That birds enlivened the amber-forest might well have been supposed, as

there was no want of fruits and mealy seeds for their subsistence; but

their existence is proved beyond all doubt by a feather which Dr.

Berendt discovered in a piece of pale yellow transparent amber. To what

bird may this remarkable relic of the past have belonged, and when may

the wing to which it was attached while living have cleaved the air?

No fish or reptile has ever yet been found in amber, however frequently

fraud may have attempted to imbed them in a resinous case for the

deception of ignorance. It is, indeed, hardly conceivable that the finny

and agile inhabitants of the waters could ever have allowed themselves

to be caught in the resins of a terrestrial forest, though some small

and less active reptiles may occasionally have been entrapped.

Of all the insects and spiders, and the more rare crustaceans inclosed

in amber, not a single specimen belongs to a species of the present

time; but though the species have disappeared, almost all the animals of

those primitive woods, as far as they are known, belong to genera of the

present time, so that upon the whole the proportion of the still

flourishing genera to such as are extinct is as eight to one.

It is remarkable that, along with many specimens similar to the present

indigenous types, some are found with a tropical character, whose

representatives are at present existing in the Brazilian forests, while

others are completely without any analogous forms in the present

creation; as, for instance, those strange Arachnidans, the Archæi,

which, armed with toothed mandibles longer than the head, and provided

with strong raptorial claws, must have been most formidable enemies to

the contemporaneous insects.

Amber was held in high estimation by the nations of antiquity, and

reckoned among the gems on account of its rarity and value. Ornaments

made of this substance have been found among the vestiges of the

lacustrine dwellings of Switzerland, and afford a convincing proof that

even in prehistoric times it was an article of commerce. Many centuries

before the Christian era the Phœnician navigators purchased amber from

the German tribes on the coast of the North Sea, these, in their turn,

having obtained it, probably by barter, from the Baltic lands. Thus from

hand to hand the beautiful fossil resin found its way to the courts of

the Indian princes on the Ganges, and of the Persian kings in Susa and

Persepolis. According to Barth[69] the search for the Amber Land was

most probably the aim of the journey which the celebrated traveller

Pytheas of Massilia undertook 330 years before Christ, in the times of

Alexander the Great.

Footnote 69:

‘Urgeschichte Deutschlands.’

Plato and Aristotle, Herodotus and Æschylus, have described and lauded

in prose and verse the wonderful properties of amber, which was not only

highly valued for its beauty, its aromatic smell, and its electro-

magnetic power, but also for the medicinal virtues ascribed to it by a

credulous age.

Under Nero the wealthy Roman senators and knights lavished immense sums

on decorating the seats and tables, the doors and columns, of their

state-rooms with amber, ivory, and tortoiseshell; and even at a later

period, under Theodosius the Great, when the declining empire was

already verging to its fall, large quantities still continued to be

imported from Germany.

Though no longer so highly prized as by the ancients, amber still

continues to be a source of considerable profit to the Baltic provinces.

Almost all the amber collected throughout the land finds its way to the

seaports of Königsberg and Dantzig, where it is sorted according to its

size and quality. Good round pieces of a shape fit to be worked into

ornaments, and weighing about half an ounce, are worth from nine to ten

dollars per pound; a good piece of a pound weight fetches as much as

fifty dollars; and first-rate specimens of a still more considerable

size, and faultless in form and colour, are worth at least one hundred

dollars, or even more, per pound. A mass weighing thirteen pounds has

been found, the value of which at Constantinople was said to be no less

than 30,000 dollars. Smaller pieces from the size of a bean to that of a

pea, such as are fit for the beads of necklaces or rosaries, are valued

at from two to four shillings per pound, and the grit or amber rubbish

which is used for varnishing, fumigating, or the manufacture of oil and

acid of amber, is worth no more than from three to eighteen pence. It is

much to be regretted that amber, when melted or dissolved, is incapable

of coalescing into larger masses with the retention of all its former

qualities, as then its value would be considerably greater. Large amber

vases would then ornament the apartments of the wealthy, and the corpses

of the illustrious dead might repose in transparent shrines, and their

features be preserved from decay for many ages.

The trade in rough amber is almost exclusively in the hands of the Jews,

who purchase it from the amber-fishers, or are interested in the

diggings which are made on most of the littoral estates. Through the

agency of the smaller collectors, it is then concentrated in the hands

of the rich traders, who sell or export it in larger assortments.

The best qualities only of translucent, milky, or semi-opaque amber find

a ready sale in the Oriental market, where they are almost exclusively

used for making the mouth-pieces to pipes, and these form an essential

constituent of the Turkish tschibouque; for there is a current belief

among the Eastern nations that amber is incapable of transmitting

infection.

Every Turkish pasha sets his pride on a rich collection of pipes, as it

is the hospitable custom of the Orient to offer a cup of coffee and a

hookah or tschibouque to a stranger; and this fashion is of no small

importance to the amber-dealers of the Baltic. A somewhat inferior

quality is sent by way of Copenhagen and London to China, Japan, and to

the East and West Indies.

Russia also consumes a considerable quantity of amber, which is very

elegantly turned or manufactured in St. Petersburg and Polangen, and

thence finds its way over the whole empire. Here, as among the Turks,

only the translucent and perfectly opaque white qualities are esteemed;

the latter being chiefly employed for the manufacture of the calculating

tables which are commonly used by the Russian merchants. Necklaces of

transparent amber are in great request among the peasantry of Hanover

and Brunswick, where strings of pale-coloured crystalline beads weighing

from half a pound to a pound are worth from fifty to sixty dollars.

Amber of a deeper colour and of a rounded form is chiefly exported to

Spain, France, and Italy.

Thus each country chooses according to its taste among the abundant

amber-masses which extinct forests furnish to the inhabitants of the

Baltic coast-lands, and which trade, through a hundred known and unknown

channels, scatters over the whole surface of the globe.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

MISCELLANEOUS MINERAL SUBSTANCES USED IN THE INDUSTRIAL ARTS.

Alum—Alum Mines of Tolfa—Borax—The Suffioni in the Florentine Lagoons—

China Clay: how formed?—Its Manufacture in Cornwall—Plumbago—Emery—

Tripolite.

Alum, a double salt, consisting of sulphate of alumina (the peculiar

earth of clay) and sulphate of potash, or sulphate of alumina and

sulphate of ammonia, was known to the ancients, who used it in medicine,

as it is now used, and also as a mordant in dyeing, as at the present

day. Their alum was chiefly a natural production, which was best and

most abundantly obtained in Egypt. In later times Phocis, Lesbos, and

other places supplied the Turks with alum for their magnificent Turkey

red; and the Genoese merchants imported large quantities from the Levant

into Western Europe for the dyers of red cloth. In 1459 Bartholomew

Perdix, a Genoese merchant who had been in Syria, observed a stone

suitable for alum in the Island of Ischia, and burning it with a good

result, was the first who introduced the manufacture into Europe. About

the same time John di Castro learnt the method at Constantinople, and

manufactured alum at Tolfa. This discovery of the mineral near Civita

Vecchia was considered so important by John di Castro that he announced

it to the Pope as a great victory over the Turks, who annually took from

the Christians 300,000 pieces of gold for their dyed wool. The

manufacture of alum was then made a monopoly of the Papacy; and instead

of buying it as before from the East, it was considered a Christian duty

to obtain it only from the States of the Church. With the progress of

Protestantism, however, the manufacture began to spread to other

countries. Hesse-Cassel began to make alum in 1554, and in 1600 alum

slate was found near Whitby in Yorkshire.

Alum-stone is a rare mineral, which contains all the elements of the

salt, but mixed with other matters from which it must be freed. For this

purpose it is first calcined, then exposed to the weather, in heaps from

two to three feet high, which are continually kept moist by sprinkling

them with water. As the water combines with the alum, the stones crumble

down and fall eventually into a pasty mass, which must be lixiviated

with warm water, and allowed to settle in a large cistern. The clear

liquor on the surface, being drawn off, is to be evaporated and then

crystallised. A second crystallisation finishes the process, and

furnishes a marketable article. Thus the Roman alum is made; but its

production being far from enough for the supply of the world, the

greater portion of the alum found in British commerce is made from alum-

slate and analogous minerals, which contain only the elements of two of

the constituents, namely, clay and sulphur, and to which, therefore, the

alkaline ingredient must be added.

Borax, or Borate of Soda, is a substance extensively used in the glazes

of porcelain, and recently in the making of the most brilliant crystal

when combined with oxide of zinc. Formerly its chief supply was obtained

under the name of Tincal, from Thibet, where the crude product was dug

in masses from the edges and shallow parts of a salt lake; and, in the

course of a short time, the holes thus made were again filled. Crude

borax is also found in China, Persia, the Island of Ceylon, and in South

America; but at present by far the largest quantity used in commerce is

derived from the lagoons of Tuscany, where vapours charged with a minute

quantity of boracic acid rise from volcanic vents.

Before the discovery of this acid, in the time of the Grand Duke Leopold

I., by the chemist Hoefer, the fetid odour developed by the accompanying

sulphuretted hydrogen gas, and the disruptions of the ground occasioned

by the appearance of new suffioni or vents of vapour, had made the

superstitious natives regard them as a diabolical scourge, which they

vainly sought to remove by priestly exorcisms; but since 1818 the skill,

or rather the industrial genius, of Count Larderel, originally a simple

wandering merchant, has rendered these once abhorred fugitive vapours a

source of prosperity to the country, and were they to cease, all the

saints of the calendar would be invoked for their return.

By a most ingenious contrivance the waters which have been impregnated

by the volcanic steams are concentrated in leaden reservoirs by the heat

of the vapours themselves. The liquid, after having filled the first

compartment, is diffused very gradually into the second, then into the

third, and successively to the last, where it reaches such a state of

concentration that it deposits the crystallised acid, which the workmen

immediately remove by means of wooden scrapers. As this mode of gradual

concentration requires very few hands and no artificial heat, a

circumstance of great importance in a country without fuel, it may

almost be said that the acid is obtained without expense. The produce of

the lagoons amounts to more than 2,000 tons annually.

China-clay, or kaolin, a substance largely used for the fabrication of

porcelain and in paper-making, is quarried from amidst the granitic

masses of Dartmoor and Cornwall. It results from the decomposition of

felspar, the chief constituent of granite, and is thus, to a certain

point, provided by Nature. As it is, however, mixed with many grosser

particles, it requires repeated washings in a series of small pits or

tanks, until finally the water, still holding in suspension the finer

and purer china-clay, is admitted into larger ponds. Here the clay is

gradually deposited, and the clear water on the surface is from time to

time discharged by plug-holes on one side of the pond. This process is

continued until by repeated accumulations the ponds are filled. The clay

is then removed to large pans about a foot and a half in depth, where it

remains exposed to the air until it is nearly dry--a tedious operation

in our damp climate, as during the winter at least eight months are

necessary, whilst during the summer less than half the time suffices.

When the clay is in a fit state it is cut into oblong masses and carried

to the drying-house, a shed the sides of which are open wooden frames

constructed in the usual way for keeping off the rain, but admitting the

free passage of the air. The clay thus prepared is next scraped

perfectly clean, and is then packed up into casks and carried to one of

the adjacent ports, to be shipped for the potteries or the paper

manufactories. It is of a beautiful and uniform whiteness, and is

perfectly smooth and soft to the touch.

China-clay is an important article of commerce. The average annual

production of Cornwall and Devonshire amounts to 105,000 tons, and it is

reckoned that more than 200,000_l._ is annually spent in Cornwall in

obtaining and preparing it.

As in our times no branch of industry remains unimproved, a machine has

recently been invented which greatly accelerates the drying. The lumps

of china-clay are placed in the compartments of the drying machine, and

the whole is then rotated with great velocity. Thus the water is thrown

off by the operation of the centrifugal force, and two tons of clay can

be dried in five minutes.

The remarkable contrast between the extreme hardness and softness of the

same primitive rock is a curiosity of geology well worth notice. ‘A

stone,’ says the author of ‘Cornwall and its Mines,’ ‘is primevally

fused and cooled into as hard a substance as nature affords; so hard

that it paves our streets in long enduring slabs and blocks. Tens of

thousands of feet passing daily over it make no impression upon it.

