82
EMERALDS book ii
before the discovery of America they could not believe otherÂwise] \ and
the majority of jewellers and artisans, when they see an emerald of
high colour inclining to black, are still accustomed to call it an
oriental emerald, in which they are mistaken [since the East has never
produced them]. I confess I have not been able to find the places in
our Continent from whence these kinds of stones are obtained. But I am
assured that the East has never produced them, either on the mainland
or on the islands ; and having made a strict inquiry during all my
journeys, no one has been able to indicate any place in Asia where they
are found. It is true that since the discovery of America some few
rough stones have often been carried by the Southern Sea from Peru to
the Philippine Islands, whence they have been exported in due course to
Europe ; but that does not justify these being called ' oriental', nor
support the view that their source is in the East, since both before
this discovery and this passage there was no want of emeralds for
disposal throughout the whole of Europe, and because at present, having
left this route, they are all conveyed by the North Sea (Atlantic) to
Spain.2 In the year 1660 I saw 20 per cent, less price
India
the emerald, though highly esteemed, and well known at a very remote
epoch, does not appear to have been found there. All records, and
indeed many might be quoted since the times of the Ptolemies, point to
certain mines in Egypt, especially at Mount Zabara on the Red Sea, as
having afforded the supply. Prof. Maskelyn, Edin. Rev, 1866, p.
244, records that when this locality was visited by Sir G. Wilkinson he
found several emeralds of pale and poor quality (Wilkinson, Ancient Egyptians, ed.
1878, i. 33). The matrix was mica schist. Among other authors who have
mentioned Egypt as supplying emeralds to India, the following are the
principal: Pliny, the Monk Cosmas, circa A. D. 545, Masudi, and
the Muhammadan travellers of the ninth century. The emeralds of Siberia
do not appear to have been discovered before the present century. P.
Leguat (Voyage, ii. 269) denies that they are found in Java.
1 The passages in square brackets do not occur in the 1678 edition of Tavernier, but are in that of 1713.
a
The foregoing passage is thus recast in the edition of 1713 : ' I
believe that long before that part of the world which is called the
West Indies had been discovered, emeralds were carried from Asia into
Europe ; but they came from mines in the Kingdom of Peru. For the
Americans, before we had knowledge of them, trafficked in the Philippine
