Page:A treatise on diamonds and precious stones including their history Natural and commercial.djvu/90

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DIAMOND.

chasers will sometimes speak with contempt of a Brazil brilliant, and this delusion gives the vender a favorable opportunity for selling what he will call a real Golconda Diamond at a much higher price. The actual, or supposed native country of a diamond, is not at all considered in estimating its commercial value.

The far famed, and much extolled diamond-mines of Golconda, are said to be nearly exhausted. The thousands of inhabitants composing its entire population, who were for so many years employed in washing the earth for these gems, have drained all the riches from this once distinguished territory, and the mines are now abandoned.

A company, chiefly English, raised a capital of £30,000, and with the assistance of the native Rajah, engaged the poor inhabitants in their former occupation; but, after a lapse of three-years, finding their capital in a rapid