Dig in when the digging gets too hard for others

When diamonds were first discovered in Kimberly South Africa, they were found in abundance in a layer of soft, easy to mine, yellow looking…

When diamonds were first discovered in Kimberly South Africa, they were found in abundance in a layer of soft, easy to mine, yellow looking soil.

The easy digging for rich rewards attracted a “stampede” of local, Dutch and English miners looking to make their fortunes from small land claims.

Before too long the miners began to dig through the soft yellow layer; exposing a base of blue earth — compact, rocky and hard enough to deflect most shovel and pickaxe blows.

Faced with more challenging mining conditions, a common belief that the diamonds were only found in the soft yellow soil spread among the minors. They didn’t see any point in struggling through the blue rock for little reward.

Then arrived a sickly young Englishman whose his parents had sent to South Africa with the hope that the warm, dry climate would help improve his health. This man, seeing an opportunity, started buying the land claims from the unwilling-to-mine miners.

It turns out that the richest diamond deposits were not found in the yellow soil.

This man and his newly formed De Beers mining company had purchased some of the world’s most profitable mining lands for pennies on the pound.

If you ever fly between Cape Town and Johannesburg look out the window as you fly past Kimberly. You’ll see a pile of yellow sand next to The Big Hole and mountains of blue rubble. Then consider how to make his vast wealth all the sickly Englishman, Cecil John Rhodes, had to do was to dig in when the digging got too hard for others.