Science Reports New Boons to Man
Chemists Approach Isolation of Life-Substance; Discover Arthritis
Cure; New Friendly Virus of Shadow-World Brought to Light.
EBy WILLIAM C. UTLEY
OW is your supply of cortin today? What? Never heard
of cortin? Well, let’s hope you have it, whether you
—1 know it or not. For without cortin your skin’s pigmenta
tion would change; you would slowly become brown, and then
you would contract Addison’s disease and die.
Cortin is a strange hormone secreted by your suprarenal
glands. These are fat bodies above your kidneys and are im
portant to what is called the "symphony of glands.’’ The cortin
which they supply keeps various constituents of your blood—
urea, potassium and sodium—in their normal relationships.
The exact chemical nature of cor
tin has long been unknown, and no
one has been able to give It to you
If your suprarenal glands atro
phied and ceased to produce it The
news about cortin today is that the
Isolation of a crystalline compound
closely resembling it, and perhaps
opening up the way to isolation of
cortin itself, was reported at the
ninety-second meeting of the Amer
ican Chemical society in Pitts
burgh.
Discoveries Are Many.
Only one of many fascinating dis
coveries reported in one historic
week by the chemical society and
the Harvard Tercentenary at Cam
bridge, Mass., was this. Among
the hundreds of papers read, there
was one telling of a substance which
has relieved many test cases of
arthritis, one of the most painful
a discovery of a new virus which,
instead of causing disease and
death, actually destroys bacteria
which are harmful to man; new
revelations in di«t which, it is
claimed, are capable of building a
race of supermen and superwomen;
a new substance prepared from the
fig free which will destroy worms
and parasites in human intestines,
and many others.
The crystalline that resemble cor
tin was isolated by research work
ers in the famous Mayo Brothers
clinic at Rochester, Minn., and was
presented to the chemical society
by H. L. Mason, C. S. Meyers and
£. C. Kendall.
The substance, said their pa
per, “is capable of maintaining the
life of animals which have had the
suprarenal glands removed.
“It is hoped that its study will
give an idea as to the action and
the chemical nature of cortin it
self. . . .
“The concentrates of cortin ob
tained have very high activity. Ex
ceedingly small amounts are potent.
It is impossible to compare the
new crystalline compound with
these cortin concentrates. Quanti
tatively it takes more of the crystal
line compound to produce the same
action, therefore the chemical struc
ture cannot be indentical, but full
knowledge of the nature of cortin
Is brought nearer."
Cure for Arthritis.
Of immediate interest to thou
sands of sufferers is the new drug
for the treatment of arthritis, re
ported to the chemical society.by
Dr. Herman Seydel, of Jersey City,
N. J. The report opened up some
controversy between this society
and the American Medical associa
tion. which declared through its
Dr. Karl Landsteincr, once winner
of the Nobel Peace prize for medi
cine, and a figure at the Harvard
Tercentenary.
journal that Dr. Seydcl'a announce
ment had been "premature.” The
latter, however, scoffs at this and
cites the success with which he
has used the drug on many patients
who had suffered from three months
to 23 years.
The substance is called a "cal
cium double salt of benzyl succinic
and benzoic acids.” Its application
of the benzoate group of drugs is
■aid to be entirely new from past
uses, in that it "detoxifies” the
body fluids or “humors.”
"Contrary to the revered belief
that arthritis is of infectious origin,
we preferred to consider it as
caused by intestinal stasis (stagna
tion), with an accompanying dis
function of the liver and gall blad
der which adversely affects the
blood stream.
“Thus we proceeded to remedy
It by the treatment designed to
better the body humors. We be
lieve that our proceedure is sound
therapeutically as it shows itself
successful clinically.’*
Dr. Seydel’s compound has for
two years been carefully applied
at the Jersey City Medical center, j
“In many cases,” he said, "it was
found that the compound gave pro
gressive and definite relief of the
three major symptoms of arthritis
—pain, fever and swelling. The
swelling disappeared; the pain was
alleviated or driven away entirely;
“Professors Benjamin H. Robbins
and Paul D. Lamson of Vanderbilt
university showed that the latex
from various fig trees contains a
potent protein - cleaving enzyme
which is capable of digesting live
ascaris worms.
Finding Mysterious ‘Oje”
“They found that such a latex
was commonly used in Central arjd
South America as a remedy for
worm parasites in the intestinal
tract; that is. as an anthelmintic.
