On every side the aspect was the same,—
All ruined, desolate, forlorn, and savage;
No hand or foot within the precinct came
To rectify or ravage.

For over all there hung a cloud of fear;
A sense of mystery the spirit daunted,
And said, as plain as whisper in the ear,
The place is haunted.

The diamond, which for a long time has been considered the most precious of gems, has been known from early antiquity. Its name adamant, a name that can be recognized in nearly all its modern appellations, was given by the Greeks, and signifies "The indomitable." The excessive hardness of the diamond quite justifies this designation.

The diamonds earliest known to the Romans were furnished by Ethiopia; but during the first half-century of our era, they had already been brought from India; and henceforward until the eighteenth century, no diamond mines were known but those of the East Indies—in the empire of the

Mogul, and in the island of Borneo.

In 1829, in

accordance with a judgment expressed by Humboldt, diamonds were found in the Ural Mountains; they have also been obtained from Sumatra, Java, Brazil, and South Africa.

First of all, for size and beauty, the Indian diamonds are famed; “diamonds of Golconda” have become a synonym for preciousness and brilliancy. These gems were brought, not from the immediate vicinity of the fortress of Golconda, but from the mines of Raolconda and other localities situated in the territory of the Golconda kings. The mines were many years ago ceded to the English, but they have long since been abandoned, and it is believed that they are exhausted. Their treasures, however, shine in the coronets of every nation of the globe. In the latter part of the seventeenth century, a celebrated French jeweler, named Tavernier, traveled through Turkey, Persia, and the Indies, and wrote a vivid account of the diamond mines visited by him.

"I visited first," he writes, "a mine in the territory of the kings of Visapoor, in a place called Raolconda, five days from Golconda and eight or nine from Visapoor. All around the place where the diamonds are found, the ground is sandy and full of rocks and covered with coppice.

"In these rocks are numerous veins, sometimes half a finger, sometimes a whole finger wide; and the miners have little iron rods, crooked at the end, which they thrust into the veins to dislodge the sand or earth in which the diamonds are found. After this part of the work is done, the mixture of earth and sand is passed through two or three washings, and is carefully searched to see

if it has any diamonds. It is from this source that the clearest stones and those of the finest water are taken.”

Tavernier relates with very picturesque and lifelike details his various affairs with the diamond merchants, and announces the somewhat remarkable fact that the chief negotiators in the sale of diamonds in India were boys not over sixteen years of age.

"It is pleasant," says Tavernier, "to see the children of these merchants and of other people in the country, from the age of ten to that of fifteen or sixteen, coming every morning and seating themselves under a large tree in the marketplace of the town.

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"Each has his diamond weights in a little pouch hanging at one side, and at the other side a purse attached to his girdle, and containing in some cases as many as six hundred gold pagodas. There they sit and wait until some one comes to sell them diamonds, it may be from the vicinity or from some other mine.

“When any one comes with something for them, he places it in the hands of the eldest of the boys, who is, as it were, the chief of the band. He looks at it, and hands it to the one next him, and so it passes from hand to hand, not a word being spoken by any of them; the eldest boy then asks the price in order to make a bargain, if possible; and if he happen to buy it too dear, he has to take it on his own account."

When evening comes the boys bring together all the stones they have bought, examine them, and arrange them according to their water, their weight, and their clearness. Then they put upon

each its price-as near as possible that at which they would sell to the merchants; and by the latter price, they see how much profit they will have.

They now carry them to the large merchants, who have always great numbers of stones to assort, and all the profit is divided among the boys; the one who acts as their chief receiving one-fourth per cent. more than the others.

Brazilian diamonds are found in the district of San Paulo, in the beds of various rivers, and at Cold Mountain, a lofty plateau measuring eight leagues by sixteen. The diamonds usually occur in alluvial soil enveloped in a conglomerate formed of rounded white quartz pebbles and light-colored sand.

When diamonds were first found by the goldhunters of Brazil, no notion was formed of their value. They were used for counters in card-playing. But at last a native named Bernardo Lobo, who had journeyed to the East Indies, and had seen uncut diamonds there, recognized the nature of these disregarded pebbles. The news of the discovery spread across the world, and its first effect was a panic in the diamond trade. Some time had to elapse, before the dealers in Indian gems could reconcile themselves to any rival that might depreciate the treasures of the Orient.

Meanwhile, upon the inhabitants of the diamond districts, the discovery acted like a curse. The search for gold no longer offered any attraction ; the children gathered the precious dust after the rains. The energies of the gold-hunters were diverted to diamond-finding; care was taken even to examine the crops of all kinds of killed fowls, for diamonds had been found in this way.

As the search became organized, the waters of the rivers were diverted at the dry seasons into canals. The soil was dug to the depth of about ten feet and deposited in heaps near the washing-huts. These huts were furnished with elevated seats for the overseers, who watched incessantly the long troughs in which the washing took place. When a slave found a diamond of 18 carats he received his freedom, and was crowned with flowers, and led in a triumphal procession, amid the rejoicings of his friends.

BLACKIE'S " Diamonds and Precious Stones."

Spell and pronounce:—indomitable, excessive, thenceforward, adamant, furnished, eighteenth, century, accordance, coppice, preciousness, Australia, localities, territory, coronets, girdle, negotiators, and vicinity.

Where are the Ural Mountains, Sumatra, India, Golconda, Brazil, Alaska, Georgia? What is a diamond? diamonds"?

What are "black

It is summer. A party of visitors are just crossing the iron bridge that extends from the American shore to Goat Island, about a quarter of a mile above the falls. Just as they are about to leave, while watching the stream as it plunges and dashes among the rocks below, the eye of one fastens on something clinging to a rock-caught on the very verge of the falls.