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BRAZILIAN DIAMONDS
pretends
to be short-sighted, and picks up the plunder with his tongue-tip. (In
India, before the mines had become exhausted, the miner jerked the
stone into his mouth or stuck it into the corner of his eye; twelve to
fifteen overseers were required per gang of fifty light-fingered men.)
Diamonds
were first discovered in Brazil by natives while washing sand for gold.
The government's first move was to order the entire gold mining
population to move out of the area, and mining rights were placed in
the hands of a few favored planters who used slave labor. This lasted
about ten years, during which time it is said that many a diamond was
taken from the region, unknown to the government, by ex-gold miners who
resented their high-handed treatment. In 1740 a new system of mining
was started, whereby a contractor, employing about six hundred slaves,
was allowed the sole mining rights for a period of three to five
years. He paid the government so much per slave and sold most of his
diamonds to the crown. This must have been a paying proposition, for we
hear tales of the contractors building magnificent estates and
maintaining large staffs of personal slaves and concubines.
Brazilian
diamonds were not well received in Europe at first. Owners of Indian
stones, fearful that their value would suffer, spread stories that the
Brazilian product was soft and of inferior grade. This the Portuguese
traders cleverly eluded by sending the stones first to Goa, reship-ping
them to Europe as Indian diamonds, and breaking the news gradually to
European buyers. Brazilian gem diamonds are today highly prized among
jewelers for their
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