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PRECIOUS STONES.
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Very young persons were often employed in some departments of the business, and soon acquired the habit of judging
the value of a stone with remarkable discernment. Rewards were offered for all specimens exceeding fourteen carats weight, but this inducement was powerless in preventing frequent thefts ; consequently, some of the best specimens were appropriated by the miners. All diamonds above ten carats in weight were reserved for the royal treasury. The Raolconda mines were at that time considered the richest in India, if not in the world, and employed thirty thousand laborers at once to work them. The Coulour, Colore, or Gani mine, the former name received
from the Persians, the latter from the natives, was discovered about a century after the Raolconda ; both are in the south central part of India, and several days journey from Golconda. The Gani diamonds were accidentally discovered while digging a piece of ground for agricultural purposes, by a native laborer, whose first prize was a stone of twenty-five carats, soon followed by a plentiful harvest, which, yielded some enormous gems, including the Great Mogul, and another, weighing nine hundred carats, presented to the Emperor Aurungzeeb. Though the Coulour or Gani mines were remarkable for the number and size of the stones, yet these were not generally of the purest water, many of them being tinged with green or yellow. There were about sixty thousand persons, including all
ages and both sexes, engaged in these mines at the time of Tavernier's first visit. The diamond localities in the region of Raolconda were once
numerous ; this traveller mentions as many as twenty mines, but since his day they have all been abandoned except two or three. The Punnah beds, in north central India, situated on a |
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