Years of travel only see it smooth and shining. The men who pass over it

pass away, but it is still durable and unsoftened. Halls and mansions,

clubs and palaces, are built of it, and it endures unmarked by Time’s

devouring tooth. Is it not adamantine? But lo! what is that elegant cup

from which you are sipping your tea? It is of Worcestershire china, fine

and almost pellucid. Well, it is made out of the soft ruins of that very

granite whose endurance is proverbial. How remarkable that the best

types of firmness and fragility should be found in the same stone! What

the immense billows of the Atlantic are now beating upon, at the Land’s

End, without effect, that very substance has been found in such a

friable natural condition as to be finally moulded into that vase which

stands, elegant and admired, upon your mantelpiece, and which one puff

of wind, or one whirl of a lady’s silk dress, would dash down into

innumerable and unmendable fragments.’

Valuable kaolins are likewise found in China and Japan, in Saxony and

France; but the production is nowhere so extensive as in Cornwall.

The best quality of Plumbago, graphite, or black-lead, from which the

finest lead-pencils were made, was formerly abundantly supplied by the

mine of Borrowdale in Cumberland. At one time as much as 100,000_l._ was

realised in a year, the plumbago selling at forty-five shillings per

pound. Its high value, however, proved a source of loss to the

proprietors, for robbery found here a most profitable field. Even the

guard stationed over it by the owners was of little avail against

determined thieves, for about a century ago a body of miners broke into

the mines by main force, and held possession of it for a considerable

time. The treasure was then protected by a building consisting of four

rooms upon the ground floor, and immediately under one of them is the

opening, secured by a trapdoor, through which alone workmen could enter

the interior of the mountain. The mine has now, however, not been worked

for many years. Its ‘nests’ of plumbago seem to be exhausted, and it is

no longer an object capable of exciting greed, or worthy of anxious

protection. At present the mines of Batougal, near Irkutsk in East

Siberia, furnish large quantities of graphite of the very best quality;

and the plumbago from Ceylon is likewise highly esteemed. Inferior

qualities--employed for counteracting friction between rubbing surfaces

of wood or metal, for making crucibles and portable furnaces, for giving

a gloss to the surface of cast iron, &c. &c.--are supplied by Lower

Austria, Bohemia, Bavaria, Ticonderago in the State of New York, New

Jersey, Arendal in Norway, Finland, &c. &c.

The name black-lead applied to plumbago, from its resembling lead in its

external appearance, is very inappropriate, as not a particle of that

metal enters into its composition. Plumbago might indeed more justly be

called black-diamond, for, consisting, in its pure state, of carbon, it

is consequently but another form of the chief of precious stones.

The beautiful oriental ruby has likewise a humble cousin among the

useful minerals, as it is identical in composition with Emery, which,

since the remotest antiquity, has been employed for the grinding of

metals and glass. Emery was formerly almost exclusively furnished by the

island of Naxos; but since 1847 new mines have been discovered in some

other isles of the Grecian Archipelago, and in the neighbourhood of

Smyrna, from which place it is now imported in large quantities. In 1850

the total production of the East amounted to 1,500 tons. In 1864 a

considerable mine of emery was discovered at Chester (Hampden County,

Massachusetts), and as might be expected in a country where none of the

gifts of nature are allowed to be wasted, already provides for the wants

of all the manufactories of the United States.

Tripolite, a mineral related to the precious opal, as it consists almost

entirely of silica, is likewise used for polishing stones, metals, and

glasses. Its composition is truly remarkable, as it is actually formed

of the exuviæ, or rather the flinty envelopes of diatoms, which belong

to the minutest forms of vegetable life. They are recognised with such

distinctness in the microscope that the analogies between them and

living species may be readily traced, and in many cases there are no

appreciable differences between the living and the petrified. As every

cubic inch of tripolite contains millions of these exuviæ, and the stone

not seldom occurs in deposits often many miles in area, imagination is

at a loss to conceive the innumerable multitudes of organised atoms

whose flinty remains have been piled up in these masses of hard rock.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

CELEBRATED QUARRIES.

Carrara—The Pentelikon—The Parian Quarries—Rosso antico and Verde

antico—The Porphyry of Elfdal—The Gypsum of Montmartre—The Alabaster

of Volterra—The Slate Quarries of Wales—‘Princesses’ and ‘Duchesses’—

‘Ladies’ and ‘Fat Ladies’—St. Peter’s Mount near Maestricht—Egyptian

Quarries—Haggar Silsilis—The Latomiæ of Syracuse—A Triumph of Poetry.

Besides metals, and the various minerals mentioned in the previous

chapter, the solid earth-rind furnishes an inexhaustible supply of

marbles, slates, and stones for building or paving; and their extraction

occupies a vast number of industrious hands.

In a popular work on geology, published some years ago, Mr. Burat

informs us that about 70,000 persons were employed in the 18,000 more or

less important quarries at that time worked in France, and that the

produce of their labour amounted to a value of more than 2,000,000_l._

There can be no doubt that the quarries of England or Germany are at

least equally productive, and thus a very moderate estimate leads us to

the conclusion that the quarries of Europe, from those which furnish the

costliest marble to those which yield the commonest building-stone,

employ at least half a million of workmen, and produce an annual value

of no less than 12,000,000_l._, a sum which is probably doubled or

trebled before the heavy materials can be placed in the hands of the

consumer. A land ribbed with stone, like England, has therefore a

considerable advantage over a flat alluvial plain, like Holland, as it

possesses in its rocky foundations a source of wealth which nature has

denied to the latter.

Though several other stones, such as granite and porphyry, are

susceptible of a fine polished surface, and serve for the decoration of

palaces and churches, yet marble or pure compact limestone is chiefly

used for ornamental purposes, both on account of its beautifully

variegated tints, and its inferior hardness, which allows it to be more

easily worked. Our Derbyshire and Devonshire quarries supply a great

variety of richly coloured marbles; but the best material for the

sculptor is supplied by the limestone mountains of Carrara, which

furnish a homogeneous marble of the purest white, with a fine granular

texture, resembling that of loaf sugar. These far-famed quarries, which

were worked by the ancients, having been opened in the time of Julius

Cæsar, are situated between Spezzia and Lucca, in the Alpe Apuana, a

small mountain-group no less remarkable for its bold and sharp outlines

than for its almost total isolation from the monotonous chain of the

Apennines, from which it is separated by a wide semicircular plain.

Where the Alpe Apuana faces the sea, it is chiefly formed of magnesian

and glimmer slate, in which large masses of limestone are imbedded; but

the more inland part of the group belongs entirely to the limestone

formation, and abounds in romantic scenery and noble peaks towering to a

height of six thousand feet above the level of the sea. Towards its

north-western extremity rises Monte Sacro (5,200 feet in height), the

famous marble mountain on whose slopes are scattered the quarries to

which the small town of Carrara owes its ancient and world-wide

celebrity.

The quarries themselves by no means afford an imposing sight, as they

are mostly small, and very badly worked; but it is interesting to watch

the transport of the huge blocks of superb material from the various

glens in which the quarries are situated, while the numerous water-mills

for cutting or polishing the marble enliven the whole neighbourhood.

In the town of Carrara numerous sculptors are constantly employed in

rough-hewing the marble into various forms, such as capitals, friezes,

busts, &c., &c., in order to diminish the cost of transport, or to

discover faults in the stone before it is shipped. There are also shops

where marble trinkets or ornaments are exposed for sale; but Florence,

Leghorn, and Genoa are the chief dépôts of ready-made marble articles,

such as vases, urns, sculptured chimney-pieces, and copies of renowned

statues. Different kinds of fruit are also executed in marble, and with

the aid of colour made to imitate nature so closely as to deceive the

eye.

In Carrara the inferior qualities of marble are used for building and

paving, as it is here the cheapest material. The window and door frames,

the flooring and the chimney slabs, in even the meanest houses, are made

of marble, and form a striking contrast to the squalid poverty of the

remainder of the furniture.

The quarries which furnished the material for the finest works of the

Grecian chisel partake of the interest which attaches to every vestige

of ancient art.

About eight miles to the north of Athens rises the Pentelikon, or Mount

Penteles, from whose flanks was excavated the marble that served for the

construction of the Parthenon, of the Temple of the Olympian Zeus, and

of the other matchless edifices of the Athenian Acropolis. No other

quarries in the world can boast of their material having undergone a

more beautiful transformation, for never has marble been more highly

ennobled than by the genius of Pheidias! The ancient roads ascending

from the foot of the mountain to the quarries still show the traces of

the sledges on which were transported the huge blocks of more than

twenty tons in weight that now lie scattered among the ruins of the

Acropolis.

On the summit of the Pentelikon the Athenians had placed a statue of

Pallas Athene, that the goddess might overlook the land devoted to her

worship. Here, from a height of 3,500 feet, she looked down upon the

plain of Marathon, and many other spots of everlasting renown; but the

outlines of the prospect are monotonous and naked, and require for their

embellishment the beautifying remembrances of the past.

Mount Marpena, in the island of Paros, furnished the most renowned

statuary marble of ancient times. It was called Lychnites because its

quarries were worked by lamp-light, in deep, minelike excavations; and

the difficulty and cost of its extraction show how highly it was prized.

It has a yellowish white colour and a texture composed of fine shining

scales lying in all directions. The celebrated Arundelian marbles at

Oxford consist of Parian marble, as does also the Medicean Venus. More

than twenty centuries have elapsed since the Parian quarries were

abandoned in consequence of the decay of Grecian art; but in our

enterprising days a company has been formed (1857) for working the

beautiful marble which has been recently discovered near St. Minas, not

far from the site of the ancient quarries, and is said to be superior

not only to that of Carrara but even to the renowned Lychnites of the

ancients.

The quarries which in olden times furnished the beautifully coloured

marbles called Rosso antico and Verde antico had likewise for many

centuries been abandoned and totally forgotten. In 1846 they were

rediscovered on the island of Tino and in the Maina by Professor Siegel,

who soon after undertook to work them, and has furnished, among others,

a large number of the beautiful columns of Rosso antico which decorate

the interior of the court of the basilica of St. Paul’s in Rome. The

hammer of the quarryman once more resounds in the wilds of the Taygetos,

and the lawless robber of the Maina already feels the beneficial

influence of industry.

On the slopes of the mountains which bound the impetuous Oesterdal Elbe

in Sweden, in a wild and desolate country, where the poverty of the

people is so great that they frequently grind the bark of fir-trees to

mix it with their bread, are situated the finest quarries of porphyry

which Europe possesses. This beautiful stone, which attracts the eye

even in its unpolished state, consists of a red-brown or blood-red mass,

in which numerous small flesh-coloured felspar pieces are embedded.

After having been rough-hewn on the spot, the blocks are transported to

the neighbouring works of Elfdal, where they are cut and polished into

slabs, vases, chimney-pieces, and other articles fit for the decoration

of palaces. The contrast is most striking when, after having traversed

the barren neighbourhood, and still deeply impressed with the sight of

poverty and distress on his road, the traveller suddenly finds himself

before a group of handsome buildings which at once bear witness to the

activity within.

Besides the red porphyry of Elfdal, that of the Altai Mountains in Asia

deserves to be noticed. It consists of a brown-red mass with snow-white

crystals, and is capable of a very fine polish. The quarries are

situated on the face of a high rock on the left bank of the Kurgun, one

of the wildest mountain streams of the Altai, about one hundred miles

from the town of Kolywansk, where it is cut and polished.

Gypsum, or sulphate of lime, and the peculiar form of that mineral

called Alabaster, are substances of considerable importance in the arts.

Rendered more valuable by a slight admixture of carbonate of lime, the

gypsum of Montmartre, near Paris, has long been celebrated for its

excellence as a cement or stucco. It is found resting on a limestone of

marine origin, and in some places appears immediately beneath the

vegetable soil, so that it can be readily and conveniently worked

without having recourse to subterranean excavation. These quarries

furnish the whole of northern France with the well-known plaster of

Paris, and the value of their annual produce amounts to not less than

100,000_l_.

