But
their hopes of immortality were mocked by later events in a world that
knows the dead are powerless. The great stone was recut. In Shah
Jehan's time it had weighed 116 carats, but when the two Arabic
inscriptions on either side of it had been destroyed, its weight was
reduced to seventy-two carats. In this state it was purchased by the
Gaekwar of Baroda for £ 35,000.
Another
great diamond also in the treasury of Baroda is one less well known,
but flawless. It is called "English Dresden" after the merchant who
sold it and who claimed for it, as another did for the Porter-Rhodes,
that it was the most perfect stone for its size in the world. He also
claimed that for colour it excelled even the Koh-i-noor. In the rough
the English Dresden weighed 119-1/2 carats, but cutting and polishing brought it down to seventy-six and a half carats. The Gaekwar of Baroda paid £ 40,000 for it, so it is said.
One
of the most recent of famous gems is the "Jonker", said to be amongst
the four largest diamonds ever to come to light. It was dug from a
muddy hole not far from Pretoria by a coloured man in the service of
an Afrikander named Jacobus Jonker. Sir Ernest Oppenheimer paid £ 60,000
for it. Like most of these extraordinarily large stones in the rough,
the Jonker, too, showed defects which made it advisable to split it
into several pieces. One of the minor pieces when cut weighed about
twenty carats and was sold for a large sum to a London business man in
April, 1938. Although I only heard of the deal going through as I was
leaving my office in the evening, one of the leading London papers had
already got wind of it and
