GROWTH OF THE DIAMOND TRADE 45
of
the " Pitt" diamond. The first price asked was 200,000 pagodas; Pitt's
first offer was 30,000 pagodas and he bought it finally for 48,000, or
£19,200. He did not sell it until fifteen years later.
In
those days the keen competition of to-day for business did not exist.
Buyers and diamonds both were few. The great endeavor was to make the
profit sufficiently large to pay for long waiting and the risks
incurred.
As
India came under the control of the English, the diamond industry fell
off. The supply was too uncertain to attract capital for organized
effort after western methods. The old time power of the native princes
to induce their subjects to go into the business of looking for
diamonds, no longer existed as a stimulus. As the princes came into
subjection to the English, and the English neither forced nor assisted
the industry, it languished. About this time, the diamonds of Brazil
were discovered, and being thrown on the market in considerable
quantities, proved to be invincible competitors. The dealer in Indian
diamonds succeeded for a time in discrediting the Brazilian stones by
arousing suspicions as to their genuineness, and later, as these were
allayed, by claiming that the quality was inferior, but the traders of
South America were too sharp for them*. Instead of entering into a
controversy over the matter, they shipped many of their diamonds by way
of Goa, the Portuguese East Indian port, to Europe as Indian stones,
until they had established a market.
A
large part of the diamonds exported from India, went to Europe as
remittances, and were not always profitable. Sir Stephen Evance writing
to Pitt in 1702
