able
to make valuable discoveries it would lead to a reversal of their hard
sentences. They wandered about for some six years, until at last,
coming in a dry season to the exposed river bed of the Abaite, a few
leagues to the north of the Rio Plata, they there washed for gold and
discovered the big diamond.
They
forthwith consulted a priest about the course they should take, who
advised them to trust to the mercy of the State, and himself
accompanied them to Villa Rica, where the Governor, on hearing the
story and seeing the evidence of their good fortune, suspended their
sentences.
The
gem was then sent to Rio de Janeiro, whence a frigate took it to
Lisbon. The priest who had originally advised the surrender of the gem
went with it to Portugal, presumably hoping for preferment, and the
Portuguese king was sufficiently impressed with his new possession to
pardon the exiles, confirming the Governor's action, and advance the
pertinacious cleric. The stone is, however, said to have been allowed
to remain in its uncut state, and Rome Delisle gave its value at 300
millions sterling, an astronomically large and almost incredible sum.
In his memoir on this diamond Murray says that Don John VI had a hole
drilled in the stone and wore it suspended round his neck on gala days.
Of its recent history there is none to say. Presumably it is still in
the Portuguese treasury, for all the information to the contrary, but
no outsider knows for certain. Enquiries are not appreciated by those
in authority, possibly because, as some suggest, the gem is not a
diamond at all, but a white topaz. If that were indeed true, successive
Portuguese Governments may have thought it politic to preserve the leg-
