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Ch. 1: The Ancient Adamas

Ch. 1: The Ancient Adamas Page of 449 Ch. 2: The Traditional Ophir Land Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
THE ANCIENT ADAMAS
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treasures of the palaces of the Pharaohs and of Darius, or the camp of the Ptolemies, come into Europe on the neck of a vulgar pro-consul's wife to glitter at every gladiator's butchery at the amphitheatre; then pass in a Gothic ox-wagon to an Arab seraglio at Seville; and so back to its native India, to figure in the peacock throne of the Great Mogul; to be bought by an Armenian for a few rupees from an English soldier, and so, at last, come hither."
The illustrations of the historic diamonds shown in this chapter have been made from photographs of facsimiles of the stones, and are the exact sizes of the originals.
Dana and other mineralogists mention that diamonds in the form of cubes have been found. While one might expect to find diamond crystals in cubic form, as this is the fundamental form of the isometric system, still very few specimens have come under my own observation, and none until within the past two years. De Beers Company's Premier Mine has produced most of these, while a few are reported as coming from Bultfontein. The usual form of these diamonds is a cube with bevelled edges, representing the combination oo O 2 and 00 O 00. See illustration below.
Ch. 1: The Ancient Adamas Page of 449 Ch. 2: The Traditional Ophir Land
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