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76 NAMES APPLIED TO THE DIAMOND book ii
The
Grand Duke of Tuscany's diamond weighs 139£ carats, is clear, and of
good form, cut on all sides into facettes, and as the water tends
somewhat to a citron colour,1 I estimate the first carat at only 135 livres, from which the value of the diamond ought to be 2,608,335 livres.2
In
concluding the remarks which I have made in this chapter, I should say
that in the language of the miners the diamond is called iri; 3 that in Turkish, Persian, and Arabic it is called almas,4 and that in all the languages of Europe it has no other name than diamond.
This,
then, in a few words is all that I have been able to discover with my
own eyes in regard to this subject during the several journeys which I
made to the mines ; and if by chance some other has written or spoken
of them before me, it can only have been from the reports which I have
made of them.5
1
This description and that in ch. xxii, as also the figure of the stone,
correspond in all important respects with the ' Austrian yellow \ once
in the possession of the Emperor of Austria. Its weight is 1331/2
Vienna carats according to Schrauf, which would amount to about 134
French carats, the proportion in milligrams being 206.13:205.5, and not
to 139J as stated in the work quoted below. The value of the stone has
been variously estimated at £40,000, £50,000, and even £155,682. (See
E. Streeter, The Great Diamonds of the World, p. 161 ff., and Murray, On the Diamond, second
edition, London, 1839.) The figure which the latter gives of the Matan
diamond is really of Tavernier's ' Grand Duke ', not so the figure
purporting to be of itself.
2 The equivalent of 2,608,335 livres is £195,625 2s. 6d.
3
Linschoten (ii. 136) has iraa, both are from the Sanskrit hira, the
term now used in Hindustani, and some other languages in India.
4
Almas is believed to be closely related with the adamas of the Greeks
and Romans—the latter term, however, does not appear to have been
originally applied to the diamond, but to corundum or steel. (See New English Diet., s. v.j
' It has already been shown that Methold had actually visited the mines before Tavernier. (See p. 56, n.) And it is probable that Caesar Fredericke had been at Rammalakota, which he describes, about the year 1570. (See Hakluyt, Voyages, Everyman's Library, iii. 216.)
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