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world
the women content themselves, in lieu of jewels, with pieces of
crystal, beads of false coral, or yellow amber, of which they make
necklaces and bracelets to wear on their arms and legs.
The
Portuguese, then, in all the places in India where they are in
authority, sell pearls by a weight which they call chegos, but buy them
of the merchants, according to the places from whence they bring them,
by carats, 'abbâs, or ratis. The table which follows shows the ratio
between these chegos and carats.
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1
With such an extraordinary table of equivalents one may easily
understand the difficulty that is experienced in reconciling statements
about weights and measures. If 1 carat equals 5 chegos, it might be
supposed that 20 carats would equal 100 chegos, and 40 carats 200 ; but
it will be seen that the equivalents above given are 277 3/4 and 1111
1/4 respectively.
This
table has been explained by Mr. A. Rambaut, Assistant Astronomer Royal
for Ireland. For the first six equivalents the equation  , represents the relation when y = the number of chegos and χ the
number of carats, subject, however, to the condition that wherever an
uneven number of eighths of a carat occurs, one is rejected. If this
table isfollowed the precise figures of Ta vernier's table are
obtained. Prom 7 carats onwards a very simple rule is followed to
obtain the number of chegos. It is to multiply the number of carats by
10, divide by 12, and square the result—thus 36 χ 10 -r 12 = 30, which
squared = 900. There is one exception to this rule in the case of 25
carats, which in the table is given equal to 430 chegos, whereas it
ought to be, when calculated as above, 434-05 chegos. This discrepancy
is probably due to a misprint, so that the table should be corrected
accordingly.
On the difficult word Chego Mr. M. Longworth Dames writes : " I find that the word Chego is in Dalgado's Glossario Luso-Asiatico. It
appears to be an ingenious method of combining weight with size,
according to Ficalho in his note on a passage in his edition of Garcia
da Orta's Collo-
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