hammer
fly in pieces, and sometimes the anvil itself is broken." This error
maintained its ground down to a very late period. Thus in the year
1476, when, after the battle of Morat, the Swiss soldiers seized upon
the tent of Charles the Bold, they found in it, among other treasures,
a certain number of diamonds, and in order to test whether they were
genuine struck them with hammers and hatchets, and of course broke them
in pieces.
The
diamonds earliest known to the Romans were furnished by Ethiopia; but
when Pliny wrote, during' the first half century of our era, they had
already been brought from India; and thenceforward, until the
eighteenth century, no diamond mines -were known but those of the East
Indies—in the empire of the Mogul, and in the island of Borneo.
Then
the discovery of the Brazilian diamond districts created an excitement
throughout the world; and, considerably more than a century afterwards,
the opening of the diamond-fields of South Africa, has once more "
revolutionized the trade."
In
1829, in accordance with a judgment expressed by Humboldt, diamonds
were found in the Ural Mountains; they have also been obtained from
Sumatra, Java, South Carolina, Georgia, Alaska, Arizona, Mexico, and
Australia; but the production has been of too isolated occurrence to
indicate any new centres of commerce.
