LOADS OF BLUE GROUND WASHED, YIELD AND VALUE OF DIAMONDS FROM THE DE BEERS GROUP OF MINES, FROM TO 30 JUNE 1917. • Loads of blue ground Carats of washed diamonds Value Kimberley and De Bemm (1888 1917). 50,468,869 36,662,783f $302,971,777 Bfesselton (1897 1917). 32,047,389 9,437,008} 86,862,439 Bultfontein (1901 1917).. 19,709,985 7,343,849f 71,667,251 Dmtoitspan (1904 1917) ....... 15.272,953 3,342,745} 75,198,367 Total 117,499,196 56,786,386i 5536,699.834 Most of the miners are natives who are kept in compounds for periods of from three to six months; this system has broken up the illicit diamond buyers ("I. D. B.") system, which seriously threatened the successful work ing of the mines. The chairman of the De Beers syndicate was Cecil J. Rhodes (q.v.), who by his genius and will created the corpora tion apparently out of chaos, and regulated the value of diamonds for over 12 years, the result being of great benefit to the jewelers of the world.
In 1908 a new diamond field was discovered in German Southwest Africa. Here the stones are found loosely scattered in a sandy over burden, and are believed to have been blown down, or washed down, from a region to the eastward. I11 1913, the year before the war, about 1,500,000 carats of diamonds were re covered, and to sustain the price, the annual output was limited to 1,000,000 carats. The crystals are of good quality •but almost all of them are very small. In 1914 the Great War put a check upon active operations in this region, although some mining has been done during the British occupation.
The first instance on the American conti nent of the occurrence of the diamond in the matrix — in its actual rock, peridotite — was described by the present writer as observed by him in Murfreesboro, Pike County, Arkansas, in 1906. More than two thousand diamonds to date have been found, one of over 16 carats, nearly all in the weathered debris of the peri dotite rock and several of these in the rock itself. Diamonds have never been found in the original matrix in India or on the North or South American continents before this time.
More than a score of other localities in the United States have furnished in all several hun dred diamonds weighing from 1 to 22 carats each but not one of these was found in the matrix. California, North Carolina and Vir ginia have supplied a few, and in Ohio, Indiana and Wisconsin occasional finds have been made the latter diamonds are traced to the glacial debris from Northwestern Canada.
Since 1867 diamonds invoiced at about $700, 000,000 have been imported into the United States, and have been marketed as jewelry for as much as $1,500,000,000. There can be little doubt that the total value of the diamonds now owned in the whole world is approximately $3,000,000,000 and that those in the United States represent nearly $1,500,000,000 or about one half of the world's diamond holdings.
The yields of the mines in the various diamond-bearing districts are approximately as follows: India $50,000,000 Brazil. 150,000,000 German South West Africa.1 Borneo 1,000,000 South Africa (Transvaal, Cape Colony.
Orange Free State) 900,000,000 Total $1,136.000,000 which, after cutting and mounting, payment of duties and placing in the hands of customers, may well have cost $3,000,000,000.
Most of the great diamonds distinguished for beauty and size have very interesting histories. The most noted historic diamond is the Koh-i niir of the English Crown jewels. It has been generally identified with the diamond given to Humayun, son of the Mogul Emperor Baber, shortly after the former's victory at Paniput, 26 April 1526. In his memoirs Baber relates that the diamond formerly belonged to Sultan Ala-ed-din, of the Khilji dynasty, who reigned over a great part of India from 1288 to 1321. There is a tradition that Ala-ed-din had taken it, about 1304, from a rajah of Malwa, in whose family it had been an heirloom for centuries. The legend runs that it was worn nearly 5,000 years ago by the hero Karna, whose deeds are celebrated in the °Mahabharata.° It is believed to have been guarded among the Mogul treas ures of Delhi until 1739,,when it was carried off as part of his immense plunder by the Persian Nadir Shah. After Nadir's death it was yielded by his weak successor, Shah Rukh, to the Af ghan chief Ahmed in 1751. The latter's descend ant, Shah Shuja, was forced to give it to Runjit Singh, the Lion of the Punjab and in 1849 it I was surrendered to the East India Company, whose directors presented it to Queen Victoria. The Koh-i-nor was shown to admiring crowds at the London Exhibition of 1851. Its weight in its Indian cutting was 1861/16 of the old carats (191.10 metric carats), but after it had been recut in London in 1852 the weight was reduced to 108%3 metric carats.