most glorious gem in the crown of the Virgin in the Cathedral
of Toledo.
The Prussian, Saxon, and papal crowns contain emeralds of
remarkable size and beauty; Austria possesses one of immense
proportions, said to weigh two thousand carats. There is a
fine specimen belonging to the Townshend collection, which
measures nearly half an inch across, and another, owned in
London, possesses a magnitude of two and seven-eighths
inches by two and five-eighths.
The famous emerald-mines of Mount Zebarah — " Mountain
of Emeralds," — between the Nile and the Red Sea, mentioned
by Strabo and other ancient writers, have recently been discovered by M. Caillaud, who found them nearly in the same
condition in which they were left by the engineers of the time
of the Ptolemies. They had been excavated to a great depth,
and contained lateral passages, causeways, and other appliances
of modern mining, together with various implements employed
in the works lying about. Strabo speaks of them as mines of
emeralds and other precious stones extracted by the Arabs.
M. Caillaud, deputed by the Viceroy of Egypt to reopen
the mines, discovered that they had been worked to the depth
of eight hundred feet, and that a part of them afforded space
for four hundred workmen at once. Very extensive quarries
were found seven leagues from Mount Zebarah, comprising
more than one thousand excavations. The emeralds were
deposited in a black, micaceous clay-slate penetrating the
mass of granite, and sometimes in granite and hyalin quartz :
they were of a pale green color and full of flaws. They are
used in Cairo and Constantinople for jewelry and for decorating the imperial equipages.
The emerald has been discovered in the Ural and the Altai
Mountains within the present century. The first stone found
