Through the discoveries in Africa the diamond trade took a mighty upswing. The find by a farmer's boy, Erasmus Stephanus Jacobs, was confirmed by the Cape Town mineralogist. Dr. W. G. Atherstone, in 1866 as the first genuine African diamond. One year later, at the world exhibition in Paris, under the name of the Eureka, it aroused t~ zrrr.ous interest and simultaneously lit the fuse of the first African diamond rush.

It was hardly blessed with luck, however, for not until 1869 was another large diamond found—the 83.5-carat Star of Africa—this time in the neighborhood of the Orange River, by a Griqua diamond engagement rings shepherd boy.

The district in question was soon almost overflowing with adventurers fired by diamond fever. On the smallest pegged-out plot, everyone for himself and cheek by jowl with each other, they dug at first in the red lateritic soil, but later, with :~e accurate Knowledge, in the deeper lying "blue ground." Often the price for a fancy engagement rings was paid with a life, through the collapse of undermined shafts. In order to clear up this chaos, prevent mine accidents and strife between employers and diggers, and guard against market crises, the Englishman Cecil John Rhodes, with support from wealthy undertakings—chiefly the Rothschild Bank—gradually bought up the farmland of the De Beers and the Kimberley mines. In 1888 he was able to enter De Beers Consolidated Mines, Ltd. in the Kimberley trade register. Since then the production and sale of diamonds have been supervised by this  rings monopolistic cartel. The most prolific diamond mines of South Africa have been the De Beers, the Kimberley, the Wesselton, the Dutoitspan, and the Bultfontein. The Jagersfontein rates as the queen of the South African mines, while the Premier is the largest diamond mine in the world. It produced, in 1905, the largest of all diamonds, the giant Cullinan of 3,106 carats. This was later cut into nine large and ninety-six smaller gem diamonds. The first diamond deposit systematically sought, and found by accurate geological methods, was the very rich occurrence near Mwadui in Tanzania, which contains large quantities of the finest  gemstone diamond engagement rings . From it came the 54-carat Elizabeth II diamond, a pink gem of great rarity, which its finder and owner, Dr. J. T. Williamson, presented to the future Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain. New discoveries are constantly being made, as for instance that of the very important Finsch mine near Kimberley in 1965, and the huge Orapa mine in Botswana.