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196 THE SANCI.
was
a Prince. The Maharajah of Puttiala became its owner. When on the
first of January, 1876, the Prince of Wales held a Grand Chapter of the
Star of India at Calcutta, he beheld, in the turban of one of the
Rajahs, the diamond of his ancestors. The Maharajah, says the London Times correspondent,
wore five hundred thousand dollars worth of the Empress Eugenie's
diamonds on his white turban, and the Great Sanci as pendant. These
were supplemented by emeralds, pearls and rubies on his neck and breast.
Of
all the diamonds whose history we have followed this one certainly
carries off the palm for the variety of its adventures. The Koh-i-Nur
is an older stone and has belonged to many kings, but the different
countries in Asia are, to our minds at least, much less clearly
distinguished from one another than our European states. For a diamond
to pass from the hands of an Afghan chief to a Persian Shah seems less
of a change than for it to go from the
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