of the mines between 1638 and 1665 as a dealer in precious stones. According to his description shallow pits were sunk, and the gravel excavated was gathered into a walled enclosure where it was crushed and water was poured over it, and it was finally sifted in baskets and sorted by hand. The buying and selling was at that period conducted by young children. In more modern times there has been the same excavation of shallow pits, and sluicing, sifting and sorting, by hand labour, the only machinery used being chain pumps made of earthen bowls to remove the water from the deeper pits.
At some of the Indian localities spasmodic mining has been carried on at different periods for centuries, at some the work which had been long abandoned was revived in recent times, at others it has long been abandoned altogether. Many of the large stones of antiquity were probably found in the Kollar group, where Tavernier found 60,000 workers in 1645 (?), the mines having, according to native accounts, been discovered about 100 years previously. Golconda was the fortress and the market for the diamond industry at this group of mines, and so gave its name to them. The old mines have now been completely abandoned, but in 1891 about 1000 carats were being raised annually in the neighbourhood of Hyderabad. The Sambalpur group appear to have been the most ancient mines of all, but they were not worked later than 1850. The Panna group were the most productive during the 19th century. India was no doubt the source of all the large stones of antiquity; a stone of 6738 carats was found at Wajra Karur in the Chennur group in 1881, and one of 21012 carats at Hira Khund in 1809. Other Indian localities besides those mentioned above are Simla, in the N.W. Provinces, where a few stones have been found, and a district on the Gouel and the Sunk rivers in Bengal, which V. Ball has identified with the Soumelpour mentioned by Tavernier. The mines of Golconda and Kurnool were described as early as 1677 in the twelfth volume of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. At the present time very few Indian diamonds find their way out of the country, and, so far as the world’s supply is concerned, Indian mining of diamonds may be considered extinct. The first blow to this industry was the discovery of the Brazilian mines in Minas Geraes and Bahia.
Brazil.—Diamonds were found about 1725 at Tejuco (now Diamantina) in Minas Geraes, and the mining became important about 1740. The chief districts in Minas Geraes are (1) Bagagem on the W. side of the Serra da Mata da Corda; (2) Rio Abaete on the E. side of the same range; these two districts being among the head waters of the Rio de San Francisco and its tributaries; (3) Diamantina, on and about the watershed separating the Rio de San Francisco from the Rio Jequitinhonha; and (4) Grao Mogul, nearly 200 m. to the N.E. of Diamantina on the latter river.
The Rio Abaete district was worked on a considerable scale between 1785 and 1807, but is now abandoned. Diamantina is at present the most important district; it occupies a mountainous plateau, and the diamonds are found both on the plateau and in the river valleys below it. The mountains consist here of an ancient laminated micaceous quartzite, which is in parts a flexible sandstone known as itacolumite, and in parts a conglomerate; it is interbedded with clay-slate, mica-schist, hornblende-schist and haematite-schist, and intersected by veins of quartz. This series is overlain unconformably by a younger quartzite of similar character, and itself rests upon the crystalline schists. The diamond is found under three conditions: (1) in the gravels of the present rivers, embedded in a ferruginous clay-cemented conglomerate known as cascalho; (2) in terraces (gupiarras) in a similar conglomerate occupying higher levels in the present valleys; (3) in plateau deposits in a coarse surface conglomerate known as gurgulho, the diamond and other heavy minerals being embedded in the red clay which cements the larger blocks. Under all these three conditions the diamond is associated with fragments of the rocks of the country and the minerals derived from them, especially quartz, hornstone, jasper, the polymorphous oxide of titanium (rutile, anatase and brookite), oxides and hydrates of iron (magnetite, ilmenite, haematite, limonite), oxide of tin, iron pyrites, tourmaline, garnet, xenotime, monazite, kyanite, diaspore, sphene, topaz, and several phosphates, and also gold. Since the heavy minerals of the cascalho in the river beds are more worn than those of the terraces, it is highly probable that they have been derived by the cutting down of the older river gravels represented by the terraces; and since in both deposits the heavy minerals are more abundant near the heads of the valleys in the plateau, it is also highly probable that both have really been derived from the plateau deposit. In the latter, especially at São João da Chapada, the minerals accompanying the diamond are scarcely worn at all; in the terraces and the river beds they are more worn and more abundant; the terraces, therefore, are to be regarded as a first concentration of the plateau material by the old rivers; and the cascalho as a second concentration by the modern rivers. The mining is carried on by negroes under the supervision of overseers; the cascalho is dug out in the dry season and removed to a higher level, and is afterwards washed out by hand in running water in shallow wooden basins (bateas). The terraces can be worked at all seasons, and the material is partly washed out by leading streams on to it. The washing of the plateau material is effected in reservoirs of rain water.
