rajahs
and shahs had snatched it in the first spoils of victory, or tried to
extort it by starvation or blinding or boiling oil or some other device
of torture; and the adventurous and bloodstained career of this famous
diamond is only one of many like
passages,
for every precious stone of renown has a trail like a meteor. Some have
gleamed weirdly in the eye-sockets of idols in Indian temples or
flashed from the splendid thrones of emperors, or glittered in golden
basins amid gems of every hue heaped up in tribute, or sparkled on the
crests of warriors, the turbans of rajahs, the breasts of begums, and
the sandals of courtesans. To win them temples have been profaned,
palaces looted, thrones torn to fragments, princes tortured, women
strangled, guests poisoned by their hosts, and slaves disembowelled.
Some have fallen on battlefields, to be picked up by ignorant
freebooters and sold for a few silver coins, and others have been cast
into ditches by thieves or swallowed by guards, or sunk in shipwrecks,
or broken to powder in moments of frenzy. No strain of fancy in an
Arabian tale has outstripped the marvels of fact in the diamond's
history.
Among
all the stones that our world's fancy holds precious, the diamond
stands preeminent. It is pure crystallized carbon. It crystallizes in
almost all the forms of the isometric system, commonly the octahedral
or dodecahedral, and frequently with curved faces.1 Two pyramids with triangular sides and a
1
The South African diamonds differ in appearance from those found in
India or Brazil. They are brighter, and for the most part without any
incrustation, and
