Panna in Bundelkhand. 157 



often much less; with regard to their produce I am inclined to 

 think that they are very precarious, notwithstanding some of 

 the largest diamonds have been found in them ; it is common 

 to hear complaints of having found nothing for many months, 

 and to me they appeared like a lottery in which there are a 

 few prizes and many blanks — they have an advantage in re- 

 quiring little or no outlay, and are consequently wrought by 

 all classes, but it is not unlikely that more capital has been 

 sunk in them in the shape of labour than has ever been re- 

 turned. 



The diamond is occasionally, though very rarely, found on 

 the surface, nor is it improbable that some lucky chance of this 

 kind may have led to the discovery of the mines. 



Mines of Transported Diamonds. — The above is a brief 

 account of all those matrices of the diamond in the Panna dis- 

 trict, which fall under the denominations of madda, lalkakru, 

 or hadda ; but there are others where the gem is found in de- 

 posites with which it appears to have been swept away from 

 its native beds, as at Majgoha and in the glen of the Bagin 

 river ; the mines of the former place are peculiar, and require 

 separate mention, but in those of the glen, the diamond is found 

 under rocky debris, both on the banks and in the bed of the 

 river, and also in the basin which receives the cascade ; its ma- 

 trix in this state, is a confused mixture of red ironstone peb- 

 bles, angular fragments of sandstone, and pieces of common 

 kankar, heaped together in ferruginous sand or clay, the de- 

 tritus in fact of its original gangue ; and the mines of course 

 have a great resemblance to the superficial mines above-men- 

 tioned, but they are said to be rather more productive, and 

 there is great reason to believe that the basin of the cascade 

 has never yet been emptied or excavated except to a trifling 

 extent. 



Majgoha Mines. — The mines of Majgoha are in the west- 

 ern part of the diamond tract, and they may properly be called 

 its western boundary ; they are situated in a hollow resem- 

 bling an inverted cone, which appears to have been excavated 

 by the same process, (more powerfully applied,) which scooped 

 out those resemblances to it in miniature, which are observ- 

 able in the rocky beds of rivers ; the diameter of the vortex is 



