The diamonds are found as
well-formed crystals, broken crystals or cleavage fragments. Their
color also varies. There are white stones tinged with yellow- known
as 'Capes' and 'Silver Capes' - greens, greys, blacks, browns, rare blue-white
and several other shades. Of the 150 pipes so far found in Southern
Africa, 30 contain diamonds in commercial quantities, and each
produces diamonds with its own identifiable characteristics.
Contained in the kimberlite are several other 'passengers'. Coming
from the depths, it picked up fragments of the older rock formations
penetrated by the pipe, including ancient material not found anywhere
on the surface of the earth. This material ranges in size from
pebbles to huge masses weighing millions of tons.
The pipes do not seem to have any
particular relation to one another. The diamonds may have been picked
up from some deep zone below, or gaseous compounds of carbon may have
infiltrated the kimberlite and been formed into diamonds by pressure.
They probably had a variety of origins. Each successive upheaval of
kimberlite in the pipes contains diamonds slightly different from the
others. The kimberlite must have risen up the pipes in a series of
convulsive movements.
Best known of the volcanic pipes
containing diamonds are those at Kimberley, the Premier Mine near
Pretoria, the Finsch Mine in the Northern Cape and the Orapa Mine in
Botswana. The Williamson Mine in Tanzania is also a diamond-bearing pipe.
Other pipes still await discovery,
for many have eroded away and lie hidden. If the kimberlite is near
the surface it can affect vegetation, and a prospector needs to be a
botanist as well as a mineralogist, closely observing changes in the
colour of the leaves of trees, or in the nature of grass.
In November 1961, Allister
Fincham, a miner prospecting for asbestos, observed just such a
vegetation change a little to the west of Kimberley. It led to a R4,5
million fortune for Fincham and his partner, a trader named Schwabel
who had grubstaked him. What he had discovered was the great diamond
mine that was to be named, after both partners, the Finsch.
The exact origin of some diamond
deposits remains a mystery. On March 13, 1926, Jacobus Voorendyk,
with an African labourer, was digging holes for fence poles on his
farm Elandsputte (the wells of the eland) in the Western Transvaal.
As they dug the last hole, the African suddenly exclaimed 'Here is a
diamond'. The two men looked at the small 0,75 carat chip in
disbelief. They washed it in a bucket of water, but they knew nothing
of diamonds. It could have been glass.
Voorendyk saddled a horse and rode
into Lichtenburg, where his father was postmaster. They took the chip
to the science master at the local high school. He was skeptical, but
he put it in a bottle of acid and left it for the weekend. On Monday
morning the men almost tiptoed back to see it. It sparkled cheerily
at them.
The rush that followed was one of
the most frenzied ever known. Within 12 months there were 108 000
people on the Lichtenburg diamond diggings. More than 30 000 men took
part in some of the claim-pegging races organized by the authorities.
Some were hired athletes, others scampered to the diggings on
crutches. Many magnificent gemstones were found. The rush which
started on Elandsputte wandered like a tornado over the veld,
following what was apparently once a river valley.
The diamonds were found in
irregular patches or runs of gravel. They were maddeningly
unpredictable. There could be a fortune made on one claim, and
prospects of starvation on neighbouring diggings. The gravel, resting
on dolomite, filled unexpected depressions, but suddenly thinned out
or vanished if the dolomite approached the surface. Occasionally
there were sinkholes or potholes, where the dolomite had collapsed.
These potholes, such as King's pothole, could exceed 30 m in depth
and contain a collection of diamonds, as though a prodigious jewelry
box had been tipped into them.
If the Witwatersrand was
originally a dream sea of gold, then this was a dream river of diamonds.
Men searched for it's beginning,
but it seemed to come from nowhere. At the height of the rush there
was a cloud of dust over the whole area so thick that motorists had
to keep their headlamps burning in daytime as a safeguard against collision.
