After cutting it ought to be
worth from $5,000,000 to $8,000,000, therefore persons desiring to save
money should buy it now. It is owned by a syndicate, and apparently
there is no satisfactory market for it. It is earning nothing; it is
eating its head off. Up to this time it has made nobody rich but the
native who found it.
He found it in a mine which was being worked by contract. That is to
say, a company had bought the privilege of taking from the mine 5,000,000
carloads of blue-rock, for a sum down and a royalty. Their speculation
had not paid; but on the very day that their privilege ran out that
native found the $2,000,000-diamond and handed it over to them. Even the
diamond culture is not without its romantic episodes.
The Koh-i-Noor is a large diamond, and valuable; but it cannot compete in
these matters with three which--according to legend--are among the crown
trinkets of Portugal and Russia. One of these is held to be worth
$20,000,000; another, $25,000,000, and the third something over
$28,000,000.
Those are truly wonderful diamonds, whether they exist or not; and yet
they are of but little importance by comparison with the one wherewith
the Boer wagoner chocked his wheel on that steep grade as heretofore
referred to.
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