PRECIOUS STONES 87
Two
fields are worked west and northwest of Sydney, one on the Lachlan
River and the other along the banks of the Macquarie and its
tributaries. Diamonds are also found about Bingara on the Gwydir River
and near the coast to the east. Also on the coast to the north, and
south of Brisbane. Also near the coast south of Sydney. A few have
been found in Victoria, and West and Northwestern Australia. They
usually occur in the neighborhood of the gold-fields and tin-drifts,
although the yield has been less in Victoria, the " Golden Colony,"
than in New S^ith Wales.
The crystals are small, very hard, and cut to exceptionally brilliant stones. They are found in old river-gravels.
Occasionally
diamonds are found while washing gold in the placer diggings of British
Guiana. Prospecting parties went from Georgetown up the Magaruni River
in 1891, and obtained a few crystals, but no further organized effort
to find more was made in that country until lately clearings were made
along the Mazarine River. During the six months after the work was
commenced eight thousand two hundred and twenty-seven small diamonds,
weighing seven hundred and sixty-seven carats, were found. They were
valued at two thousand pounds.
July
5, 1829, the first European diamond was found in the district of the
Hiitte Bissersk, in the Urals, Russia. But few, probably one hundred
and fifty to one hundred and sixty, have since been found, the largest
of which did not weigh quite three carats.
A
few diamonds have been found in the United States,— in Georgia, North
Carolina, South Carolina, Southern Virginia, California, Oregon,
Idaho, Montana, and, it is claimed, also in Kentucky and Indiana.
Except the " Dewey" or " Morrisey" diamond, which weighed in the rough
twenty-three and three-fourths carats, and eleven and
eleven-sixteenths after cutting, they are all small and of little
value. There have been no discoveries to warrant a systematic search