The efficacy of such a latex against
whip worm had been demonstrated
in Alabama by Fred C. Caldwell of
the Rockefeller foundation in 1929.
“Since none of the known anthel
mintics had proved satisfactory
against whip worm, an investiga
tion of fig tree latex waj under
taken about a year ago. It soon
became apparent that this material
was identical with the mysterious
'oje' previously obtained with such
Andrew Mellon (center) accepts the American Chemical society’s
bronze plaque for “outstanding service in chemistry’’ from Chester C.
Fisher (left). Richard K. Mellon Is seen accepting a similar one in the
name of his late father, R. B. Mellon.
movement and renewed use of af
fected parts were greatly improved
or restored."
The drug is a white, crystalline
salt "of distinct odor and taste.”
It is administered without other
drugs.
Into the Shadow World.
Evidence of a queer "shadow
world” of "creatures” which exist
in a sort of twilight zone between
living and non-living things was re
ported at the Harvard Tercentenary
by Dr. John Howard Northrop of
the Rockefeller Institute for Medical
Research. It is a world of viruses,
some of which are deadly to man
and others, according to Dr. North
rop’s discoveries, friendly.
It is a virus which is believed
to cause the dread infantile paraly
sis, as well as the common cold.
But the newly found virus is one
which has the same power to de
stroy bacteria as the bacteriophage
which saved hundreds ol lives dur
ing the World war.
A queer property of the virus is
that it multiplies itself after the
manner characteristic of life only
when it is in the presence of bac
teria. With no living bacteria pres
ent it "goes dead” again.
Dr. W. M. Stanley, a colleague of
Dr. Northrop, last year was the
first to isolate in crystalline from
a tobacco virus which had the prop
erty of seemingly taking life, vam
pire-like. from living beings with
which it was associated, but lapsing
back into an inanimate state as
soon as the living thing was taken
away from it.
Fig Sap Kills Worms.
It was the opinion of the scien
tists present at the meeting that
Dr. Northrop’s discovery indicates
u possibility that ther? may be
more of these semi-beings in their
twilight world who — or which —
will further aid man in his battle
for life against deadly bacteria.
From the milky sap of the fig
tree comes a substance which kills
worms and parasites in the intes
tines of men, ns reported to the
American Chemical society by Dr.
Alphone Walti, from the laborato
ries of a manufacturer in Rahway,
N. J.
Dr. Wulti described the product,
known ns “flcin,” as a powerful,
protein-cleaving enzyme in crystal
line form. He said it was the first
ever shown to destroy living cells.
Science, heretofore, had believed
that enzymes were without effect on
living cells. He declared that flcin
is the first protein-digesting enzyme
to crystallize from plant sources.
Its story has a romantic back
ground.
For many years certain native
tribes of Central and South Amer
ica have been known by explorers
and others familiar with them to
have successfully used a mysterious
healing substance, which they called
“oje” as a specific for many dis
eases. They attributed to it, with
some justification, extraordinary
therapeutic values.
“In 1934,” Dr. Walti continued.
difficulty from Central America.”
Dr. Walti and his staff succeeded
in isolating the protein-cleaving
agent in its crystalline form.
“Further Investigations of the en
zyme are being carried out along
various lines," he said. “Crystal
line flein is of the utmost scientific
interest as it may help to elucidate
the protein metabolism in plants
as well as animals."
Diet May Build Super-Rare.
New discoveries in the field of
diet which, if applied, may result
in the productior of a race o. super
men and superwomen, and may
succeed in eliminating idiots alto
gether were reported to the chem
ical society by Dr. E. P. Arm
strong. president of the Association
of British Chemical Manufacturers.
He predicted a revolution in the
methods of growing foodstuffs.
"There Is strong reason to be
lieve," said Dr. Armstrong, “that
the finding of biochemistry and
medicine will afford conclusive evi
dence that freshness in food is of
paramount importance to a nation,
so that there will be a national out
cry both for absolute maximum
home production and for production
of vegetables contiguous to the
great cities."
Dr. Armstrong said that science
tomorrow must concern itself much
more with the study of the farm
and food it raises, declaring that
the new science of food may even
be able to change the mental nature
of the people. "A trace of iodine
may shift the balance from idiocy
to sanity.” he said. He added that
one of the great problems of to
morrow is to find "what chem
ical substances in food, if any, can
give intelligence, courage and alert
ness to the inhabitants of a city.
