300 NATURAL HISTORY OF PRECIOUS STONES, &c.
(Gomara, Chron. c. 184.) For one of
these gems some Genoese merchants at Seville had offered Cortez 40,000
ducats. The queen of Charles V. had previously intimated her desire of
acquiring some of these precious curiosities : and the disappointment
she experienced, through the preference shown by the adventurer for
his bride, made her his enemy for life, the effects of which she did
not fail to make him experience on subsequent occasions.* Another
monster Emerald was that accompanying the third letter of Cortez to the
Emperor, in May, 1525; it was of fine quality, four-sided, and tapering
to a point like a pyramid, as large as the palm of the hand at the base.
The largest Peruvian Emerald
obtained at the Conquest was the one that fell into Pizarro's hands on
his first entrance into the province of Coaque, the region of the "
Esmeraldas." A large number of those made prize of on the same occasion
were smashed by the soldiers with hammers, the test of the true Emerald
being its infrangi-bility according to their chaplain, Eeginaldo de
Pedianza. The Emeralds not supporting this test were considered mere
pastes, and reckoned valueless ; and consequently were collected
without difficulty for himself by the astute and more knowing friar.
Pedro
d'Aragona, an early Viceroy of Peru, dedicated to Our Lady of Loretto a
mass of quartz studded with numerous crystals of the finest-coloured
Emeralds, some an inch in diameter (0.027 m.) So says Caire, who had
examined it.
Garcilasso de la Vega relates that the chief deity worshipped in the city of Manta (Peru) was an Emerald nearly
