When everything is taken into consideration, the wonder is that they were not discovered five thousand years ago and made familiar to the African world for the rest of time.

For this reason the first diamonds were found on the surface of the ground.

They were smooth and limpid, and in the sunlight they vomited fire.

They were the very things which an African savage of any era would value above every other thing in the world excepting a glass bead.

For two or three centuries we have been buying his lands, his cattle, his neighbor, and any other thing he had for sale, for glass beads and so it is strange that he was indifferent to the diamonds--for he must have pickets them up many and many a time.