248 THE CURIOUS LORE OF PRECIOUS STONES
the
precious relics of the Christian world, was only exhibited on high
feast days, when the Indians nocked to the shrine from far and near,
bringing gifts to the goddess. The wily priests especially recommended
the donation of. emeralds, saying that these were the daughters of the
goddess, who would be well pleased to see her offspring. In this way an
immense store of emeralds rewarded the efforts of the priests, and on
the conquest of Peru all these fine stones fell into the hands of
Pedro de Alvarado,38 Garcilasso de la Vega, and their
companions. The mother emerald, however, had been so cleverly concealed
by the priests of the shrine that the Spaniards never succeeded in
gaining possession of it. Many of the other emeralds were destroyed
because of the ignorance and stupidity of some of their new owners,
who, supposing that the test of a true emerald was its ability to
withstand hard blows, laid the stones on an anvil and hammered them to
pieces. The old and entirely false notion that the genuine diamond
could endure this treatment may have suggested the unfortunate
test.....
;
.Garcilasso likens the growth of the emerald in its mine to that of a
fruit on a tree, and he believed that it gradually acquired its
beautiful green hue, that part of the crystal nearest the sun being the
first to acquire color. He notes an interesting specimen found in
P'eru, half of which was colorless like glass, while the other half was
a. brilliant green; this he compares with a half-ripened fruit.39 : The remarkable jade adze, generally known as the
38 Garcilasso de la Vega, " Histoire des Incas," Fr. trans, by Jean Baudoin, Amsterdam, 1715, vol. ii, pp. 255-257.
39 Ibid., p. 347. . . .: ....'..
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