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DIAMONDS.
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town,
however, lie was only able to purchase a few diamonds. After much
prolonged negotiation, he was permitted to visit the junction of the
rivers Hebe (Ebe) and Mahanadi, where the diamonds were said to be
found. A servant of the Raja's, who was in charge there, informed him
that " it was his business to search in the river Hebe, after the
rains, for red. earth, washed down from the mountains, in which earth
diamonds were always found. I asked him if it would not be better to go
to the mountains and dig for that earth. He answered that it had been
done, until the Maharattas exacted a tribute from the country; and to
do so now would only increase that tribute. He showed me several heaps
of the red earth—some pieces of the size of small pebbles, and so on,
till it resembles coarse brick-dust—which had been washed and the
diamonds taken out."*
Mr.
Voysey, on his last journey from Nagpur to Calcutta, in 1824, visited
the diamond washings of Sambalpur. He mentioned that the gems were
Sought
for in the sand and gravel of the river—the latter consisting of
pebbles of clay slate, flinty slate, jasper, and jaspery ironstone of
all sizes, from an inch to a foot in diameter.t
The next mention of Sambalpur diamonds is to be found in Lieutenant Kittoe's account^ of his journey,
* This description suggests laterite as the matrix from which the diamonds were proximately derived. Messrs. Hislop and Hunter, vide infra, describe
the diamonds of Weiragurh as occurring in laterite gravel. In this
connexion it may be noted that one of the sources of Cape diamonds is
said to be a superficial ferruginous conglomerate.
+ Vide Carter's " Summary of the Geology of India," p. 724.
J "Journal Asiatic Society, Bengal," vol. viii. p. 375. 1839. I
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