DIAMOND MINES OF BRAZIL 203
9,396
carats only. In round figures, the production, without guessing as to
the amount taken by smugglers, has been estimated from the discovery to
1818, as follows: from the beginning to 1740, 240,000 carats. From
1740 to 1772, 1,700,000 carats, and from 1772 to 1818, 1,300,000. In
all up to 1818, 3,240,000. Some authorities place the quantity produced
through legitimate channels up to 1822 at a little under three million
carats. The production, however, between 1818 and 1822 was small,
having fallen to about 12,000 carats annually.
There
appears to be little definite knowledge of the output from 1818 to
1850, but writers generally agree in putting the entire product of the
Brazilian mines up to 1850 at a little over 10,000,000 carats, of which
something over 5,800,000 is credited to the Minas Geraes district,
nearly 1,200,000 carats to Matto Grosso, and over 1,200,000 to Bahia.
The
discovery of very rich deposits in the Serra do Sincora, Bahia, in
1844, drew thousands to these fields and the neighborhood of the rivers
Paraguassu and An-darahy, where they cut through the mountains, was
worked so diligently that for some time the daily output averaged
between fourteen and fifteen hundred carats. As the exposed gravels
were exhausted and it became more difficult to reach the
diamondiferous material, the number of workers dwindled, and with them
the production. The Bahia fields were constantly extended, however, so
that by 1858 the production of Bahia was 54,000 carats as against
36,000 carats for Minas Geraes.
In
1850 and 1851 the Bahia yield was said to be about 300,000 carats per
annum, but from that time, the average yearly production fell about
half, though it recovered
