troleum of Baku yields a lower percentage of kerosene than
the American wells, but it contains more lubricating oil. Millions of
gallons of lubricating oil are shipped from Baku each year to all parts
of Europe. On the opposite side of the Caspian there are great cliffs of
mineral wax such as is obtained from petroleum and used extensively in
the manufacture of paraffin candles.

More than two hundred different products are made from petroleum, among
the chief of which are kerosene, lubricating oil, benzine, gasoline,
vaseline, and paraffin.

CHAPTER XXI

THE SOUTH AFRICAN DIAMOND FIELDS

Many of the great treasure fields of the world have been discovered by
chance rather than careful search.

The diamonds of the Deccan, India, were trodden under foot for ages
before they were recognized as diamonds. In Brazil the gold placer
miners threw away the glassy pebbles as worthless and the black slaves
used them as counters in their card games. A visitor who was acquainted
with the diamond fields of India happened one day to notice the shining
stones which two men were using in a card game at a public-house. The
brilliancy of the pebbles piqued his curiosity. Having secured some, he
tested them and found them to be diamonds of the first water. Yet so
great was the prejudice against the Brazilian diamonds at first that for
years many were secretly shipped to India and thence sent to the diamond
market as Indian diamonds.

A trivial circumstance often leads to a marvellous change in the
conditions of men, communities, and nations. The playful act of a Boer
lad picking up a shining pebble on the banks of the Orange River served
as a beacon to lure persons to search for the most precious and hardest
of gems, the diamond, and thereby transformed South Africa.

It was the beginning of an industry that has already added more than
four hundred million dollars' worth of wealth to the world and which now
yields annually twenty million dollars' worth of diamonds. The history
of the South African diamond mines is a fascinating story from start to
finish.

A Boer farmer named Jacobs had made his home on the banks of the Orange
River not far from Hopetown. Here, living in a squalid hovel, he eked
out a precarious existence by hunting and grazing. His chief income was
from the flocks of sheep and goats that grazed on the scanty herbage of
the veld. Black servants were the shepherds, and the children, having no
work to emplo