The great rush to Lichtenburg
petered out in 1953, but a few hopefuls still fossick in the area
today and sometimes find a few diamonds, which the multitude
overlooked. The landscape for kilometres has the appearance of a vast
battlefield, scarred and devastated like a no-man's-land.
The classic diamond pipes will
always be those at Kimberley. This town has a particular place in the
hearts of the women of the world, for from these great pipes have
come the gemstones for countless engagement rings and gorgeous pieces
of jeweler.
The Big Hole of Kimberley is the
deepest open pit ever excavated by man. It has a diameter of 500 m
and a circumference of 1,6 km. Three Empire State Buildings, one on
top of the other, would comfortably fit into it. The Big Hole was
excavated as an open-cast working for 400 m, then continued down for
another 900 m, as an underground working. More than 25 million tons
of kimberlite were removed and 14 504 566 carats of diamonds
recovered before operations ceased in 1914 (1 carat equals 200 mg).
The Big Hole started off as a
hillock known as Colesberg Koppie, on which three diamonds were found
on July 18, 1871, by a very drunk servant named Damon employed by
Fleetwood Rawstone, a digger working a claim near by at Du Toits Pan.
Seven hundred claims were pegged on top of the great pipe at
Colesberg Koppie. At first each claim was separately worked. Chaos
came as the diggers worked deeper into the volcanic throat.
Individual workers tried the most ingenious ways of reaching their
own claims and hauling away the kimberlite, but this became
impossible. Amalgamation into one vast working was the only solution,
and so it was that the organising genius of such men as Cecil Rhodes
and Barney Barnato brought them to almost unbelievable fortune and
control of the diamond industry.
Four diamondiferous pipes are
still worked in the vicinity of Kimberley. The output from them is
about 19 carats per 70 000 kg of blue ground. The richest pipe worked
in Southern Africa is the Premier Mine near Pretoria. Its diamond
output is 29 carats per 70 000 kg of blue ground. Discovered in 1902
by Thomas Cullinan, this huge pipe for long produced the bulk of
South Africa's gemstones.
The world's finest diamond
It was in this mine, at 5.30 p.m.
on January 26, 1905, that a miner called Fred Wells, just before
knocking off for the day, found a colossal diamond, 3 106 carats in
mass - by far the most valuable diamond ever found. It was named the
Cullinan Diamond, and General Louis Botha, the Prime Minister of the
Transvaal, suggested that the State buy the diamond and present it to
the British monarch as an expression of gratitude for the granting of
responsible government to the Transvaal.
The State already owned 60 percent
of the diamond through taxation and other rights. The mining company
sold its 40 per cent for a nominal sum. The diamond was taken to
Amsterdam, where it was cut and polished by a master cutter, Joseph
Asscher. It ended as the 530 carat 'Star of South Africa', the
smaller Cullinan II, III, IV and several brilliants - all set in the
British Crown Jewels.
The bottom has not been reached in
any of these diamondiferous pipes. As with the Witwatersrand gold
mines, the deeper the mine the greater its working costs. But for at
least 50 years to come diamonds will continue to be produced from the
Premier Mine, the various Kimberley mines and other pipes such as
Jagersfontein and Koffiefontein. New pipes, such as the Finsch Mine,
will certainly be found.
Fissures filled with
diamond-bearing kimberlite are also mined in the Vaal River area.
With other vast deposits in Namaqualand and South West Africa, it is
not likely that South Africa will ever be short of diamonds. Since
that momentous day in 1866, when a 15-year-old boy, Erasmus Jacobs,
found a glittering stone on a farm near Hopetown in the Cape, and the
magistrate at Colesberg tentatively identified it as a diamond by
scratching the letters 'DP' into the window of his office, an
astronomical fortune in diamonds has been found in South Africa with
morel than 7 million carats valued at more than R90 million, being
the current annual production.
We are not allowed to deal in
diamond specimens from South Africa. That is why there are no
diamonds up for sale on this website.
