Early in 1867 the children of a Boer farmer, Daniel Jacobs, who dwelt near Hopetown on the banks of the Orange River, picked up in the course of play near the river a white pebble, which was destined not only to mark the commencement of a new epoch in the record of diamond mines, but to change the whole course of the history of South Africa. This pebble attracted the attention of a neighbour, Schalk van Niekerk, who suspected that it might be of some value, and offered to buy it. Mrs. Jacobs, however, gave it him, laughingly scouting the idea of accepting money for a mere pebble. Van Niekerk showed it to a travelling trader, by name John O’Reilly, who undertook to obtain what he could for it on condition that they shared the proceeds. Every one he met laughed to scorn the idea that the stone had any value, and it was once thrown away and only recovered after some search in a yard, but at length he showed it to Lorenzo Boyes, the Acting Civil Commissioner at Colesberg, who, from its extreme hardness, thought it might be diamond and sent it to the mineralogist, W. Guybon Atherston, of Grahamstown, for determination. So uncertain was Boyes of its value that he did not even seal up the envelope containing it, much less register the package. Atherston found immediately that the long-scorned pebble was really a fine diamond, weighing 21-3/16 carats, and with O’Reilly’s consent he submitted it to Sir Philip Wodehouse, Governor at the Cape. The latter purchased it at once for £500, and dispatched it to be shown at the Paris Exhibition of that year. It did not, however, attract much attention; chimerical tales of diamond finds in remote parts of the world are not unknown. Indeed, for some time only a few small stones were picked up beside the Orange River, and no one believed in the existence of any extensive diamond deposit. However, all doubt as to the advisibility of prospecting the district was settled by the discovery of the superb diamond, afterwards known as the ‘Star of South Africa,’ which was picked up in March 1869 by a shepherd boy on the Zendfontein farm near the Orange River. Van Niekerk, on the alert for news of further discoveries, at once hurried to the spot and purchased the stone from the boy for five hundred sheep, ten oxen, and a horse, which seemed to the boy untold wealth, but was not a tithe of the £11,200 which Lilienfeld Bros., of Hopetown, gave Van Niekerk. [Illustration: _PLATE XV_ KIMBERLEY MINE, 1871] [Illustration: _PLATE XVI_ KIMBERLEY MINE, 1872]