When sulphate of lime or gypsum assumes the opaque, consistent, and

semi-transparent form of alabaster, it is worked like marble. The pure

white and harder varieties are usually employed for the sculpture of

statues and busts; while the softer kinds are cut into vases, boxes,

lamps, and other ornamental objects. The alabaster quarries in the

neighbourhood of the ancient Etruscan town of Volterra are the most

famous in Europe, and have afforded employment for many centuries to her

industrious population. Volterra exports her beautiful produce to all

parts of the world, even as far as the interior of China. Beggary is

here unknown (a rare case in Italy), for even women and children are all

employed in cutting, sawing, rasping, or filing alabaster. In the

remotest antiquity, when the city was still called Volathri or

Volaterræ, this industry was practised within her walls, and a

collection of sepulchral urns and other works of Etruscan art contained

in the town-hall bears testimony to her ancient skill. Now, however, art

seems to have degenerated into mere manufacturing ability; the statues

and other objects are almost always repetitions of the same models, and

but very rarely some speculative person introduces a novelty, for the

purpose of obtaining a somewhat higher price for his wares.

[Illustration: FENRHYN SLATE QUARRY, NORTH WALES.]

Great Britain possesses apparently inexhaustible quantities of alabaster

in the red marl formation in the neighbourhood of Derby, where it has

been worked for many centuries. The great bulk of it is used for making

plaster of Paris, and as a manure, or as the basis of many kinds of

cements. For these common industrial purposes it is worked by mining

underground, and the stone is blasted by gunpowder; but this shakes it

so much as to render it unfit for works of ornament, to procure blocks

for which it is necessary to have an open quarry. By removing the

superincumbent marl, and laying bare a large surface of the rock, the

alabaster, being very irregular in form, and jutting out in several

parts, can be sawn out in blocks of a considerable size and

comparatively sound. This stone, when preserved from the action of

water, which soon decomposes it, is extremely durable, as may be seen in

churches all over this country, where monumental effigies many centuries

old are still as perfect as when they proceeded from the sculptor’s

chisel. The Derbyshire alabaster, commonly called Derbyshire spar, gives

employment to a good many hands in forming it into useful and ornamental

articles. Another kind of alabaster also found in Derbyshire is

crystallised in long needlelike silky fibres, which, being susceptible

of a high polish and quite lustrous, is used for making necklaces,

bracelets, brooches, and other small articles.

Besides her inexhaustible coal, iron, and lead mines, Wales possesses in

her slate quarries a great source of mineral wealth. For this article,

which many would suppose to be but of secondary importance, is here

found in such abundance and perfection as to command a ready market all

over the world. Thus, in North Wales the face of the mountains is

everywhere dotted or scarred with slate quarries, of which by far the

most important and largest are those of Llandegui, six miles from

Bangor, in which more than three thousand persons are employed. This

circumstance alone will give an idea of their extent, but still more

their having their own harbour, Port Penrhyn, which holds vessels of

from 300 to 400 tons, and whence slates are sent not only to all parts

of Great Britain, but even to North America. The cost of the inclined

planes and railroads which serve to transport the slates from the

quarries to the port is said to have amounted to 170,000_l._ The masses

of slate are either detached from the rock by blasting, or by wedges and

crowbars. They are then shaped on the spot into the various forms for

which they are destined to be used.

Though the quarries of Llandegui are unrivalled, yet there are others

which give employment to workmen whose numbers range from a thousand to

fifteen hundred. In those that export their produce by way of Carnarvon,

which owes its prosperity almost entirely to this branch of industry,

about 2,300 men were employed in the year 1842, and since then their

number has very much increased. Walking on the handsome new quay of the

town, the visitor everywhere sees slates ready for shipment in the

numerous small vessels which crowd the picturesque harbour. They are

heaped up and arranged or sorted in large regular piles according to

their dimensions or quality, the ‘ladies’ and ‘fat ladies’ apart, as

also the ‘countesses,’ ‘marchionesses,’ ‘princesses,’ ‘duchesses,’ and

‘queens,’ for by these aristocratic names the slate merchants

distinguish the various sizes of the humble article they deal in.

Kohl, the celebrated traveller, remarks that, whenever a new branch of

industry springs up in England, a number of active hands and inventive

heads set to work to extend its application. This was also the case with

the Welsh slates, when, about half a century ago, they first began to

attract the notice of the commercial world. A polish was soon invented

in London which gave them the appearance of the finest black marble. As

they are easily worked with the aid of a turning lathe, they can thus be

used for the manufacture of many useful and ornamental articles, which

have all the lustre of ebony, and may be obtained at a much cheaper

rate.

The quarries of St. Peter’s Mount, near Maestricht in the Netherlands,

are probably the most extensive in Europe. For the white tufaceous

limestone of the mountain has been used from time immemorial both for

building and manuring, and the enormous extent of its caverns is perhaps

even owing in a greater measure to the agriculturist than to the

architect. And yet St. Peter’s Mount, situated near a town of moderate

extent, would hardly have been excavated beyond the limits of a common

quarry if the broad Meuse, flowing at its foot, had not opened towards

Holland an almost unlimited market for its produce. Sure of being able

to dispose of all the materials they can possibly extract from the

earth, the quarrymen of the neighbourhood are thus yearly adding new

passages to the labyrinths at which so many generations of their

forefathers have toiled from age to age.

In spring and summer they are mostly occupied with agricultural

pursuits, and then but rarely leave the light of day to burrow in the

entrails of the earth by the dismal ‘sheen’ of smoky lamps; but as soon

as the approach of winter puts a stop to the labours of the field, they

descend into the cavities of the mountain, and begin to excavate the

vast mounds of stone or grit which are to be shipped in the following

spring.

Accompanied by a guide, the stranger enters these amazing quarries, that

extend for miles into the interior of the mountain, and is soon lost in

wonder at their endless passages, perpetually crossing each other to the

right and left, and ending in utter darkness. The dismal grandeur of

these dark regions is increased by their awful silence, for but rarely a

drop of water falls from the vaults into a small pool below, and even

the voice of man dies away without awakening an echo.

But in order to make one feel the full impression of night and silence,

the guide, after penetrating to some distance into the interior of the

cave, extinguishes his torch. A strange sensation of awe then creeps

over the boldest heart, and by an almost irresistible instinct the

stranger seeks the nearest wall, as if to convince himself that he has

at least the sense of touch to depend upon where the eye vainly seeks

for the least ray of light, and the ear as vainly listens for a sound.

Then also he feels how dreadful must have been the agonies of the

despairing wretches who, having lost their way in these dark labyrinths,

prayed and wept and shouted in vain, until their last groans died away

unheard.

It has not seldom happened that persons have hopelessly strayed about in

these vast caverns, and there slowly perished, while but a few fathoms

above the labourer was driving his plough forward or the reaper singing

his evening song. In several parts of the caverns an inscription on the

walls points out where and under what circumstances a corpse has been

found, or a few traces of black chalk give a rude portrait of the

victim. Here we read the short story of a workman who, losing his way,

roamed about till the last glimmer from his torch died out in his burnt

fingers; there that of another whose lamp by some chance was overturned,

and who, plunged in sudden darkness, was no longer able to find his way

out of some remote passage.

The French geologist, Faujas de Saint-Fond, who, in the year 1798

minutely explored the Mount, relates that one day the torches that were

carried before him discovered at some distance a dark object stretched

out upon the floor, which on a closer inspection proved to be a corpse.

It was a shrivelled mummy, completely dressed, the hat lying close to

the head, the shoes separated from the feet, and a rosary in its hand.

From the dress Faujas conjectured it to be the body of a workman, and

perhaps more than half a century might have passed since the poor man

died in the quarry which had probably given him bread for many a year.

The dry air, and the total absence of insects in these subterranean

vaults, explained the mummy-like preservation of the corpse.

In the year 1640 four Franciscan monks resolved, for the greater glory

of God and of their tutelary saint, to construct a chapel in a deserted

part of the caverns. Taking with them a thick pack of thread, they

attached one end of it to a spot where the trodden path ceased, and

penetrating deeper and deeper into the unknown vaults as long as their

thread lasted, finally came to a larger cavity or hall, which had

probably not been visited for centuries, but which in consequence of

their misfortune has since become one of the show-places of the quarry.

At the entrance one of them drew with a piece of coal a still existing

sketch of his convent on the wall, and wrote underneath the date of the

discovery which was to be so fatal to him and his companions. What must

have been their dismay when, wishing to retrace their steps, they

discovered that, by some accident, the thread which alone could lead

them out of the labyrinth had been severed, and that they were left

without guide or compass in the inextricable maze of the caverns. The

prior, alarmed at their prolonged absence, and knowing that they had

visited the quarries, ordered them to be sought for. But such is the

vast extent of the excavations that it was only after seven days that

their corpses were found, lying closely together, their faces downwards

and their hands folded, as if their last moments had been spent in

prayer.

The caverns of St. Peter’s Mount, generally devoted only to the pacific

labours of the quarryman or to unbroken silence, have once been the

scene of a bloody fight; and as the quiet waters of the Todtensee, on

the heights of the Grimsel, have witnessed a sanguinary battle between

the French and the Russians, so these subterranean vaults have once

resounded with the din of fire-arms and the shouts of embittered

enemies.

During the siege above mentioned, which brought Maestricht into the

power of the French Republic, some sharpshooters of the besieging army

took up their position in the quarries. The Austrians, who occupied Fort

St. Pierre, on the back of the mountain, and had already made several

successful sorties, formed the plan of penetrating into the caverns from

the interior of the fort, in the hope of surprising the enemy who

occupied their entrances. But as the torches which lighted their silent

march betrayed their intentions, the Frenchmen cautiously and slowly

advanced upon them, surprised them with a sudden volley of musketry, and

drove back into the depths of the caverns all those who were not made

prisoners or killed.

To the geologist the quarries of St. Peter’s are particularly

interesting, as the calcareous tuff of which they are composed is

extremely rich in valuable petrifactions. Here, among others, was found,

in 1770, the famous skull of the Mososaurus Hoffmanni, a giant lizard

twenty feet long, which before the discovery of the still more colossal

Ichthyosauri in England and Bavaria was considered as the most

remarkable fossil known, and now forms one of the chief ornaments of the

Museum of the Jardin des Plantes in Paris.

There are no subterranean animals peculiar to the caverns of St.

Peter’s, such as have been found in large natural caves; but foxes and

martens not seldom find here a secure retreat, and many a bat hibernates

in their warm recesses.

Near the small village El Massara, which, like all the hamlets on the

Nile, stands in a grove of date-palms, are situated the quarries which

furnished materials for the temples and pyramids of Memphis. After

having first traversed a wide plain of sand, the visitor reaches the

foot of the Mokattam mountain. Here the ground is everywhere covered

with enormous heaps of rubbish from the quarries, which look more like

an attempt to cut the whole mountain into blocks and carry it away than

simple excavations for building materials. At first sight the traveller

might indeed almost fancy that all the eighteen thousand towns of

ancient Egypt must have been dug out of these stupendous excavations.

Here he may see the mountain cut through from top to bottom, and open

spaces as large as the squares of a great capital on a level with the

plain, while there the rock has been hollowed out into enormous halls,

their roofs reposing on titanic pilasters. In one spot the rocky wall

has been cut rectangularly, after which it runs parallel to the river

for a distance of about fifteen hundred feet, and then again projects at

a right angle towards the plain, so that in the space between the wings

there would be room enough for a small town, yet all the stone which

once filled this vast cavity has been sawn from the rock and carried

over the Nile. Here and there enormous masses of stone, like those which

in winter roll from the high Alps into the valleys, have fallen from the

overhanging rock. Many bear evident traces that the hand of man

originally severed them from the mountain; but their size was such as to

baffle even the perseverance and mechanical skill of the Egyptians. No

power could remove them from the spot, and thus they remained to be worn

away by time, which as yet, however, has hardly left a trace of its

passage upon their chiselled sides.

From the mounds of rubbish that lie before the openings of the quarries

there is a magnificent view of the long line of pyramids which mark, to

the west, the extreme limits of the fertile land. Here, indeed, is a

place for meditation, for nowhere do stones preach a more impressive

sermon!

