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Ch. 11: Home of the Diamond

Ch. 10: Diamond Page of 401 Ch. 11: Home of the Diamond Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
CHAPTER XI.
HOME OF THE DIAMOND.
India. — This country, the source of a large part of the
luxuries of the East, and the home, par excellence, of the most
valuable of the precious stones, has always supplied the rest of
the world, to a great extent, with its ornaments ; consequently,
it became the great mart for the traffic in gems. The diamond
employed for personal decoration by the ancient people of this
venerable empire, as we learn from their literature, must have
been an article of commerce among the Asiatics at a very
early period in the world's history, though the first authentic
account of the diamond mines of India, by a European, is
comparatively modern. Garcias, a Portuguese traveller, first
made known their existence, in 1565, but the first published
record was made by Jean Baptiste Tavernier, a French
jeweller and famous traveller of the seventeenth century, who
visited four different mines, which he describes at some length.
The Raolconda mine, — not Golconda, as is sometimes said ;
there are no diamond mines there, — was discovered more than
four hundred years ago. The soil was found by this explorer
to be full of rocks crossed by fissures enclosing sand with
diamonds, but they were often flawed, a defect which the
native lapidaries ingeniously concealed by facets, and, remarks
this shrewd observer, a stone dressed in this manner was
pretty sure to be imperfect. The cutting was accomplished
with great facility, but the polishing was inferior to European
finish.
197
Ch. 10: Diamond Page of 401 Ch. 11: Home of the Diamond
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