85 



its natural size, was imitated in jewellery, composed of the most 

 costly diamonds, rubies, emeralds, sapphires, topazes, and ame- 

 thysts, producing a wonderful effect. This throne was valued at 

 ten crore of rupees, upwards of twelve millions sterling. After the 

 assassination of Nadir Shah this plunder was transported into vari- 

 ous countries, and since the late revolutions in Persia has been 

 more widely dispersed. 



Jewels have been always held in high estimation; sacred and 

 profane writers extol their beauty and value; the Romans, under 

 their luxurious emperors, carried this extravagant superfluity to 

 the utmost prodigality. Diamonds with them do not appear to 

 have been in so much request as pearls, of which they possessed 

 some immensely valuable: one, presented by Julius Caesar to Ser- 

 vilia, the mother of Brutus, cost him forty-eight thousand pounds 

 sterling. The celebrated pearl ear-rings of Cleopatra were valued 

 at one hundred and sixty thousand pounds. 



In the oppressed and impoverished city of Cambay, at the time 

 I last saw it, there was no demand for jewels, nor any other valuable 

 commodity; they were generally sent to Sural, Bombay, or China, 

 where they found a ready sale. The magnificent prismatic dia- 

 mond I have just mentioned, was lost in a dreadful storm a few 

 months afterwards at Surat bar, where the ship in which it was 

 freighted, with a number of other vessels, foundered at their an- 

 chors. Cambay in former times, when the sea flowed near its 

 walls, was the grand emporium of Guzerat, and the resort of mer- 

 chants from every quarter of the globe. Queen Elizabeth, the first 

 English monarch who encouraged the Indian trade, sent out three 

 persons in 1583, with letters to the sovereigns of China and Cam- 



