THE DIAMOND MINES OF INDIA 167
found,
that diamond mining was an occupation for the most poverty-stricken
people only. When the yield of a deposit became poor, the miners
naturally melted away, and unless by chance a new rich strike was made,
they were soon neglected and sometimes forgotten.
Diamond
mines were simply diggings here and there in a gravelly deposit which
to the initiated had the earmarks of the diamonds. Sometimes it lay on
the surface, sometimes in the beds of streams, and at others, under a
valueless covering of some other kind of earth anywhere from two to
twenty feet thick.
Among
those included in the ancient term " Golconda " mines, which probably
embraced all those to the south and east of Golconda from which the
rough was brought to that place as a center of the industry, were the
famous mines of Kollur. From these some of the most celebrated
historical stones are supposed to have been taken, among them the
Koh-i-noor and the Great Mogul. These mines were on the south bank of
the Kistna, directly north of Madras and a little west of the Parteal
mines. Tavernier referred to them as the Gani Coulour. V. Ball says
Gani should be written Gan-i or " the mines of " Coulour. Hugh Murray,
1834, says: " The mines are in a plain along the foot of some high
mountains and yielded Shah Jehan the famous stone of upwards of 700
carats (Great Mogul)." They are said to have been accidentally
discovered by the finding of a 25 carat stone, followed soon after by
others of good size, about 1560. When Tavernier was in India in 1669 he
says there were about 60,000 people employed in connection with the
mines.
A governor of Madras visited them in 1679, and
