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204 NATURAL HISTORY OF GEMS.
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virtue;
a piece no larger than a half-thaler selling at 100 crowns, whilst a
mass of sufficient dimensions to make a good-sized cup, then in the
hands of the imperial jeweller, was valued at 1600 thalers.*
The
same author states that it was then brought from New Spain, and quotes
Monardes (a Spanish physician, whose treatise was published in 1567) as
to the ancient estimation in which the natives had held it : " The
Indians wear the Nephrite, shaped into various figures, some ot fishes,
some like birds' heads or parrots' beaks, others spherical like
rosary-beads, but all of them perforated, because from time immemorial
they wear them as pendants, against all diseases of the kidneys and
pains in the stomach, in which complaints these ornaments are highly
esteemed for their efficacy." De Boot again mentions (under Sma· ragdoprasius} that
the West Indians, the Caribs, wrought that particular stone, which some
held to be the only genuine Nephrite, into a cylinder, enlarged at one
end, oi the size of the little finger, which was worn by their chiefs
as a badge of rank, through a hole pierced in the lower lip. He also
asserts a very singular thing, that the true Nephrite was then found in
Spain and also in Bohemia ; a fact which he adds was but little known,
because the ignorant lapidaries mistook it for the Smaragdoprase, or
for the green Jasper. Strange to say this most obdurate material has
held the same place amongst certain barbarian races, though the most
remotely situated from each other, that was occupied by the Onyx
amongst the most refined nations of antiquity. The Mexicans, when first
discovered, employed the Jade as their chief jewel, before the Emerald,
and had
* De Laet mentions having seen in England a mass as hig as a man's head, of a milky greenish colour ; lately brought from the river Amazon, where this stone was found in the greatest abundance. The owner asked 50Z. sterling for it : a vast sum in James I.'s days.
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