The quarries of Haggar Silsilis, in a wild mountainous country between

Assuan and Edfu, are on a still grander scale. Passages as broad as

streets, running on both sides between walls fifty or sixty feet high,

now stretching straight forward, now curving, extend from the eastern

bank of the river into the heart of the mountain, where spaces have been

hollowed out large enough to embrace the Roman Colosseum! To the north

numberless Cyclopean caverns have been hewn out, and enormous colonnades

stretch along the foot of the mountain. The rough-hewn irregular roof

rests upon immense square, or many-sided, pillars, frequently eighty or

a hundred feet in circumference. Enormous blocks, already completely

separated from the rock, rest on smaller ones, ready to be transported,

while in other parts the labours of the quarrymen were suddenly arrested

by the invasion of the foreign conqueror who put a stop to the dominion

of the priests. The Bedouin, astonished at these vast works, so alien to

his roving habits, exclaims at their aspect, with a wondering mien,

‘Wallah! if these unbelievers had lived until now, they would have

carried away the whole mountain and levelled it with the ground!’

Syracuse, the proud city that vied with Rome itself, and the remembrance

of whose magnificence and glory, both in arts and arms, will live as

long as classical literature, is now reduced to a heap of rubbish, for

her remains deserve not the name of a city. But though even her ruins

have mostly disappeared, ‘_etiam periere ruinæ_,’ yet the vast quarries

which furnished the materials for her palaces and temples still bear

witness to her ancient grandeur.

The Latomiæ of the Capuchins, thus named from a convent of that order,

situated on the rock above, now form a noble subterranean garden, one of

the most romantic and beautiful spots imaginable. Most of it is about

one hundred feet below the level of the earth, and of an incredible

extent. The whole is hewn out of a rock as hard as marble, composed of a

concretion of shells, gravel, and other marine bodies. The bottom of

this immense quarry, from which pro bably the greatest part of Syracuse

was built, is now covered with an exceedingly rich soil; and as no wind

from any point of the compass can touch it, it is filled with a great

variety of the finest shrubs and fruit-trees, which bear with prodigal

luxuriance, and are never blasted. The oranges, citrons, pomegranates,

and figs are all of a remarkable size, and, frequently growing out of

the hard rock, where there is no visible soil, exhibit a very uncommon

and pleasing appearance. This quarry is the same that Cicero eloquently

describes as the vast and magnificent work of the kings and tyrants of

ancient Syracuse, hewn out of the rock to a prodigious depth. It also

served as a prison for the Athenian soldiers that were made captives

during the Peloponnesian war, and even now these vast excavations might

be used for a similar purpose, as their high and overhanging walls

forbid the possibility of escape, and ten men would be able to guard ten

thousand without danger. Yet the genius of Euripides liberated many of

his countrymen from this deep pit of bondage, for happening to sing a

chorus of one of his immortal tragedies, they moved the tyrant to

restore them to liberty, in honour of their illustrious fellow-citizen.

Never has a more grateful offering been awarded to a poet’s genius, and

never has the magical power of the Muses celebrated a nobler triumph.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

PRECIOUS STONES.

Diamonds--Diamond Cutting--Rose Diamonds--Brilliants--The Diamond

District in Brazil--Diamond Lavras--The great Russian Diamond--The

Regent--The Koh-i-Noor--Its History--The Star of the South--Diamonds

used for Industrial Purposes--The Oriental Ruby and Sapphire--The

Spinel--The Chrysoberyl--The Emerald--The Beryl--The Zircon--The

Topaz--The Oriental Turquoise--The Garnet--Lapis Lazuli--The Noble

Opal--Inferior Precious Stones--The Agate-Cutters of Oberstein--Rock

Crystal--The Rock-crystal Grotto of the Galenstock.

In former ages superstition ascribed a strange mysterious power to

precious stones. Gems of conspicuous size or lustre were supposed to

confer health and prosperity on their owners, to preserve them in the

midst of the most appalling dangers, or even to give them a command over

the world of spirits.

The crucible of modern chemistry has, indeed, effectually dispelled

these illusions of a poetic fancy; but the precious stones have lost

nothing in value by their nature being better known. They are still the

favourite and most costly ornaments of wealth and beauty, and they still

deservedly rank among the wonders of creation. For surely no fabled

talismanic virtues can be more worthy of admiration than that natural

power which in the secret laboratories of the subterranean world has

caused their atoms to unite in lustrous crystals, and imparted to such

vulgar materials as carbon, clay, or sand the gorgeous reflections of

the rainbow or the glorious colours of the setting sun.

The diamond, it is almost unnecessary to say, is the chief of precious

stones, none other equalling it in brilliancy and refractive energy.

Although generally colourless, like pure rock-crystal, yet it is also

found of every variety of tint, from a roseate hue to crimson red, or

from a pale yellow to dark green and blue, or even black. Colourless

diamonds are in general most highly esteemed, but coloured stones are

sometimes of an exquisite beauty, and of corresponding value. Blue is an

exceedingly rare colour, and one of this shade, the celebrated Hope

diamond, which weighs forty-four and a half carats,[70] and unites the

charming colour of the sapphire with the prismatic fire of the diamond,

is valued at 25,000_l._

Footnote 70:

The carat is equal to 3¼ grains Troy weight.

As the rough stones are rarely found with an even or transparent

surface, the assistance of art is required to develop their full beauty.

The diamond, being by far the hardest of all substances, can only be cut

and polished by itself. Hence the lapidaries begin their operations by

rubbing several diamonds against each other while rough, after having

first glued them to the ends of two wooden blocks thick enough to be

held in the hand. It is the powder thus rubbed off the stones, and

received in a little box for the purpose, that serves to grind and

polish them.

The process of diamond-cutting is effected by a horizontal iron plate of

about ten inches’ diameter, called a _schyf_ or mill, which revolves

from two thousand to three thousand times per minute, and is sprinkled

over with diamond dust mixed with oil of olives. The diamond is fixed in

a ball of pewter at the end of an arm resting upon the table on which

the plate revolves; the other end, at which the ball containing the

diamond is fixed, is pressed upon the wheel by movable weights at the

discretion of the workman.

The method of cutting and polishing diamonds was unknown in Europe

before the fifteenth century, but appears to have been practised long

before in India, though in a rude manner. The original facetting of the

Koh-i-Noor was the work of an unknown and prehistoric age.

The diamonds which were employed as ornaments before that period, as for

instance the four large stones which enrich the clasp of the imperial

mantle of Charlemagne, as now preserved in Paris, remained in their

rough and uncut state. The invention is ascribed to Louis von Berguen, a

native of Bruges, then the great emporium of Western trade and luxury,

who in the year 1476 cut the fine diamond of Charles the Bold; and ever

since that time Antwerp and Amsterdam have maintained the first rank in

the practice of an art which might be supposed to have a more

appropriate seat in London or Paris, the centres of modern wealth and

fashion.

Diamonds are generally cut either as rose diamonds or as brilliants. The

rose diamond is flat beneath, while the upper face rises into a dome,

and is cut into facets. The brilliant, which is always three times as

thick as the rose diamond, is likewise cut into facets, but so as to

form two pyramids rising from a common central base or _girdle_. Each

pyramid is truncated at the top by a section parallel to the girdle,

which cuts off -5⁄18 of the whole height from the upper one, and -1⁄18

from the lower one. The superior and larger plane thus produced is

called the _table_; and the inferior and smaller one is called the

_collet_. Although the rose diamond projects bright beams of light in

more extensive proportion often than the brilliant, yet the latter shows

an incomparably greater play, from the difference of its cutting. In

executing this there are formed thirty-two faces of different figures,

and inclined at different angles all round the table on the upper side

of the stone, while on the under side twenty-four other faces are made

round the small table. It is essential that the faces of the top and the

bottom shall correspond together in sufficiently exact proportions to

multiply the reflections and refractions, so as to produce the gorgeous

display of prismatic colours which renders the brilliant so pre-

eminently beautiful.

From the hardness of the diamond, its cutting is a very tedious and

expensive operation, requiring more time in the proportion of fifty to

one than the cutting of the sapphire, which comes next to it in

hardness.

Experiment has determined that the diamond consists of pure carbon, so

that the same substance which in its common black state is utterly

worthless in very small quantities, becomes the most costly of precious

stones, when it makes its appearance in the crystalline form. Already

Newton, by observing the extraordinary refractive power of the diamond,

had been led to place it among combustibles; but Cosmo III., Grand Duke

of Tuscany, was the first who proved the truth of this bold conjecture

by actual observation. He exposed diamonds to the heat of the powerful

burning glass of Tschîrnhausen, and saw them vanish in a few moments

into air. The formation of the diamond in nature is one of the many

problems which ‘our philosophy’ has not yet enabled us to solve. Time is

an element which enters largely into nature’s works; she occupies a

thousand or even thousands of years to produce a result, while man in

his experiments is confined to a few years at most.

The most anciently renowned diamond districts are situated in the Indian

peninsula, in the kingdoms of Golconda and Visapour, extending from Cape

Comorin to Bengal, at the foot of a chain of mountains called the Orixa,

which appear to belong to the trap-rock formation. Tavernier describes

them as giving employment to thousands of workmen, but they seem now to

be all but exhausted.

We are but little acquainted with the diamond mines of Landak in Borneo,

though Ida Pfeiffer, on her second voyage round the world, obtained

permission to visit them, a favour but rarely accorded to strangers by

the suspicious potentate to whom they belong. So much is certain, that

very few stones from this quarter find their way to the civilised world,

which at present draws its chief supplies from the mines of Serro do

Frio and Sincora in Brazil.

When diamonds were first found in the Serro do Frio, about the beginning

of the last century, the real value of the glittering crystals was so

little known that they were made use of as card-marks by the planters of

the neighbourhood. An inspector of mines, who had been some time in

India, was the first who discovered their true nature. Wisely keeping

his secret to himself, he collected a large quantity of them, and

escaped with his treasure to Europe. In 1729, the governor of Brazil,

Don Lourenço de Almeida, sent some of the transparent stones of the

Serro to the court of Lisbon with the remark that he supposed them to be

diamonds, and thus the attention of Government was at length attracted

to their value. By a decree of the 8th of February, 1730, the diamond

district was placed under the rule of an Intendant, armed with the most

arbitrary powers. Not only all strangers were carefully excluded from

its limits, but not even a Portuguese or a Brazilian was allowed to

tread its forbidden ground without a special permission; its population

was limited to a scanty number, nor durst the foundation of a new house

be laid unless in the presence of magistrates and mining inspectors. A

system of secret delations was introduced worthy of the worst times of

the Inquisition, and many an innocent person was banished, imprisoned,

or transported to Africa, without even knowing his accuser, or the

trespass laid to his charge. In one word despotism seemed to have

exhausted all her inventive powers for the purpose of securing to the

Crown the monopoly of the costliest gem on earth.

But in spite of every precaution, it was impossible to put down the

contraband trade in diamonds. The audacity of the smugglers increased

with the obstacles placed in their way, so that a far more considerable

quantity of diamonds was secretly sold and exported than ever came into

the hands of Government. Traversing the deep forests on almost

inaccessible mountain paths, the bold _free-traders_ met, at some place

of appointment, the negroes who had been able to secrete some of the

precious stones, and paid them a trifle for diamonds which beyond the

limits of the district were worth at least twenty times the price given.

Sometimes even the smugglers searched for diamonds themselves in the

unfrequented wilderness. While some were washing the sands, others kept

watch upon an eminence, and gave notice of the approach of the soldiers,

who were constantly patrolling the district.

The heaviest penalties could not prevent the inhabitants of the Serra

from defrauding the Crown, and Herr von Tschudi (‘Travels in South

America in 1857–1861’) was told many amusing instances of their

smuggling contrivances. One of them had concealed a diamond of twenty-

five carats in the handle of his riding whip, for which purpose he had

practised for many weeks the art of plaiting the thin leather straps

which covered it, and another had secreted his precious stones in a

kettle with a double bottom.

