52 THE GREAT DIAMONDS OF THE WORLD.
finer quality. At Landak there are ten parits or
mines, each employing from twenty to thirty labourers. So far back as
1738, the Dutch annually exported from this district diamonds to the
value of from 200,000 to 300,000 dollars, and Sir Stamford Raffles
tells us that " few courts of Europe could boast of a more brilliant
display of diamonds than, in the prosperous times of the Dutch, was
exhibited by the ladies of Batavia, the principal and only mart yet
opened for the Bornean diamond mines, and whence those known in the
European world have been procured. With the decline of the Dutch
Government, however, the demand has decreased, and the mines are now
much neglected, the numerous diamond-cutters not being able to obtain a
livelihood. Formerly, when more Chinese were employed in the mines of
Landak, diamonds from 10 to 13 carats were common in the public
markets. The Pangéran (Rajah) of Landak now wears one of 18, and
another of 14-1/2 carats."*
The
mines in this part of the island have been worked for over a century
chiefly by the Chinese. But in 1842 the "Celestials" were set upon, and
either massacred or driven out of the country by the Dyaks, as the
aborigines are called. The cause of this outbreak was the intolerable
tyranny of the Chinese, who appear to have treated the Dyak labourers
employed by them with the most atrocious cruelty and oppression. It was
one of these Dyaks who found the large diamond under consideration, as
fully related by Sir Stamford Raffles. " Among the larger diamonds
which these
