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Birds and All Nature, Vol. VII, No 1, January 1900

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<h2> THE YOUNG NATURALIST.</h2> DIAMONDS AND GOLD. 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. [Pg 37] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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