When the Brazils became an independent country, the monopoly of the

diamond trade was abandoned by the new Government, and any speculator

was allowed to search for diamonds on payment of a slight duty. The

precious stones are found chiefly in alluvial deposits (_Cascalho

virgem_), in the beds of torrents, or along low river-banks, and

frequently large quantities of overlying rubbish. (_Cascalho bravo_)

have to be removed before the diamond-bed can be reached. The mining

labours are generally performed by slaves, though some of the poorer

miners, or Faiscadores, have no other assistance but that of their own

families. The work varies with the seasons. During the dry period of the

year the cascalho is removed from the beds of the desiccated brooks, and

dams are raised or canals dug for the purpose of turning off the stream

into another channel, while the wet season is made use of for washing

the sands. While this operation is going on, an overseer, seated on a

high chair, keeps a sharp look-out upon the negroes; but in spite of all

his attention, and of the severe punishments that await them in case of

discovery, they know how to secrete many a diamond, by rapidly throwing

it into their mouth, and concealing it under their tongue or swallowing

it. In the Portuguese times an Intendant, complaining to the overseers

of the frequency of theft, accused them of negligence, but was told that

no vigilance in the world could prevent it. To convince himself of the

fact, he ordered a negro who enjoyed the reputation of being a most

expert hand at secreting diamonds to be brought before him, and placing

a small stone in a heap of sand, promised him his liberty in case he

should succeed in appropriating the stone without being detected. The

negro began to wash the sand according to the usual method, while the

Intendant was observing him all the time with the eyes of a lynx. After

a few minutes he asked the slave whether he had found the stone. ‘If the

word of a white man can be trusted,’ answered the black, ‘I am from this

moment free;’ and taking the diamond out of his mouth, he handed it to

the Intendant.

The negroes employed in the diamond washings are generally hired by the

miners at so many milrees a week. Although their labour is very severe,

they generally prefer it to any other, as on Sundays and Feast-days they

are allowed to search on their own account (of course in places not

previously occupied), and have, moreover, an opportunity of stealing

diamonds.

The profits thus lawfully or unlawfully made they generally spend in

drinking, a slave but very rarely saving money for the purpose of

purchasing his freedom. In the Portuguese times, while the mines were

still worked on account of Government, a negro who was fortunate enough

to find a stone weighing an oitava (17½ carats) was at once rewarded

with his liberty; at present only small rewards are given. Formerly most

diamonds were found in the district of Tejuco, the capital of which

received in 1831 the significant name of Diamantina; but in 1844 new

mines were discovered in the Serro do Sincora, in the province of Bahia,

whose richness eclipses that of the most brilliant times of Tejuco.

The total produce of Brazil is estimated at about 300,000 carats,

annually worth on the spot from 300 to 500 milrees the oitava (17½

carats). The miners rarely make a fortune, as their expenses are very

great; the chief profits of the diamond trade fall to the share of the

merchants, who purchase the stones in the mining districts and then sort

and export them. The price of diamonds is subject to considerable

fluctuations, which, proceeding from the markets of London, Paris, and

Amsterdam, are most sensibly felt in the diamond districts, for the

great European houses in whose hands the trade of the rough stones is

concentrated, and who dispose of considerable capital, are able to wait

for better times, while the small Brazilian trader or miner is soon

obliged, for want of money, to sell his stones at any price. After the

breaking out of the Crimean war, diamonds were very much depreciated at

Diamantina. They were offered for sale at absurdly low prices, and even

then a purchaser was rarely to be found. The market improved very

slowly; but when the war was at an end, the prices once more rose to a

height which had never been known before. The commercial crisis in North

America and Europe at the end of 1857, and in the beginning of 1858,

caused a new reaction, the effects of which Tschudi was able to note

during his stay at Diamantina. ‘Good ware’ (_fazenda regular e boa_),

consisting of stones averaging a vintem[71] in weight, which a few

months before had been paid with 500 milrees the oitava, were now

offered for 300. A stone of six vintems was sold in March 1858 for 170

milrees; six months before it would have been worth 240 or 260.

Footnote 71:

In the Brazilian diamond trade, the oitava (17½ carats) is considered

as the unity of weight. It is subdivided into 4 quartas or 32 vintems;

the vintem is equal to 2-18⁄100 grains. Stones of half a vintem still

pass as good ware (_fazenda ainda boa_), when well-shaped and

colourless. Middling ware (_fazenda mediana_) consists of from 64 to

100 stones to the oitava, while all below that weight is sold as

refuse.

While the price of the smaller stones of about a vintem or less is

regulated by the exporters in Rio, conjointly with the European houses,

fancy prices are asked at Diamantina for larger stones of several

carats. A fine diamond of an oitava sells for about three contos of rees

(360_l._), and one of two oitavas, or thirty-five carats, is often sold

on the spot for ten to twelve contos (1200_l._-1440_l._).

During the last thirty years, diamonds have risen about forty per cent.

in price in Europe, a natural consequence of the increase of wealth and

luxury while the supply of the article continues to be limited. As,

however, many large stones have recently been found in South Africa, and

Australia now adds the diamond to her many sources of natural wealth,

its value will probably once more decline.

When cut and polished, a brilliant of the first or purest water in

England, weighing one carat, is valued at 12_l._, a rose diamond of the

same weight at 8_l._, while the value of all those of a larger size is

calculated by multiplying the square of the weight in carats by twelve

or eight, except for those exceeding twenty carats, the price of which

increases at a much more rapid rate. The enormous value ascribed to

large diamonds is, however, merely fanciful, for they are worth neither

more nor less than what purchasers may be inclined or able to give for

them. According to the above valuation, stones weighing 100 carats would

be worth at least (100 × 100 = 10,000 × 12) 120,000_l._; a sum which has

probably never yet been paid for a diamond of that weight. A very

trifling spot or flaw of any kind lowers exceedingly the commercial

value of a diamond. The number of large diamonds is very small. Among

ten thousand stones, the Brazilian mines furnish but one that weighs ten

carats; diamonds above twenty carats are very rare, and in all Europe

there are but five diamonds of more than one hundred carats.

The largest of these is the magnificent gem of the first water, without

fault or blemish, which sparkles in the Imperial sceptre of Russia. It

weighs 194¾ carats; its largest diameter is one inch three lines and a

half; its height ten lines. It is of East Indian origin, and once

figured with another similar stone in the throne of Nadir Shah. When

this tyrant was murdered, it was stolen, and ultimately came into the

possession of an American merchant named Schafrass, who purchased it

with several other valuable stones of an Afghan chieftain in Bagdad, for

the round sum of 50,000 piasters. In 1772 the Empress Catharine II.

bought the diamond of Schafrass, who had meanwhile settled in Amsterdam,

for 450,000 silver roubles and a patent of nobility.

Of somewhat smaller size, but of unparallelled beauty, is the

magnificent diamond called the Pitt or Regent, which Mr. Pitt,

grandfather of the famous Lord Chatham, into whose possession it had

come while governor of Madras, sold to the Duke of Orleans, Regent of

France, for 135,000_l._ having himself paid 12,500_l._ for it to

Tamohund, the most famous native dealer in India. It originally weighed

410 carats, but has been reduced to 136¾ by cutting it into a brilliant—

an operation which is said to have lasted two years. It is now the first

among the jewels belonging to the French Government; Napoleon used to

wear it in the hilt of his sword.

During the five years the stone remained in his possession, Governor

Pitt is said to have lived in such constant dread of having it stolen,

that he never made known beforehand the day of his coming to town, nor

slept two nights following in the same house. If this story be true,

great indeed must have been his relief when he parted with his gem,

which, though small in weight, was to him a true millstone in anxiety.

The diamond of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, which weighs 139½ carats, and

is consequently a trifle larger than the Regent, once belonged to

Charles the Bold of Burgundy, and at the battle of Nancy fell into the

hands of an ignorant trooper, who plucked the gem from the helmet of the

unfortunate duke and sold it for a crown. At a later period it came into

the possession of the Court of Tuscany, and is now the first crown jewel

of the Emperor of Austria.

The most celebrated diamond in the world is undoubtedly the Koh-i-Noor,

or ‘mountain of light,’ which, according to Hindu legend, was worn by

one of the heroes of the Great War which took place about four thousand

years ago, and which forms the subject of the epic poem the Maha-

Bhârata. After numberless vicissitudes and peregrinations, we find it in

the possession of the Grand Moguls, and in 1739 in that of Nadir Shah,

who, on his occupation of Delhi, compelled Mohammed Shah, the great-

grandson of Aurungzeb, to give up to him all the valuables contained in

the imperial treasury. According to the family and popular tradition,

Mohammed Shah was imprudent enough to wear the Koh-i-Noor in front of

his turban at his interview with his conqueror, who being

‘the mildest-mannered man

With all true breeding of a gentleman,’

insisted on exchanging turbans in proof of his regard; and is said to

have bestowed upon the diamond thus politely annexed the name of Koh-i-

Noor. After the fall of his dynasty, the stone became the property of

Ahmed Shah, the founder of the Abdali dynasty of Kabul, and, when Mr.

Elphinstone was at Peshawur, was worn by his successor Shah Shuja, on

his arm. When Shah Shuja was driven from Kabul, he became the nominal

guest and actual prisoner of Runjeet Singh, who, following the good

example of Nadir Shah, _gently_ persuaded his protegé to part with his

diamond for the revenues of three villages, not one rupee of which he

ever realised. ‘By what do you estimate its value?’ asked the Sikh

Maharajah of his victim, as the surrendered Koh-i-Noor lay on the arm of

his new master. ‘By its good luck,‘ said Shah Shuja, ‘for it hath ever

been his who hath conquered his enemies.’

Subsequent events fully proved the truth of this remark, for when the

Punjab was annexed by the British Government, it was stipulated among

other conditions that the Koh-i-Noor should be presented to the Queen of

England. But in spite of its promising name, the ‘Mountain of Light’ was

but of inferior lustre, for the Orientals are mere bunglers in the art

of diamond-cutting, and lay greater weight upon the size than upon the

brilliancy of a jewel. Hence it was resolved to have it recut by the

most skilful Amsterdam lapidaries, who came over to England for the

purpose. The operation, which was performed with the assistance of a

small steam-engine, and cost no less than 5,000_l._, was perfectly

successful; and though the Koh-i-Noor, which formerly weighed 186¼

carats, has been reduced by its conversion into a brilliant of 102-3⁄16

carats, it has gained so much in lustre that it now fully deserves the

name assigned to it by the hyperbolical phraseology of the East.

All these large diamonds originally came from India; but latterly they

have been rivalled by a stone of Brazilian origin, originally weighing

254½ carats, but reduced by cutting to 125, which has received the

poetical name of ‘Estrella do Sul’ or Star of the South. It is a

singular fact that as yet this beautiful gem has brought good luck to

none of its possessors. An old negro woman accidentally found it in a

diamond mine at the Rio da Bagagem, in Minas Geraes, among a heap of

pebbles that had been previously washed. She gave it to her master, who

did not even reward her with her liberty, and superstition has traced

all the ill-luck attached to the stone to that ungenerous act. The first

proprietor of the diamond was a needy man, who for a trifling sum had

been allowed by the proprietor of the mine to search for stones with the

few slaves he possessed. The proprietor now claimed the diamond,

alleging that it had not been found on the premises hired by the former;

and a law suit, profitable of course to none but the lawyers, was the

consequence. To be able to defend his cause, the possessor of the stone

pawned it to the Brazilian Bank for about 8,000_l._, for which he had to

pay fifteen per cent. commission and a high interest.

The law suit, as may naturally be supposed, lasted so long that the man

died before it was decided, and but a very small sum of money remained

to his widow. After passing through several hands, the stone was

purchased at Rio for a million of francs, by a Dutch jeweller, who, to

make up this considerable sum, was obliged to borrow money at the usual

high interest of the place. He took the stone with him to Amsterdam,

where it was cut, at an expense of about 4,000_l._ The great desideratum

now was to find a purchaser for the magnificent jewel, which, however,

did not prove of the first water. It was offered for sale to several

crowned heads, and no princely bridal was allowed to pass without an

attempt to dispose of the ‘Star of the South;’ but all efforts proved

fruitless, for it seems that the monarchs of our days are of opinion

that the exorbitant sums formerly paid for diamonds of an uncommon size

may be invested in a much more profitable manner. The unfortunate

speculator died of a broken heart. By the latest accounts the stone is

still in Paris, held in pawn by a commercial house, which most probably

will keep it, as the accumulated interest of years must of course absorb

its whole value.

