Hopetown, South Africa
Encyclopedia : H : HO : HOP : Hopetown, South Africa
Hopetown, South Africa lies at the edge of the Great Karoo on an arid slope leading down to the Orange River, named by the great explorer Colonel Robert Gordon in honour of William Prince of Orange. The Bushmen called this The Great River, "Nu Gariep", as it carries 23 % of the total water run-off of South Africa to the sea.
The first diamond discovered in South Africa, the Eureka diamond was found at Hopetown.
History
Hopetown came into being in 1850 when Sir Harry Smith extended the northern frontier of the Cape to this mighty river. A handful of settlers claimed ground and by 1854 a rough frontier town had mushroomed up and a church had been built.
Hopetown was a quiet farming area until 1866 when Schalk van Niekerk, a young farmer went to visit a neighbour, Daniel Jacobs on the farm, De Kalk. As he rode towards the homestead he noticed the neighbour's 15 year old son playing jacks with a glittering white pebble.
Familiar with local legends of diamonds, he became intrigued and offered to buy it from the wife of the owner of the land. Instead she gave it to him saying that it was "only a pebble" and that there were "a lot more of them". He kept it for a while, but then gave it to John O'Reilly who took it to Colesberg in 1867 and showed it to the magistrate there, Lourenzo Boyes, who declared: "I do believe it to be a diamond."
The stone was then sent to Grahamstown to a Dr Willian Guybon Atherstone. A local catholic priest, Father James Ricards, confirmed this by using the stone to scratch his initails on a piece of glass in his office.
It proved it to be a 21 1/4 carat (4.25 g) diamond, and became known as the "Eureka". It was bought for £500 by the Governor of the Cape, Sir Philip Wodehouse and on 16 April 1946, the Eureka diamond was sold in London for £5,700.
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