It is difficult to obtain an estimate of the actual production of the Minas Geraes mines, for no official returns have been published, but in recent years it has certainly been rivalled by the yield in Bahia. The diamond here occurs in river gravels and sands associated with the same minerals as in Minas Geraes; since 1844 the richest mines have been worked in the Serra de Cincora, where the mountains are intersected by the river Paraguassu and its tributaries; it is said that there were as many as 20,000 miners working here in 1845, and it was estimated that 54,000 carats were produced in Bahia in 1858. The earlier workings were in the Serra de Chapada to the N.W. of the mines just mentioned. In 1901 there were about 5000 negroes employed in the Bahia mines; methods were still primitive; the cascalho was dug out from the river beds or tunnelled out from the valley side, and washed once a week in sluices of running water, where it was turned over with the hoe, and finally washed in wooden basins and picked over by hand; sometimes also the diamantiferous material is scooped out of the bed of the shallow rivers by divers, and by men working under water in caissons. It is almost exclusively in the mines of Bahia, and in particular in the Cincora district, that the valuable carbonado is found. The carbonado and the diamond have been traced to an extensive hard conglomerate which occurs in the middle of the sandstone formation. Diamonds are also mined at Salobro on the river Pardo not far inland from the port of Canavieras in the S.E. corner of Bahia. The enormous development of the South African mines, which supplied in 1906, about 90% of the world’s produce, has thrown into the shade the Brazilian production; but the Bulletin for Feb. 1909 of the International Bureau of American Republics gave a very confident account of its future, under improved methods.
South Africa.—The first discovery was made in 1867 by Dr W. G. Atherstone, who identified as diamond a pebble obtained from a child in a farm on the banks of the Orange river and brought by a trader to Grahamstown; it was bought for £500 and displayed in the Paris Exhibition of that year. In 1869 a stone weighing 8312 carats was found near the Orange river; this was purchased by the earl of Dudley for £25,000 and became famous as the “Star of South Africa.” A rush of prospectors at once took place to the banks of the Orange and Vaal rivers, and resulted in considerable discoveries, so that in 1870 there was a mining camp of no less than 10,000 persons on the “River Diggings.” In the River Diggings the mining was carried on in the coarse river gravels, and by the methods of the Brazilian negroes and of gold placer-miners. A diggers’ committee limited the size of claims to 30 ft. square, with free access to the river bank; the gravel and sand were washed in cradles provided with screens of perforated metal, and the concentrates were sorted by hand on tables by means of an iron scraper.
But towards the close of 1870 stones were found at Jagersfontein and at Dutoitspan, far from the Vaal river, and led to a second great rush of prospectors, especially to Dutoitspan, and in 1871 to what is now the Kimberley mine in the neighbourhood of the latter. At each of these spots the diamantiferous area was a roughly circular patch of considerable size, and in some occupied the position of one of those depressions or “pans” so frequent in S. Africa. These “dry diggings” were therefore at first supposed to be alluvial in origin like the river gravels; but it was soon discovered that, below the red surface soil and the underlying calcareous deposit, diamonds were also found in a layer of yellowish clay about 50 ft. thick known as “yellow ground.” Below this again was a hard bluish-green serpentinous rock which was at first supposed to be barren bed-rock; but this also contained the precious stone, and has become famous, under the name of “blue ground,” as the matrix of the S. African diamonds. The yellow ground is merely decomposed blue ground. In the Kimberley district five of these round patches of blue ground were found within an area little more than 3 m. in diameter; that at Kimberley occupying 10 acres, that at Dutoitspan 23 acres. There were soon 50,000 workers on this field, the canvas camp was replaced by a town of brick and iron surrounded by the wooden huts of the natives, and Kimberley became an important centre.
It was soon found that each mine was in reality a huge vertical funnel or crater descending to an unknown depth, and filled with diamantiferous blue ground. At first each claim was an independent pit 31 ft. square sunk into the blue ground; the diamantiferous rock was hoisted by bucket and windlass, and roadways were left across the pit to provide access to the claims. But the roadways soon fell in, and ultimately haulage from the claims could only be provided by means of a vast system of wire ropes extending from a triple staging of windlasses erected round the entire edge of the mine, which had by this time become a huge open pit; the ropes from the upper windlasses extended to the centre, and those from the lower tier to the sides of the pit; covering the whole mass like a gigantic cobweb. (See Plate II. fig. 12.) The buckets of blue ground were hauled up these ropes by means of horse whims, and in 1875 steam winding engines began to be employed. By this time also improved methods in the treatment of the blue ground were introduced. It was carried off in carts to open spaces, where an exposure of some weeks to the air was found to pulverize the hard rock far more efficiently than the old method of crushing with mallets. The placer-miner’s cradle and rocking-trough were replaced by puddling troughs stirred by a revolving comb worked by horse power; reservoirs were constructed for the scanty water-supply, bucket elevators were introduced to carry away the tailings; and the natives were confined in compounds. For these improvements co-operation was necessary; the better claims, which in 1872 had risen from £100 to more than £4000 in value, began to be consolidated, and a Mining Board was introduced.