The uncut stone belonging to the King of Portugal, and weighing 1,680

carats, is now well known to be not, as was supposed, the greatest

diamond in the world, but a mere white topaz. The quality of another

stone of 138½ carats, found near the Rio Abaete in 1791, and likewise in

the Portuguese treasury, has not been determined. So much, however, is

certain, that the Portuguese Crown possesses (or possessed a few years

ago) the richest collection of diamonds in the world, the value of which

was estimated at about 3,000,000_l._(?) Of all the stones annually sent

to Lisbon by the General Intendant of the diamond districts, the king

selected the largest and finest for the royal treasury, and the others

were sold. When King Joao VI. returned in 1821 from Brazil to Portugal,

he carried along with him almost as many diamonds as Voltaire’s Candide

on his escape from Eldorado. The jewels were deposited in sealed bags in

the vaults of the Lisbon Bank, where they remained forty years as a dead

capital. In 1863 it was at length very wisely resolved, with the consent

of the Cortes, to sell these rough diamonds, and to invest the proceeds

for the benefit of the civil list.

Though diamonds are usually washed out from the soil, yet they also

generally occur in regions that afford a laminated granular quartz rock,

called _Itacolumite_, which in thin slabs is translucent and more or

less flexible. This rock occurs in the mines of Brazil and the Urals,

and also in Georgia and North Carolina, where a few diamonds have been

found. Before taking leave of the prince of gems, I will not omit

mentioning that it is not only the costliest of all ornaments, but

serves also for several more humble though more useful purposes, as for

cutting glass by the glazier, and all kinds of hard stones by the

lapidary. Small drills are made either of imperfect diamonds, or of

fragments split off from good stones in their manufacture for jewelling.

They are used for drilling small holes in rubies and other hard stones,

for piercing holes in china where rivets are to be inserted, or in any

other vitreous substance, however hard. Diamonds have also been recently

used for arming the end of the borer in a new rock-boring machine, for

scooping out holes in the hardest rocks, such as granite and porphyry.

The use of diamond dust within a few years has increased very materially

with the increased demand for all articles wrought by it, such as cameos

and intaglios.

The mineral substance that ranks next to the diamond, whether we

estimate it by its hardness, the splendour of its colour, or its

rareness, is that called by the mineralogists Corundum. It consists of

pure crystallised alumina (the oxide of the now well-known metal

aluminium), variously tinted by the addition of small quantities of iron

or chromium. To this class belong the ruby, the sapphire, the topaz, the

emerald, the amethyst, and other stones of gorgeous colour,

distinguished by the epithet ‘oriental’ prefixed to the name.

The Oriental Ruby, or Red Sapphire, is the red stone _par excellence_ of

jewellery, and, from its fiery lustre, probably identical with the

carbuncle of Pliny, and the anthrax or ‘burning coal’ of Theophrastus.

Its finest colour is a most rich and lovely crimson, known as the

pigeon’s blood tint; but its scarlet tints are also most beautiful. The

red rays of the prism falling on a ruby produce a charming effect. Pegu

is the land of rubies, and Australia now likewise furnishes stones of

excellent quality. A perfect ruby above three and a half carats is more

valuable than a diamond of the same weight. If it weigh one carat it is

worth ten guineas; two carats, forty guineas; three carats, one hundred

and fifty guineas; six carats, above one thousand guineas. The largest

oriental ruby known to be in the world was brought from China to Prince

Gagarin, Governor of Siberia. It came afterwards into the possession of

Prince Menschikoff, and is now a jewel in the imperial crown of Russia.

The blue variety of the corundum is the Oriental Sapphire of the

jeweller. There is one hue of it of a soft pure azure, distinguished

from the commoner kinds by its retaining its fine blue even by

candlelight, when an ordinary sapphire looks purple or black. Unlike the

ruby, it occurs in specimens of a considerable size. A good blue stone

of ten carats is valued at fifty guineas. If it weighs twenty carats its

value is two hundred guineas, but under ten carats the price may be

estimated by multiplying the square of its weight in carats into half a

guinea; thus one of four carats would be worth eight guineas. A sapphire

of a barbel-blue colour, weighing six carats, was disposed of in Paris

by public sale for 70_l._; and another of an indigo blue, weighing 6

carats and 3 grains, brought 60_l._, both of which sums much exceed what

the preceding rule assigns, from which we may perceive how far fancy may

go in such matters.

The Spinels, whose transparent and more precious forms consist

essentially of alumina combined with magnesia, and tinted perhaps with

iron, include two resplendent stones, the Spinel Ruby, a scarlet variety

of considerable fire and of rich colour, and the Balais or Balass Ruby,

thus called from one of the most celebrated localities of the spinel in

former times, namely Beloochistan or Balastan. The latter is of a

delicate and rarely deep rose-colour, showing a blue tint when looked

through, and a redder one when it is looked at. Both of these minerals

are termed rubies by the jewellers, and the deeper-tinted kinds are

sometimes sold for the true stone. In fact, nearly all the large and

famous gems that pass under the name of rubies belong to this species,

as for instance the ancient ruby in the crown of England, which was

presented to Edward the Black Prince by Don Pedro the Cruel, and the

enormous stone, time-honoured in Indian tradition, that came along with

the Koh-i-Noor into Her Majesty’s possession. Such was the superstitious

value attached to it by its former proprietor, Runjeet Singh, that he

would sooner have lost a province than this stone. When the weight of a

good spinel exceeds four carats, it is said to be valued at half the

price of a diamond of the same weight.

The Chrysoberyl, called also by the jewellers the Oriental Chrysolite,

is a stone of almost adamantine lustre and transparence. It is a

compound of alumina and the rare oxide glucina, a constituent of the

beryl. It has usually a peculiar, sometimes a very delicate greenish

yellow or primrose colour, and is then one of the most beautiful of

gems. The finer specimens are from Brazil.

The Emerald and the Beryl are one and the same mineral—a silicate of

alumina and glucina, which owes to a small trace of iron its blue, pink,

or yellow tints, or else to a little chromium the transcendent green

which characterises it as the emerald. The colour of this beautiful gem

is so pleasant to the eye that the ancients attributed to it the power

of strengthening and relieving the sight when fatigued by previous

exertions. Both from its beauty and rareness they held it in high

estimation, and Pliny ranks the emerald in value immediately after the

diamond and the oriental pearl. In the Egyptian tombs real emeralds are

sometimes found as the ornaments of regal mummies, and they have not

seldom been discovered among the ruins of Rome, or at Herculaneum and

Pompeii. Scythia, Bactria, and Egypt were renowned among the ancients as

the countries which furnished the most beautiful emeralds. At present

these precious stones are obtained chiefly from New Granada and Siberia,

in which latter country they occur of much larger size, but of less

beauty, and consequently far inferior value. The first Siberian emeralds

were discovered in the year 1831, in the neighbourhood of

Catharinenburg, by some peasants, while making tar, and other mines were

opened in 1834 ten versts distant from the former. Here was found an

enormous stone, fourteen inches long and twelve broad, and weighing 16¾

lbs. troy, and another superb specimen consisting of twenty crystals,

from half an inch to five inches long, and as much as two inches thick,

embedded in a matrix of mica-schist. Both these monstrous gems now rank

among the chief ornaments of the Imperial Mineralogical Cabinet.

When the Spaniards conquered Peru, they found many beautiful emeralds in

the possession of the natives. The largest of these stones, about the

size of an ostrich egg, was adored as a god in one of the temples, and

other emeralds of a smaller size placed around it were honoured as its

children. In their blind fanaticism, the otherwise greedy Spaniards

shivered the god and his family to pieces, but it is more than probable

that the wisest of the band quietly picked up the fragments and

afterwards disposed of them to advantage. The finest stones used to be

found in the valley of Manta; but the Indians kept the mines secret, to

avoid being obliged to work in them, or perhaps out of hatred against

their oppressors. At present, the American emeralds are chiefly obtained

from the valley of Tunka, in the province of Santa Fé de Bogota, in New

Granada.

The price of emeralds varies considerably, according to their purity,

the beauty of their colour, their lustre, and their size. Before the

discovery of America, they were uncommonly dear, all knowledge of the

old mines having been lost, so that the emeralds still used as ornaments

were all ancient. Afterwards their value decreased, when a greater

quantity was imported from Peru; but recently they have again risen in

price, as America at present furnishes but few good stones. A splendid

specimen in the possession of Mr. Hope, weighing six ounces, cost

500_l._; another fine American emerald belonging to the Duke of

Devonshire is two inches long, and weighs above eight ounces, but, owing

to flaws, it is but partially fit for jewellery.

The Beryl, which exhibits every gradation of tint, from a pale azure

blue to a fine mountain green, and also occurs in a pale orange yellow

variety, is found in great perfection at Oduntschilon and Mursinsk in

Siberia. A beautifully clear crystal, ten inches long, discovered in the

latter locality in 1828, and forming part of the mineralogical museum at

Petersburg, is valued at 8,000_l._ Formerly Brazil and Cangayum in the

Deccan were in much repute as fields in which the beryl was found, and

many a brilliant little stone has been furnished by the Mourne Mountains

in Ireland.

The Zircon consists of the mixed oxides of silicon and of the rare

element zirconium, and is one of the heaviest and most lustrous of gem-

stones. Its colourless variety is the nearest match in brilliancy and

refractive energy for the diamond, while the deep orange-tinted red

zircon is that transcendent gem, the true hyacinth, which makes a very

superb ring-stone.

The Topaz, a silicate of alumina and fluorine, is found chiefly in

Siberia, Brazil, and Saxony, and is also met with in the granitic

detritus of Cairngorm in Aberdeenshire. The colourless Brazilian variety

(_Pingo d’agoa_, or waterdrop) surpasses rock-crystal in purity and

refractive power, and being of the same weight as the diamond, is

sometimes mistaken for it. The pale yellow topaz when heated in a

crucible assumes a rose-red colour, and is then called by the jewellers

ruby of Brazil. The Saxon topaz, on the other hand, becomes white when

exposed to heat, and thus deprived of colour is sold for the diamond. In

ancient times the topaz was highly esteemed; but, in spite of its

beauty, it is not now considered of very great value, from its being too

frequently found, and is sold in the rough for about forty shillings per

pound.

When of a beautiful ‘forget-me-not’ blue, and above the size of a pea,

the Oriental Turquoise, which in inferior specimens is but of little

value, fetches a considerable price, so that fine stones of about half

an inch in length are worth 15_l._ or 20_l._ The turquoise, which

consists of phosphate of alumina coloured by oxide of copper, occurs

chiefly in the mountainous range of Persia, whence it is brought by the

merchants of Bochara to Moskau; but the Shah is said to retain for his

own use all the larger and finely tinted specimens.

Major Macdonald gives the following account of a new field for the

turquoise which he discovered in Arabia Petræa. ‘In the year 1849,

during my travels in Arabia in search of antiquities, I was led to

examine a very lofty range of mountains, composed of iron sandstone,

many days’ journey in the desert; and whilst descending a mountain of

about six thousand feet high, by a deep and precipitous gorge, which in

the winter time served to carry off the water, I found a bed of gravel,

where I perceived a great many small blue objects mixed with the other

stones; on collecting them I found they were turquoises of the finest

colour and quality. On continuing my researches through the entire range

of mountains, I discovered many valuable deposits of the same stones,

some quite pure in pebbles, and others in the matrix. The action of the

weather gradually loosens them from the rock, and they are rolled into

the ravines, and, in the winter season, mixed up by the torrents with

beds of gravel, where they are found.’

The Occidental or Bone Turquoise, which has generally but one-fourth of

the value of the oriental, is said to be fossil bones or teeth, coloured

with oxide of copper.

