80 RUBIES IN EUROPE book ii
found
in certain places, but more balas's rubies ' than others, many
spinelles, sapphires, and topazes. There are gold mines in these
mountains, and rhubarb 2 also comes from these places,
which is highly esteemed, because it does not spoil so quickly as that
which grows in other parts of Asia.
There
are also in Europe two places from whence coloured stones are obtained,
viz. Bohemia and Hungary. In Bohemia there is a mine where pebbles of
different sizes are obtained, some being as large as an egg, others the
size of the fist, and on breaking them some of them are found to
contain rubies 3 as hard and as beautiful as those of Pegu.
I remember being one day at Prague with the Viceroy of Hungary, in
whose service I then was, as he washed his hands with General
Wallenstein, Duke of Friedland, before sitting down at table, observing
on the General's hand a ruby he admired for its beauty. And he admired
it much more when Wallenstein told him that these stones came from
Bohemia ; and, in fact, at the Viceroy's departure the General
presented him with about 100 of these pebbles in a basket. When we
returned to Hungary the Viceroy had them all broken, and out of the
whole of the flints rubies were found only in two, one of them weighing
about 5 carats and the other about 1 carat.
which
appears to be undoubted. Thus Crawfurd says they are found in hills at
Chan-ta-bun in Lat. 12° on the east side of the Gulf. They constitute a
rigidly-guarded royal monopoly, but are much inferior in quality to the
Ava stones. (Embassy, 4to., London, 1828, p. 419.) No recent
account of rubies in Cambodia has been traced. ' Rubies are found in
Siam, at several localities in the provinces of Chantabon and Krat,'
and at Moung Klung (Ency. Brit., xxiii. 812).
1
The distinction made by our author between ' balass' rubies, and
spinels indicates that already in his time the name had been
transferred from its true original application to spinels—to rubies of
a particular shade of colour, probably light, and resembling the
spinel. (See vol. i, p. 303 n.)
2
This was probably China rhubarb, which thus found an outlet to Europe.
Afterwards it mainly came through Russia. A very interesting account of
the rhubarb trade from the earliest times, though Cambodia is not
mentioned there, will be found in Hanbury's and Fluckiger's Pharmacographia, Art. ' Rhubarb' ; Watt, Commercial Products, 912 f. ; Yule, Marco Polo, ii. 144; Bernier, 425 ; Barbosa, ed. Dames, i. 93 f.
3 These rubies, so'called, were doubtless only garnets.