“Can we feed to produce nervous
strength and mental agility?" he
asked.
"At present it is more than doubt
ful if chemical factors alone in the
food are sufficient to achieve such
ends, for we are biological and not
physical entities,” Dr. Armstrong
said.
All that can be said is that cer
tain chemical elements assume our
racial and individual peculiarities;
they become truly ourselves, where
as other chemical substances only
pass through the body.
"Food is the first of all the
weapons of preventive medicine,
and it must be the function of the
agriculturist in the near future to
grow complete foods and not mere
market produce. Life is so complex
that we have forgotten how entire
ly food is its foundation.
"We have only recently learned
that life depends upon the concur
rent balanced interactions of a con
siderable number of material agents
in the food, some of them sub
stances directly derived from the
soil, others formed in the plant, all
indispensable in some as yet un
known way to health and some of
them required only in the most mi
nute proportions."
(£> Western Newspaper Unioa
i seL:n
and
HEARD
ardund the
national
(CAPITAL
Carter Field *y
Washington.—The Democratic and
Republican organizations alike are
proving again this year what every
politician knows—that presidential
campaigns are the most wasteful
form of activity known to man, sur
passing even the red tape, wasted
energy, duplication if activities and
poor judgment of government it
self.
A very wise politician once told
the writer that 90 cents out of every
dollar spent in a presidential cam
paign is wasted. That is still true.
No one has much idea at this mo
ment how much the two major
parties will spend before the cam
paign is over. Reported figures do
not give much idea There will be
big spending later. Moreover, there
is big spending by all sorts of agen
cies, which do not directly tie in to
the national organization, and much
spending by amateurs on sidelines.
The probability is that not less
than ten million dollars will be spent
altogether, and, if the old politician
mentioned is right, nine millions of
that will be wasted.
Nine million dollars is not much
waste if one thinks in terms of fed
eral government spending. And it
has the redeeming side that no one
has to pay for any part of it if he or
she does not want to do so. But
there is something about this waste
which shocked such a mind as that
of Calvin Coolidge, who in 1924 put
his friend William M. Butler in
charge for the main purpose of
holding the costs down—knowing all
the time, incidentally, that Butler
knew very little about politics, but
a great deal about business effi
ciency.
Yet even in that campaign, with
an efficient business man in charge,
and with no real necessity of doing
anything whatever, literally millions
of dollars were wasted.
Redistributed, if you like. For of
course the money spent went mostly
for salaries, postage (which helped
the Postoffice department’s deficit
and thereby helped keep taxes
down), printing, etc. There weren’t
many special trains. Coolidge didn't
think much of them!
Consider Pamphlets
In a close battle, such as this one
is, however, the difficulty about
eliminating waste* is that so few
people really know what does count
in changing votes and what does
not. In considering the question, one
can dismiss the really effective work
—that of a local political organiza
tion getting the voters registered
and to the polls on election day.
Most of that does not figure In the
reports of campaign expenses, any
how.
But consider pamphlets! This
writer has been touring the country
during presidential campaigns since
1920. In every campaign the closing
days have found tons of pamphlets,
prepared at prodigious effort and
after all sorts of wrangling over
texts, standing in unopened pack
ages at local headquarters in states,
cities or counties.
With a moment’s thought the
directing head in either political
headquarters would know that most
of these pamphlets would meet this
fate. Yet they were delayed until
it was physically impossible for
them to be distributed as their au
thors fondly imagined they would
be, and then rushed out when there
remained no possible chance of
their finding their way into the
hands of the mythical undecided
voter who, by reading it, might be
influenced.
Even the much discussed cam
paign textbook rarely appears, even
in national headquarters, until well
into September. Yet it is supposed
to guide speakers who have been
busy since early August! And who
by the time it appears have long
since discovered what points make
hits with their audiences, and what
do not.
And there remains the point that
nobody really knows whether any
pamphlet ever changed a vote.
There is a known ease, about twenty
years ago, where a speech in the
senate changed a vote, so maybe
pamphlets also do.
Case of Talmadge
"Mad Democrats" beat wise
cracking, rough talking Eugene
Talmadge, most colorful southern
governor for many years, in his
race for the Georgia senatorship
against Senator Richard B. Russell,
Jr.
