As it happens, the 11/97 issue of Natural History, p. 16, contains an
article about extraordinary numbers of diamond "pipes" that have washed down
the Orange River in southern Africa to its mouth and thence out to sea. So
many tons of diamonds have landed on the Namibian beaches that miners use
massive dredges to expose hundreds of diamonds each day. Could not some
garbled tale of these riches have reached Europe, perhaps centuries before
Hildegarde, through the trans-Saharan gold trade?
Aline Hornaday
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