BRAZILIAN DIAMONDS AND THEIR ORIGIN. 613 



while a strip of it in the south, near the city of Serro, belongs to the 

 basin of the Rio Doce. Capital differences are marked in the distri- 

 bution of the diamond-bearing beds of these valleys. 



In the basin of the Jecjuitinhonha, nearly all the water-courses, 

 however insignificant, are or have been diamond-bearing from their 

 sources to their mouths at that river. In the basins of the Rio das 

 Velhas and of the Rio Doce, the streams cease to yield diamonds at a 

 short distance from their source. 



In these streams, the diamond is always accompanied by gold in 

 flakes or in little nuggets ; but while the diamond prevails in the center 

 of the diamond-yielding region, as we move toward the east, the 

 proportions are reversed : gold becomes more abundant ; and finally, 

 after having passed the city of Serro, it is the only precious substance 

 contained in the sands. To this point penetrated, at the beginning of 

 the eighteenth centurv, those bold adventurers, bands of whom, seeking 

 gold for nearly a half-century previously, had crossed the mountains 

 and reached the middle of the forest of the Sierra d'Espinhaco, dispos- 

 sessing the tribes of savages whose last representatives still live mis- 

 erably on the banks of the Rio Doce. 



Often, down to 1729, the gold-hunters had noticed, in the bottoms of 

 the bowls in which they washed the river-sands, little bright crystals, 

 to which they attached no value. The brilliancy of these crystals, 

 their hardness, and their regular form, as if shaped by the hand, had 

 indeed attracted the attention of the miners, and many had saved 

 them to use as counters in play ; but gold alone had any value in the 

 eyes of these adventurers. At this epoch, according to the least 

 uncertain tradition, a monk, who had taken part in the search for dia- 

 monds in India, recognized the nature of these counters. He told his 

 discovery to a certain Bernardo da Fonseca Lobo, who made it known 

 in his name to the Portuguese Government. The king immediately 

 took possession of all the lands where the presence of diamonds had 

 been recognized, and where it could be suspected. 



Bernardo received as his reward the title of roval notarv, and the 

 command of the militia of the most important city of the region. The 

 name of the monk was forgotten. I do not believe that the name of 

 either could have been popular at Minas, for their discovery, which 

 threw hundreds of millions into the treasury of the kin^s of Portugal, 

 was the origin of one of the most despotic rules that any country ever 

 had .to endure. 



The first diamonds were found in the sands of the brooks ; and 

 these sands, or, to use the Portuguese expression which has passed into 

 nearly all languages, cascalhos, still constitute the beds that are prin- 

 cipally worked. But beds of an entirely different nature, situated, 

 like mines of metals, in the midst of the strata, and of corresponding 

 depth, have been x brought to notice in later years. 



The diamond-bearing cascalhos not only occupy, or rather did oc- 