Talmadge, according to shrewd
Georgia politicians, went out on a
limb and sawed it off. He was on
safe ground as long as he merely
followed the lead of Senators Carter
Glass and Harry F. Byrd of Vir
! ginia, and Millard E. Tydings of
Maryland. They merely criticized
what the New Deal did. They didn't
intimate that they were opposed to
the re-election of President Roose
velt. In fact, they stated the con
trary. Moreover, they didn’t accept
what is generally regarded as help
from Republican sources in any lo
cal contests,
Talmadge did.
One of the weakest spots in Tal
madge's armor, again citing in
formation obtained from well in
formed and, strangely enough, dis
interested Georgia sources, was the
fact that the American Liberty
League spent more than $40,000 in
his behalf.
To show how curious this situation
is. let's look at a little happening
in the campaign for the Democratic
gubernatorial nomination. Right at
the height of the bitterness, the sup
porters of Charles D. Redwine
charged that E. D. Rivers, another
candidate, had flirted with the Re
publicans. They produced affidavits
seeming to prove that Rivers had \
been willing to make a race for con- j
gress on the Republican ticket pro
viding he was supplied with $25,000.
Now at first blush that would seem
to have been a haymaker, as our
pugilistic friends would put it. |
Especially, as seems to have been
the case, if it were true, and that j
Rivers would not dare deny itl
Why He Lost
What happened was that the
Rivers people demanded indig- j
nantly to know what the Redwine J
people meant by getting affidavits
from Republicans! What, the Rivers
spokesmen asked, did the Redwine
people mean by consorting with Re
publicans, and getting information
about Democrats from them? And
finally, what were the Republicans
injecting themselves into a Demo
cratic primary for? Were they at
tempting to tell the Democrats
whom to nominate?
It may sound crazy to northern
and western readers, but it worked.
Four country papers, which had
been supporting Redwine, were so
disgusted with this apparent al
liance between the Redwine forces
and the Republicans that they
switched their support to Rivers!
And to this day Rivers has never
denied that he offered to run for
congress on the Republican ticket
if they would give him $25,000.
It’s a little difficult to draw any
logical analogy, but it’s there. Tal
madge made his great mistake tak
ing himself all the way out of the
Democratic party, and by having
aid in a Democratic primary from
Republicans. He lost. Rivers flirted
with the Republicans first, but
sternly rebuked his Democratic op
ponent when that opponent sought
to inject Republican artillery into
a Democratic primary.
Actually the most amazing thing
is the huge vote that Talmadge
rolled up. He was beaten slightly
less than two to one. One Demo
cratic voter out of every three, in
short, approved the man who has
been rougher in his criticism of
Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New
Deal than any Republican speaker
in this campaign.
All of which means nothing, so
far as electoral votes are concerned.
Not a single state south of the
Potomac and Ohio rivers will go
for Landon. On the contrary all will
go for Roosevelt by bang-up major
ities. The Republicans, nationally,
have been kidding themselves about
the South ever since 1928. There is
no such religious issue this year.
Tenant Farm Problem
Two solutions of the tenant farm
problem are being seriously con
sidered, on an absolutely non-par
tisan basis, by farm leaders in the
Middle West who believe that tenant
and share-crop farming are a little
short of a curse.
This situation has been ag
gravated by city peoplo buying
farms as life-preservers against the
possibility of a currency inflation
which would wipe out or curtail the
value of all “dollar” investments,
such as bonds, bank deposits, life
insurance, mortgage, etc., which
specify the number of dollars.
One of these has worked rather
successfully, they claim, in Britain
and Ireland, in the drive to break
up big estates and absentee land
lordism. Whether it would be con
stitutional in this country is open to
grave question,
This plan involves appraisals of
farms—not only their sales price at
any given time, but on their yield
value. Valuations thus determined
would be the figures set at which
tenants could buy the farms they
are operating, rather than the price
to which land might be boosted due
to the present wave of city folks
buying farms as an anchor to wind
ward against inflation.
Under the British - Irish system
now being studied by farm leaders
the value is not definitely fixed, but
is flexible. Thus, if there should be
a wide swing in the prices of farm
products, which might take the
yield value of the farm up or down,
adjustments would be made to meet
this.
