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.

In Kimberley I had some conversation with the man who saw the Boer do that--an incident which had occurred twenty-seven or twenty-eight years before I had my talk with him.