Hopetown

Hopetown (Hoopstad) lies at the edge of the Great Karoo in South Africa's Northern Cape province. It stands on an arid slope leading down to the Orange River, which was named by the explorer Colonel Robert Gordon in honor 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 was founded in 1850 when Sir Harry Smith extended the northern frontier of the Cape Colony to the Orange River. A handful of settlers claimed ground and by 1854 a frontier town had developed and a church had been built. Hopetown is mostly mistaken for a town in the Freestate, South Africa, called Hoopstad. Hoopstad is a different town and should not be confused with Hopetown in the Northern Cape, South Africa.

Hopetown was a quiet farming area until 1866 when Schalk van Niekerk, a young farmer went to visit a neighbor, Daniel Jacobs, on the farm, De Kalk. As he rode towards the homestead he noticed the neighbor'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."Fact|date=November 2007

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 initials on a piece of glass in his office.

It proved it to be a 21¼ 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.Fact|date=November 2007