Tough Hurdle
The tough hurdle to get over is
the forcing of people who did not
want to sell their property to sell at
a price thus determined. To which
answer is made by those advocating
the plan that they would not have
to sell, they could come and live on
the farms themselves if they chose,
in which case there would be no
move to force them to dispose of
their property.
The other plan being studied in
volves less constitutional difficulty,
but still contains quite a little.
This would be to have two sepa
rate rates of state and local tax
ation on farms. One would be for
farm owners who lived on their
farms. The other would be for land
lords. Naturally in this system the
proposal is that the man who lives
on his own farm would be made a
much lowci rate of taxation than
the man who ow'ns the farm but
rents it to a tenant or share
cropper.
C Bell Syndicate.—WNU Service.
Golden Johannesburg
_ . .. I II IMBlIJIM—nTt '■‘^T ' - — TV mm
m * , r - •
Pyramids of Dross at Johannesburg.
Prepared by National Geographic Society,
Washington. D. C.-WNU Service.
THE Golden Jubilee of Johan
nesburg, Union of South Af
rica, is marked by the open
ing of the Empire Exhibi
tion of South Africa. Two million
visitors are expected as a minimum
during the four months’ dura
tion of this, the first exhibition out
side the British Isles purporting to
reflect activities of the entire Brit
ish Empire, which embraces about
one-fourth of the entire earth’s land
area. •
The Jubilee for Johannesburg is
“golden” in more ways than one. In
claiming a place among the world’s
most prosperous, this city needs
only to mention that it is the center
for the ten-billion-dollar geld in
dustry of the Witwatersrand, dis
covered in 1886.
Thus Johannesburg is the city that
gold built. Just fifty years ago
George Walker, out for a stroll,
accidentally stubbed his toe and
kicked into a gold-bearing outcrop
of what proved to be the main reef
of the Witwatersrand. Here, shaped
like a vast bowl imbedded face
upward, was a 70-mile stretch of
gold-impregnated rock, now fami
liarly known as the Rand and surely
one of the richest gold fields in the
World.
Immediately, upon that treeless
uninhabited no-man’s-land there ap
teared a tawdry mining village of
tents and covered wagons. Tele
graph wires hummed and the
village became a raw tin-shack town
of 3,000 people.
The prevailing crude process of
mining and treatment of ore lost
half the gold worked. Yet who cared,
since the Reef seemed inexhausti
ble? Supplies were teamed from 300
miles away. Yet who minded fancy
prices? And, as to the water short
age, “All right; let’s bring in cham
pagne!”
Thus began the babyhood of Jo
hannesburg, which is to-day, though
a mere youth of fifty years, a giant
in achievement. The largest African
town south of Cairo and chief com
mercial plexus of the South African
Union’s hinterland, “Jo'burg” has a
municipal area of nearly 82 square
miles and some 300,000 people, or
about half the population of the Reef,
upon which rises this city built on
gold.
Now a Cosmopolitan City
A town of such spectacular be
ginnings needs time to settle down
to life’s quieter realities. Today, 50
years young and quite used to hav
ing an annual $225,000,000 wortn of
gold dug up, so to speak, in its
back yard, the City of the Reef pre
sents the aspects of a well-rounded
cosmopolitanism.
One might expect such fine public
buildings as the Town Hall, the Law
Courts, and the Stock Exchange.
Few visitors, however, would anti
cipate the planned beauty of some
of Johannesburg’s suburbs, or the
spaciousness of its parks and re
creation fields, or its support of art,
medical research, and of so im
pressive an academic seat as the
Witwatersrand University.
It is reported that growth even
within the past few years has ac
celerated, to keep time with the
amazing boom in the value of gold.
Tall buildings are taller and more
frequent on the skyline of this South
African metropolis—and still going
up!
As for the city's play-hour aspects,
one might mention innumerable
clubs, race meets, sporting events,
motor cars like peas in a pod, and
as for motor - cycles — watch
your step! In off hours the City
Built on Gold forgets its world-im
portant mining interests in such re
laxations as a quiet game of bowls
on swards as smooth as golf greens.
For Johannesburgers are one with
Drake in their love of bowling
greens and the very same game
which tradition says the great Eli
zabethan was playing with the cap
tains of his fleet when couriers
brought news of the sighting of the
Armada.
