THE "PITT" OR "REGENT" DIAMOND. 83
Besides,
it is almost beyond belief that a man whose business was the dealing
.in Diamonds, and who had visited India expressly for that purpose,
should not have understood the trae relation of the rati to the carat,
a weight that he was every day using, and thus have cheated himself to
so exaggerated an extent in all his dealings with the native merchants.
And what, with me, settles the matter, his estimate of the rati is
almost the same as that given a hundred years before him by the
well-informed Garcias ab Horto, who puts it at three grains of wheat,
and the Portuguese carat at four.*
THE "PITT" OR "REGENT."
This
stone, found at Puteal, 45 leagues from the city of Golconda, was next
to Mirgimola's the largest on record, weighing in the rough 410 carats.
It was bought by Governor Pitt of Fort St. George, Madras, from the
Parsee merchant Jamchund, according to his own statement, for the sum
of 12,500l., and not from "the honest factor," to whose agency
Pope assigned its acquisition, to Pitt's infinite annoyance. To cut it
into a perfect brilliant, in London, occupied two entire years at a
cost of 5000l. ; but which was nearly covered by the value of the fragments separated in shaping it, which amounted to 3500l. This operation reduced its weight to 136-7/8 carats,
