hundred thousand dollars, while twenty diamond buttons worn
in the doublet of Joseph I. have been estimated at a sum
-exceeding four hundred thousand dollars.
The Spanish treasury is no less replete with this precious
stone, if the report can be credited that Queen Isabella II.
displayed upon her person, at the public reception of an ambassador from Morocco, diamonds valued at two million dollars.
Russia. — This country is remarkably affluent in diamonds
and other precious stones, which include many of extraordinary
beauty and historical renown. The reason for this appears in
the right of the crown to all the gems found in the productive
mines of Siberia and the Urals, — a monopoly which has
enriched the collection beyond the power of computation.
Bayard Taylor refers to the great number of royal jewels seen
at Moscow and St. Petersburg, and adds : " The soul of all the
fiery roses of Persia lives in these rubies ; the freshness of all
velvet swards in these emeralds ; the bloom of southern seas in
these sapphires ; the essence of a thousand harvest moons in
these necklaces of pearls."
The geographical position of Russia has given her great
facilities for the acquisition of oriental gems; while her conquest and absorption of smaller states have increased her stores
of crown jewels to an almost unlimited extent. Uncounted
wealth in precious stones, crowns, thrones, sceptres, globes,
and other emblems of royal power, is deposited in the tower of
the Kremlin, where the crowns of the czars and the regalia
of the different peoples that constitute this complex nationality,
comprising those of Siberia, Poland, Kazan, and other provinces, are kept. Some of the imperial diadems are exceedingly
rich in diamonds, one alone comprising two thousand five hundred and thirty-six, all of superior excellence. This jewel is
surmounted by an immense ruby, purchased at Pekin for one