Mines of The Rand
t
Strangely impressive, as one ap
proaches Johannesburg, are these
miles upon miles of mine dumps
surrounding the Witwatersrand gold
fields and stretching across the vast
plain like avenues of mammoth
monuments. Indeed, South Africa
also has its pyramids—pyramids of
waste material, running into mil
lions of tons of fine white sands, left
from the gold-extracting processes.
Their sloping sand-hued massifs sug
gest military fortifications on a
I
scale the world has never known.
The Witwatersrand mines pre
sent a unique sight. Above ground
is a confusing mass of vats, trol
leys, bins, trestles supporting pipes
and machinery, dumps, headgears
topped by cables and whirling
wheels, and various structures of
wood and iron. Workmen, who are
"underground commuters,” des
cend by “skip” (lift) into the in
terior at the speed of an express
elevator for well over a mile into the
depths of the earth.
Johannesburgers dig holes as
grandiosely a s Americans rear
skyscrapers — more grandiosely.
The shafts of the deepest mine on
the Rand at present descend over
8.000 feet, approximately a mile and
a half. Plans are under way for
mining to the depth of 10,000 feet,
nearly two miles.
Atrip below the surface reveals to
you a subterranean electric-lit town,
with avenues and cross streets,
where thousands of men are drilling
and loading the gold-bearing con
glomerate. It gives you the impres
sion of cleanliness, neatness, and—
thanks to the giant elevators — of
a not-too-uncomfortable warmth.
You stay long enough to watch a
surface hoist start off with a load
weighing over nine tons, which it will
lift up that mile or more of shaft
to the crushing and reduction plant j
in about two minutes. Then you too
may ascend once more to what,
measuring shafts by skyscrapers,
the elevator operator might con
ceivably announce as "Two hun
dredth floor, last stop!”
What you have glimpsed is but
a tiny corner of what is, in effect,
a vast underground city, whose axis
measures 70 miles, whose workers
number over 300,000 and whose
shafts, avenues, and streets exceed
4.000 miles, or approximately the
length of the African Continent.
Sports of the Natives
How to handle that grand total of
212.000 men, 90 per cent of them
Bantu, who, either above ground or
under it, work on the Rand?
Recreation—whether golf, tennis,
bowls, swimming, or native dances
—is universal, with inter-mine sports
as a corollary. As to health and
safety, each man regularly under
goes medical examination, first aid
is taught to many thousands, while
that cheery organ, The Reef, advises
you on everything, from keeping fit
to giving accident-prevention tips
to American visitors in what it
thought to be Americanese.
As to native recreation, the
“boys” weekly war dance rivals a
circus, a rodeo, and a football
match combined. Here is a native
compound disgorging its thousands
of black Shangaans who are wel
coming other thousands of black
M’Chopis, the former tribe’s invited
guests. A pell-mell pageant of sav
age magnificence! All are superb in
leopard skins, beads, head plumes,
oxtail knee adornments.
iron ana uiamonas, *«»
How explain the Reef? How was
this treasure house built? In order
to comprehend, we must imagine
successive geologic cataclysms
molten rock being ejected from the
interior of the earth; long-vanished
seas rushing in to lay sediments
thereon; then the sea’s retirement,
and in its place some great, pre
historic river sweeping through au
riferous regions to deposit its gran
ular gold among that three-mile
depth of marine sediment.
But the Transvaal, like South Af
rica in general, is as varied in re
spect to treasure houses as was an
cient Delphi, with its ‘‘treasuries.’'
In the Pretoria region, and also near
Rustenburg and in the “Bushveld
Complex,” there are apparently un
limited iron resources, while the
last-named region promises to yield
one of the greatest platinum de
posits in the world.
And then there are the ever-crop
ping-up diamonds—one might al
most say, those irrepressible South
Africa diamonds. Really, one never
knows where they will turn up next.
And, just to illustrate how South
African diamonds keep cropping up,
here is a glimpse of the Lichtenburg
alluvial diggings west of Johan
nesburg. Not ten years ago Lichten
burg was a tiny, willow-shaded
Sleepy Hollow of a dorp—sleepy,
perhaps dreaming, but certainly not
of diamonds. But suddenly one day
appeared some 25,000 men, who
lined up for the official pistol shot, .1
then rushed pell-mell to peg their
claims on what had proved to be a
diamond field fifteen miles long by
five miles wide