work of the ninth century, and in the celebrated crown of St. Stephen of Hungary, made in the tenth.
There
was a very fine emerald in the tiara of Julius II., who died in 1513,
thirty-two years before the discovery of Peru. And, finally, Benvenuto
Cellini, when speaking of the antique gems which he bought from the
country-people of Kome, describes an emerald with an engraving, said to
be antique, representing the head of a horse.
The
discovery of America really furnished all Europe with a great quantity
of those gems which of all the Western stones are the most beautiful.
When
Pizarro conquered Peru, he went as far as Cal-camalca, a considerable
city, whoso chief offered him many gold and silver vases, with a
quantity of large emeralds, which had probably been obtained from the
mines of Warta. But this did not satisfy the cupidity of the invaders,
who forcibly took the treasures which for ages had been accumulating in
the principal temple of that empire. Amongst the rest, they got a great
number of these gems, as the priests persuaded the people that the
goddess Esmeralda, to whom the temple was dedicated, dwelt in an
emerald the size of an ostrich egg, and that no offering was more
acceptable to her than these stones.
The price of emeralds is very variable, depending on the size, colour and clearness.
A
very pure and perfect Oriental emerald, of six carats, may be worth
10,000 lire ; and there are some of more than fifty carats, which are
not worth more