The Garnet, a silicate of some base which may be lime, magnesia, oxide

of iron, or chromium, is in its finer specimens one of the most

beautiful coloured products of nature’s laboratory. By jewellers the

garnets are classed as Syrian, Bohemian, or Cingalese, rather from their

relative value and fineness than with any reference to the country from

which they are supposed to have been brought. Those most esteemed are

called Syrian garnets, not because they come from Syria, but after

Syrian, the capital of Pegu, which city was formerly the chief mart for

the finest garnets. Their colour is violet purple, which in some rare

instances vies with that of the finest oriental amethyst; but it may be

distinguished from the latter by acquiring an orange tint by

candlelight. The Bohemian garnet is generally of a dull poppy-red

colour, with a very perceptible hyacinth orange tint, when held between

the eye and the light. When the colour is a full crimson, it is called

pyrope or fire-garnet, a stone of considerable value when perfect and of

large size. Garnet is easily worked, and when facet-cut is nearly always

(on account of the depth of its colour) formed into thin tables, which

are sometimes concave or hollowed out on the under side. Cut stones of

this latter kind, when skilfully set, with a bright silver foil, have

often been sold as rubies.

Though Lapis Lazuli, a silicate of soda, lime, and alumina, with the

sulphide of iron and sodium in minute quantities, is without

transparency, and without much lustre, yet its beautiful azure-blue

tints, often interspersed with yellow specks, and veins of iron pyrites,

which, from their brilliant appearance in the comparatively dull blue

stone, might easily be mistaken for gold, entitle it to be ranked among

the semi-precious stones. The finest quality, which sells in the mass

for 30_l._ per pound, is used for jewellery, and for making costly vases

and ornamental furniture. Lapis lazuli was also the source from which

the beautiful pigment ultramarine was obtained; but this colour is now

prepared artificially at a very cheap rate. This beautiful mineral is

found in crystalline limestone of a greyish colour on the banks of the

Indus, and in granite in Persia, China, and Siberia.

In the long list of the crystalline or hyaline quartzes, consisting of

silex or silica in various degrees of purity, there is but one variety,

the Noble Opal, that ranks among precious stones of the first quality.

In this beautiful gem, minute fissures are apparently striated with

microscopic lines, which, diffracting the light, flash out rainbow tints

of the purest and most brilliant hues. The Noble Opal, which is one of

the favourite jewels of modern times, was no less highly esteemed by the

ancients, ‘for in this stone,’ says Pliny, ‘we admire the fire of the

ruby, the brilliant purple of the amethyst, the lustrous green of the

emerald, all shining together in a wonderful mixture.’ For the sake of a

magnificent opal, set in a ring, and valued at 20,000_l._ of our money,

the senator Nonius was exiled by Mark Antony. He might have escaped

banishment by presenting his opal to the covetous triumvir; but he

preferred exile with his gem to staying in Rome without it.

The Precious Opal is so rare a stone that, with all our mining

enterprise and geological research, we know of only two certain

localities for it, namely, in Hungary and in Mexico, though some

specimens are said to have been found in the province of Honduras and in

the stormy Feroe Islands. The opal mines of Hungary, situated at

Czernewitza, in the county of Saros, belong to the Crown, and are at

present farmed by Herr Goldschmidt of Vienna, for 10,000 florins

annually. About 150 workmen are employed, and as good stones occur but

rarely, and are of a corresponding value, it may easily be imagined

that, what with the constant fear of being robbed, and that of not being

able to cover his expenses, poor Herr Goldschmidt is no less to be

pitied than Governor Pitt while in possession of his diamond.

The finest and largest opal in the world is in the Imperial

Mineralogical Cabinet in Vienna. It has the most magnificent play of

colours, chiefly green and red, weighs seventeen ounces, and is

irregularly cut, so as not to diminish the mass. An Amsterdam jeweller

is said to have offered half a million of florins for this unique gem.

Unfortunately, its large size prevents its being used as an ornament, as

for this purpose it would have to be cut to pieces, which would be an

unpardonable piece of Vandalism.

Their relative beauty increases the value of opals so considerably that

fine stones of a moderate bulk have, in modern times, been frequently

sold at the price of diamonds of equal size. The so-called ‘Mountain of

Light,’ an Hungarian opal in the Great Exhibition of 1851, weighed 526½

carats, and was estimated at 4,000_l._ The black opals, which allow the

red fire of the ruby to flash out from the dark ground-colour of the

stone, are also highly esteemed. Besides the commoner varieties of opal,

such as semi-opal, opal jasper, wood opal, different kinds of quartz

crystal, including amethyst, Cairngorm stone, and a long and beautiful

array of jaspers and chalcedonies, such as agate, onyx, sard, plasma,

and chrysoprase, may be placed in a list of stones of the second degree

in point of value, if that value be estimated by rarity and price.

The cutting, or grinding and polishing of most of these stones, which

are commonly comprised under the name of agates, is chiefly carried on

in the small towns of Oberstein and Idar, situated in the picturesque

valley through which the rapid Idar flows into the Nahe, a tributary of

the Rhine. The sterile soil yields but a scanty produce, but the

neighbouring hills abound in chalcedonies, which afford the people an

ample indemnity for the barrenness of their land. As early as the

fourteenth century, the art of agate-cutting was introduced into this

remote valley, from Italy, where it had long been practised; but for a

long time the trade was conducted in a very rude manner. The workmen

themselves undertook the sale of their ware, and wandered as pedlars to

the neighbouring castles or towns, where they could hope to dispose of

their agates to the best advantage. It was not before the middle of the

last century that the industry of Oberstein made a considerable

progress. Gold and silversmiths settled in the small town to set the

stones as they came out of the hands of the grinders, and gradually a

more wealthy class of traders was formed, who undertook long voyages,

and extended their operations to distant countries. The fairs of

Frankfort and Leipzig were regularly attended by the merchants of

Oberstein and Idar, and some of them even ventured as far as Smyrna or

Archangel. The taste and the ability of the workmen improved as their

market extended, but now the want of the raw material began to be felt.

The neighbouring hills were no longer able to meet the demand, the

stones continually rose in price, the better qualities could hardly be

procured, and thus the agate manufactory was menaced with decline, when

a fortunate circumstance gave it a new impulse.

Some of the inhabitants of Idar who in 1827 had emigrated to Brazil

discovered in their new home an inexhaustible supply of stones. Enormous

masses of chalcedony were found scattered as boulders near the banks of

some rivers or disseminated in the plains, and could be sent as ballast

at a trifling expense across the ocean. Thus almost all the rough

material that Oberstein needs comes at present from Brazil or even

India, and only the rarer varieties of agate-jaspis are at present

collected in the neighbourhood of Idar. In possession of the best

materials, supplied by a number of localities, and comprising all

imaginable varieties of chalcedony—carnelion, plasma, heliotrope,

jaspis, rock-crystal, amethyst, topaz, lapis lazuli, malachite—and

commanding a market which extends further and further over the globe,

the prosperity of Oberstein and Idar steadily increases. One hundred and

eighty-three water-mills (with 724 large grinding-stones), situated

along the romantic Idar, give employment to about 3,000 workmen, and the

value of the manufactured stones amounts to at least 220,000_l._

annually.

No stones are so porous or so easily coloured by artificial means as the

varieties of chalcedony. In ancient times the onyxes from the Nerbudda

were ‘baked in ovens,’ and to this day, in the neighbourhood of Brooch,

the nodules of onyx dug in the dry season from the beds of torrents are

packed in earthen pots with dry goat’s-dung, which is set on fire. By

this baking process the grey or dark green iron hydrate which permeates

their pores and gives them a dull colour is changed into the red oxyde,

which imparts to the improved stones rich hues of orange and hyacinthine

red, and the more ornamental of the mottled onyxes that come from Cambay

are those thus artificially beautified.

The art of baking and colouring is now fully understood in Oberstein.

Some agates consist of impermeable white bands or layers alternating

with others of a grey or dull colour, and of a porous nature. When

placed in honey and exposed to a moderate heat for eight or ten days,

the saccharine matter penetrates into the microscopical pores. Then the

stones are boiled in sulphuric acid, which, carbonising the honey,

imparts a deep black colour to the porous layers which it had permeated,

and by thus setting-off the white layers to the best advantage, changes

a previously almost worthless stone into a beautiful onyx or sardonyx.

An Italian who came to Oberstein to buy rough agates for the cameo-

cutters of Rome made the Germans acquainted with this method, which had

long been practised by his countrymen. By other chemical processes, some

of which are generally known, while others are kept a secret, rich

yellow, or apple-green, or blue tints are imparted by the agate-dealers

of Oberstein to the rough produce of nature. A description of all the

varieties of quartz used for ornamental purposes would lead me too far;

but a few words on rock-crystal may not be uninteresting.

This beautiful mineral occurs in many varieties, such as the violet,

rock-crystal, or amethyst, the most beautiful specimens of which are

procured from India, Ceylon, and Persia; the false topaz when yellow,

the morion when black, the smoky quartz when smoke-brown. The limpid and

colourless kinds are often called Bristol or Irish diamonds, after the

various localities in which they are found. Rock-crystal frequently

occurs in the Alps, as is well known to every traveller in Switzerland.

Small rock-crystals have hardly any value, but considerable prices are

paid for very large specimens, which are accordingly much sought for by

chamois-hunters and goatherds. About a century since a quartz cave was

opened at Zinken, which afforded 1,000 cwt. of rock-crystal, and at that

early period brought 300,000 dollars. One crystal weighed 800 pounds.

In 1867 a party of tourists, descending from the solitudes of the

Galenstock, discovered, in a band of white quartz traversing a

precipitous rock-wall about a hundred feet above the Tiefen Glacier,

some dark spots which the guide, Peter Sulzer, of Guttannen, declared to

be cavities in which undoubtedly rock-crystals would be found. The

weather being unpropitious, no search was made at the time; but a few

weeks after Sulzer and his son revisited the spot, and after having

clambered up to the holes with great difficulty, found that they

communicated with a dark cavity, from which the intrepid explorers

extracted some pieces of black rock-crystal with the curved handles of

their alpenstocks.

In the August of the following year the Sulzers, accompanied by a few

friends from Guttannen, to whom they had imparted the secret, made a

more decisive attempt to force their way into the cave, by widening the

entrance with gunpowder. To clamber and maintain one’s position on a

nearly vertical rock on ledges only a few inches broad is at all times a

matter of no small difficulty; but this difficulty is very much

increased when at the same time the hammer and other implements for

blasting are to be handled. The weather was also very bad, and every now

and then a dreadful gust of wind threatened to hurl the hardy

adventurers from the rock upon the glacier. Hail and rain stiffened

their limbs; and thus they passed a miserable night closely huddled

together on a narrow projection before the cavity. Wet to the skin, and

their teeth chattering with cold, they resumed their labours on the

following morning, and at length sufficiently widened the entrance to

open a passage into a cave which was found to penetrate to a

considerable depth into the mountain. The cave was filled nearly up to

its roof with a mound consisting of pieces of granite and quartz mixed

with chlorite sand; but here and there, imbedded in the rubbish,

glistened the large planes of jet black morions which showed that their

toil had not been fruitless. Originally the crystals had grown from the

sides or the roof of the cave; and who can tell the ages that were

required for their formation, or the mysterious circumstances that

favoured their growth?—then at an equally unknown time the concussion of

an earthquake, or maybe their own weight, had detached them from the

rock to which they clung, and precipitated them upon the floor. Upon the

whole more than a thousand large crystals were found in the cave, many

of them weighing from fifty pounds to more than three cwt.

After the first explorers had collected about a ton, the whole able-

bodied population of Guttannen, provided with hammers, spades, ropes,

baskets, and trucks, came forth to carry away the remainder. As the

report had spread that the Canton of Uri, on whose territory the cave

was situated, intended to stop their proceedings, they worked night and

day with feverish haste, and in the space of a week had entirely

stripped it of its treasures, which were partly conveyed to the new

Furca Road, and partly transported over the glaciers to the Grimsel. One

of the party fell into a crevice with a crystal of a hundred pounds upon

his back, but extricated himself, though he was obliged to abandon his

prize. Thus when the authorities from Uri made their appearance on the

spot nearly all the crystals had been removed out of their reach. Seven

of the finest specimens, each rejoicing in an individual name, like the

mammoth-trees of America, now form a magnificent group in the museum of

Berne, to which they were sold for 8,000 francs. The ‘king,’ 32 inches

high and 3 feet in circumference, weighs 255 pounds; the 'grandfather,’

though of inferior height, makes up for this deficiency by a superior

girth, and weighs 276 pounds. Many other fine crystals were sold to

various museums and private collections for six or seven francs per

pound, so that Sulzer’s discovery will long be gratefully remembered in

the annals of the poor village of Guttannen.

