![]() ![]() Within a year there were 50,000 miners camped around the hillock. Within a few days of Daniel's discovery Colesberg kopje was dotted with 1000 different claims dug into the hillside all being worked by thousands of men. Rawstorne named the hillock the 'Colesberg kopje' after the town of Colesberg, 180 miles to the south, where he had been born, and the tented city of diamond miners that rapidly grew up around it became known as New Rush. Two weeks later Daniel returned with a whole bagful of diamonds and Rawstorne and his companions stampeded off to the kopje to stake their claims, at the vanguard of what, as the news spread, became known as the 'New Rush'. Daniel set about his task on a small flat-topped hillock, or kopje, located about 30 miles to the south, in the middle of a farm called Vooruitzicht, owned by a Boer called Johannes De Beer. As punishment Rawstorne sent Daniel down to the dry country with instructions to 'dig until you find a diamond'. In 1871 an African servant known as Daniel, working for a prospector called Fleetwood Rawstorne, who was searching for diamonds along the Vaal River, got drunk and burnt his employer's tent down. ![]() Some small diamonds were also found in what was called the 'dry country' between the two rivers, but conditions were so appalling that few prospectors bothered to try their luck there. Prospectors came from far and wide to search for diamonds along the Orange River and also along the Vaal River to the north. The diamond was later named the Star of South Africa and the news of this find did spark a rush. Then three years later, in 1869, an African shepherd boy found what turned out to be an eighty-four carat diamond not far away, on the banks of the Orange River, which he traded with farmer Schalk van Niekerk for 500 sheep, ten oxen and a horse. The discovery of the Eureka Diamond did not immediately cause a rush because no more diamonds were found and it was seen as nothing more than a one-off. One hundred years later the Eureka was bought by De Beers, who donated it to the people of South Africa, and it can now be seen in the Kimberley Mine Museum. It was eventually purchased for £500 by the Governor of the Cape Colony, Sir Philip Wodehouse. The stone was given to a neighbouring farmer, Schalk van Niekerk, and found its way to a geologist in Grahamstown, who recognised it as a twenty-one carat diamond. ![]()
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