French
jeweller who travelled through Turkey, Persia, and the Indies in the
latter part of the seventeenth century, thatwe derive the most vivid
accounts of the Indian mines.
"I visited first," he writes, "a mine in the territory of the kings of Visapoor, in a place called Raolconda, five days from Golconda, and eight or nine from Visapoor.
"All
around the place where the diamonds are found the ground is sandy and
full of rocks, and covered with coppice, somewhat like the environs of
Fontainebleau. In these rocks are numerous veins, sometimes half a
finger, sometimes a whole finger wide; and the miners have little iron
rods, crooked at the end, which they thrust into the veins to dislodge
the sand or earth in which the diamonds are found. . . . After this
part of the work is done, the earth and sand is passed through two or
three "washings, and is carefully searched to see if it have any
diamonds. It is from this source that the clearest stones and those of
finest water are taken. The only evil is, that to render more easy the
extraction of the sand from the rocks, such strong blows are given
with a great lever of iron, that they shock (étonne) the diamond and produce flaws."
Tavernier
visited also the mine of Garree, seven days east from Golconda, and the
diamond-yielding bed of the river Gooel, in the kingdom of Bengal.
