Keepsake-Rocks

"God save the King," cried the Mining Commissioner of South Africa at Potchefstroom last week, and as he spoke cut a cord releasing from a flagpole the Union Jack which came slowly crumpling down.

In filmy pajamas, in scantily cut bathing-suits, in practical running shorts and in ordinary clothes, 25,000 men and women ran scrambling forward at this signal to stake out claims in the Grasfontein diamond field (TIME, Feb. 7) that promises to yield $5,000,000 in hard, white, transparent, keep-sake-rocks.

Within a few minutes, surface diamonds valued at $30,000 had been found by lucky prospectors, prospectrices.