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CHAPTER VIII
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THE DIAMOND MINES OF INDIA
IT
is not known when diamonds were first mined in India. As far as we
know, all the diamonds of ancient times came from that country. It is
possible, however, that some came from Africa. All discoveries of
diamonds throughout the world in alluvial deposits, of which we have
cognizance, were made by men while washing the sands and gravels for
gold. There have been found in Rhodesia of late, in a section in which
the alluvial deposits contain gold and diamonds, evidences of mining
operations, ancient beyond record. Some of the six kinds of diamonds of
which Pliny wrote two thousand years ago may therefore have been
African stones. Of these six kinds, he said that the Arabian and Indian
were superior, being of " unspeakable hardness." There is no evidence
that Arabia ever produced any diamonds. Topaz occurred there, and white
topaz was probably thought by the ancients to be a kind of diamond, but
it could not have been the stone he coupled with the Indian diamond as
equally hard, therefore the Arabian diamond must have been obtained by
trade from some other source, either from India further east, or
possibly from Africa to the southwest. It is quite possible that the
Phoenicians in their day tricked the world as the Portuguese did later
with the diamonds from Brazil. The diamonds of India and the East were
known
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