the country
brought them into a war with England.