Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 April 1884 — A True Story of a Diamond. [ARTICLE]

A True Story of a Diamond.

Chats about the gems on view brought out odd scraps about the way diamonds came into the market. A gem now in the possession of apolice captain had, as too many of the more notable historical stones have, a queer, weird, blood-stained history. A miner at De Beers, Grigualand West, South Africa, abandoned his claim because the walls, huge masses of rock, left towering above the excavated ground, had fallen in, and to such an extent that it would not pay to have the claim cleared. He went to another rush, and months afterward found himself arrested on, a charge of making away with a man named Comyngs, last seen in his tent on the night before he “skipped the camp.” He was confined on suspicion, and yet, there be’ng no corpus delicti, was not brought to trial. One day he was summoned on a Coroner’s inquest and marched from his prison to the Court House, liberty, and comparative fortune. The missing man had been found. It seems the claim had been taken into the area of a strong company, who found, inter alia, the dead, decomposed corpse of poor Comyngs. How he had got into the claim was a mystery, but in his dead hand, where he lay crushed all shapeless by the huge masses of rock that tumbled on him so inopportunely, was a nineteen-carat diamond worth $16,000, a piece of purest water. The miner was acquitted, and diggers’ law gave him the diamond so found in his claim, which could not be declared legally abandoned until the month expired from his vacating his license. — New York World.