INDEX.

Aben Aboo, last Morisco chief of Granada, his end, 174

Abraham, his purchase of the field of Machpelah with silver money, 297

Abydos, rock-hewn cemeteries of, 205

Abyssinia, rock-churches of, 186

Aconcagua, height of the volcano of, 54

Adelsberg, cave of, vast dimensions of the, 135, 138

entrance to the Cave of, 137

stalagmital formations of, 140

traversed by a river, 150

fungi in the, 157

subterranean animals found in the, 162, 163

insects in the, 163

Adit levels, drainage by, 269

Adullam, David’s refuge in the cave of, 169

Æolian caverns, 198-200

those of Terni, 198

fables respecting, 199

Africa, future services of Artesian wells to, 51

cannibal caves of South, 234

Agates, 496

of Oberstein, 496, 498

Aidepsos, antiquity of the hot baths of, 44

Ajunta, rock-temples of, 182, 183

Alabaster, origin of, 4

of Montmartre, 468

of Volterra, 468

of England, 469

Alaghez, sulphur of the crater of the volcano of, 445

Albania, subterranean water-courses of, 150

Albano, Lake of, the crateriform hollow forming the, 132

Albert the Great, his discovery of arsenic, 385

Alchemists, their search for gold, 371

Aleschga, fire temple of, 91

Aleutian Mountains, volcanoes of the, 61

Aleutian Archipelago, formation of a new volcanic island in the, 60

Alexander the Great, wealth of, 286, 298

Aldborough, amber found on the coast at, 450

Algeria, Artesian wells of, 51

Algiers, great part of, destroyed by the earthquake of 1755, 118

Aljaska, volcanoes of the peninsula of, 61

Almaden del Azogue, quicksilver mines of, 371-373

mines of New Almaden in California, 378

Alpujarras, destruction of the Moors of Granada in the caves of, 173,

174

Alston, situation of the town of, 366

Alston Moor, horses used in the mines of, 262

great drain of Nent Force Level, 270

lead mines of, 365, 366

Altaï, copper mines of the, 326

porphyry of the, 468

Alten Fjord, copper mines of, 324

Aluminium, discovery and uses of, 387

Aluminium-bronze, 387

Amber, modes of collecting, on the Prussian coast, 449

diggings near Dantzig, 449, 450

various places in which it is found, 450

what is amber? 450

the extinct amber-tree, 451

insects inclosed in amber, 452-455

ancient and modern trade in, 455-457

constituents of, 458

mines of Tolfa, 458

manufacture of, 459

Amblyopsis spelæus, of the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky, 168

America, number of active volcanoes in Western and Central, 61

copper mines of, 326

ancient copper mines of, 327

iron industry of, 362

lead mines of, 367

silver mines of, 300-314

coal-fields of North, 424

fossil monkeys of South, 24

animals of the Pliocene period and of the present day, 24

Ammonites, number of species of the,18

characteristics of the, 18

Ammonites Henleyi, 9

Anaitis, golden statue of the goddess, 286

Anchorites, caves of, 178

Ancyloceras gigas, 19

Andernach, on the Rhine, glacial beer cellars of, 192

entrance to the glacière of, 201

Andes, sea-shells found on the, 34

fish disgorged from the volcanic caverns of the, 69

André, St., town and church of, buried by a landslip of Mount Grenier,

127

Andreasberg, St., depth of one of the pits of, 247

Animals, impressions produced on, by an earthquake, 113

subterranean, 159-168

divine honours paid to them by the Egyptians, and converted into

mummies, 205

caves containing remains of extinct animals, 213

Anoplotheriums, size and characteristics of the, 23

Antæopolis, rock-hewn cemeteries of, 205

Anthony, St., of Egypt, his rock-cave, life, and death, 178, 179

Anthracites, or non-bituminous coal, 401, 402

value of, for steam-engines, 405

Antimony, first mention of, 383

uses of, 383

Antioch, earthquake of, in the reign of Trajan, 97

its subsequent subversion by an earthquake, 97

Antiparos, Grotto of, 134

Antuco, eruption of the volcano of, in 1835, 79

Apallachian coal-field, its enormous extent, 424

Apollo, at Delphi, golden statue of, 285

Apteryx australis of New Zealand, 216

Aptornis, Professor Owen’s resuscitation of the, 217

Aqueducts of the Romans, 41

of the Turks, 41, 42

Aqueous rocks, countless ages of the formation of the, 1, 5

incomplete knowledge of these sedimentary formations, 1

aqueous strata disturbed by igneous formations, 4

Arabia, sulphur of, 446

Arcadia, consecrated caves to Artemis and Pan in, 187

Arcueil, artificial mushroom-beds at, 158

Arica, effects of an earthquake sea-wave at, 109

Argentiferous veins of the Clausthal and the Veta madre, their length,

247

Armenia, hermits in, 179

Arnaud, St., Colonel, his massacre of the Arabs in the cave of Shelas,

176

Arracan, mud volcanoes of the coast of, 93

Arsenic, discovery of, 385

supply of, 385

Artesian wells, subterranean heat shown by, 32

theory of, 48

of the inhabitants of the Sahara, mentioned by Olympiodorus, 48

the well of Grenelle at Paris, 49

Artesian well sunk in the London basin, 49

various uses of Artesian wells, 50

those of Algeria, 51

future importance of, in Africa and Australia, 51, 52

Ashes thrown out by volcanic eruptions, 66, 67

Asia Minor, earthquakes of, in the reign of Tiberius, 97, 100

Asphalte, 426

found swimming on the Dead Sea, 427

uses of, 427

pavements made of, 428

Assuan, rock-hewn cemeteries of, 205

Asterophyllites comosa, 392

Augustus, Emperor, and the sacrilegious soldier, story of, 286

Aurignac, sepulchral grotto of, 228, 229

Australia, future importance of Artesian wells to, 52

stalactital caves of, 141

ossiferous caves of, 216

discovery of gold in, 289

Sir Roderick Murchison’s surmises, 289

copper mines of, 329

Austria, coal-fields of, 423

salt mines of, 433-436

Auvergne, carbonic acid gas springs of, 88

maare, or crateriform hollows, in, 132

Avaricum (Bourges), Cæsar’s siege of, 347

Averno, Lake of, formed in an extinct crater of a volcano, 57

Aviculopecten sublobatus, fossils of, 15

Axmouth, landslip at, 128

Sir C. Lyell’s account of it, 128

Azores, earthquakes in the, 100

Azure Cave of Capri, beauty of the marine excavation called the, 143

Babylon, golden image of Belus at, 285

Bagdad, coins of, 287

Baghilt coal mine, in Wales, drowned, 273

Bahaud, Port, upheaval of the land at, 36

Baku, burning springs of, 91

new mud volcano near, 95

Balearic Islands, troglodytes of, 234

Ballarat, gold mines of, 291

Baltic, changes on the shores of the, 451

Banca, tinstone of, 335

Bann Bridge, subsidence of the land at, 36

Barbary, earthquake of 1755 in, 118

Barigazzo, burning springs near, 90

Bath, thermal springs of, 43

Bats, clusters of, in caverns, 159

Baumann’s Cave, in the Harz Mountains, 136

fatal expedition, 136

Bean shot and feathered shot of copperworks, 321, 322

Bear, grisly, of the Rocky Mountains, 125

bones of huge and formidable extinct species found in caverns, 123,

125

remains of bears found in caves, 213

Beatus, St., his cave on the Lake of Thun, 181

pilgrimages to his cave, 181

Beauheyl, or ‘living streams’ of tin, 337

Beaujonc, scenes of the inundation of the mine of, 274

Beckford, his remarks on the Grotto of Pausilippo and Virgil’s tomb,

242, 243

Beetle, cavern, in the cave of Adelsberg, 163

in the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky, 167

Belemnites of the Lias and Oolite, 19

size and characteristics of the, 19, 20

Belemnite, restored, 19

Belgium, lead mines of, 367

production of zinc in, 381

coal-fields of, 423

Belus, image of, in the temple of Babylon, 285

Belzoni, his aptitude for his work, 203

Benedict, St., his cave near Subiaco, 180

Berchtesgaden, salt mines of, 436

Bergmann, his experiments with platinum, 382

Berguen, Louis von, discovers the art of cutting diamonds, 478

Beryl, the, 491, 492

Bethlehem, Church and Grotto of the Nativity at, 188

Bewick, Thomas, a coal-hewer in early life, 419

Biban-el-Moluk, the royal tombs of Thebes, 202-204

Biscayana, Veta de la, silver mine of, 304

its great wealth and subsequent abandonment, 304

Billiton, tinstone of, 335

Birds, cave-haunting, 160

Birmah, mud volcanoes of, 93

rock-temples, 184

Bismuth, first mention of, 383

whence furnished, 383

Bituminous substances, 426

Black Country, iron furnaces of the, 351

Black lead. _See_ Plumbago.

Blast furnaces for iron, 352

benefits of the hot blast, 353

Blasting in mines and its dangers, 258-260

Bleyberg-à-Montzen, lead mines of, 367

Blothrus spelæus, of the Cave of Adelsberg, 163

its pursuit of the cavern-beetle, 163

Blowers in coal-mines, 279

Bogs, effects of bursting of, 130

Bohemia, ice-caves of, 197

gold coins of, 287

gold of, 288

silver mines of, 299

their produce, 300

tin mines of, 336

iron mines of, 358

coal-fields of, 423

Bolivia, active volcanoes of, 61

Bolsena, Lake of, formed in the extinct crater of a volcano, 57

Bonifacio, in Corsica, caverns of, 144, 145

Borax, or borate of soda, former chief supply of, 459

obtained as a crude substance in various places, 459

the suffioni of the Florentine lagoons, 460

Boring for minerals, 249

Williams’s account of the emotions of the boring party, 249

mode of operation, 250, 251

prices in the North of England for boring, 250 _note_

implements used for boring, 250

Borneo, diamond mines of, 480

Borrowstoness Colliery, 410

Bosio, Anthony, his discovery of the catacombs, 209

Boston, in America, smelting-houses of the Bay of, 328

Botallack mine, in Cornwall, 317-319

the blind miner of, 319, 320

Bourbon, Isle of, volume of the lava stream of the eruption of 1787, 75

Bracciano, Lake of, formed in the extinct crater of a volcano, 57

Brachiopods of the Silurian seas, 12, 13

Brandstein, ice-cave of, 197

Brazil, ossiferous caves of, 216

iron-ores of, 363

lead mines of, 367

Bressay, islet of, its marine caverns, 142

Breton, Cape, rain-drops of the Carboniferous period preserved at, 29

Brienz, village of, twice buried by a landslip, and twice

reconstructed, 127

Brilliants, 479, 484

Britannia metal, 335

manufacture of, 383

Brittany, traces of depression of the land on the coast of, 37

Brixham, bone-caves of, 227

Bronze, an alloy of copper and tin, 332

implements of, found in Switzerland, 332

Brownhill, in North America, bituminous coal-field at, 424

Brûlé, near St. Etienne, burning coalmine at, 283

Brunswick, New, coal-fields of, 424

Buch, Leopold von, his observations as to the rise of the land of

Sweden, 35

Büdöshegy, in Transylvania, sulphur caves of the mountain, 446

visit to the caves, 446

Bufador, or the water-spout of Pope Luna, 146

Buffalo, food of the, 26

Burgbrohl, carbonic acid gas spring of, and quantity it produces, 88

Burra-Burra copper mine, in Australia, 329

Busingen, destruction of the village of, 124

Bustamente, Don José, his draining gallery, 304