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Van Niekirk: 'Will you kindly allow me to give my testimony to the kindly treatment of the Dutch women and children by the British troops? As the wife of a Transvaal burgher, I have lived in Krugersdorp since 1897, until three weeks ago.
More than thirty years before the outbreak of the Second Boer War a Dutch child in the Hopetown District of Cape Colony found, while playing carelessly near the left bank of the Orange, a pretty pebble that was destined to mould the History of South Africa. He took the bagatelle home to his father's farm, where a neighbour, one Van Niekirk, saw it and was struck by its brilliancy.
His case, he thought, was somewhat similar to that of old Baas Jacobs, the Boer who found the first great South African diamond on his farm near Hopetown, and threw it down beside the door, with other pretty shining pebbles, for his child to play with. The child's mother tossed it to Van Niekirk as a worthless gift. Van Niekirk passed it on to J. O'Reilly.
The next deepest was De Beer's, which, however, was very unevenly worked. Then followed Du Toit's Pan and Bultfontein. The Du Toit's Pan mine ranked next in importance to Kimberley mine. Diamonds were first discovered in 1867 by Mr. O'Reilley, a trader and hunter, who visited a colonist named van Niekirk, residing in Griqua. The first diamond, on being sent to the authorities, was valued at 500l.
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