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The National Geographic Magazine 



yard long, two-thirds of a yard wide, 

 and only one-eighth of an inch thick. 

 Nearly all the jade of New Zealand was 

 sent to Germany and there cut into 

 stones for rings, scarf-pins, studs, and 

 for ordinary jewelry purposes, such as 

 those for which sard and agate have 

 heretofore been used. 



The diamond syndicate, composed of 

 the South African mine owners, manage 

 the sale of their diamonds very shrewdly. 

 A purchaser must buy not only the va- 

 riety of diamond he wants, but also all 

 the other varieties from the mines. 

 The syndicate sells its diamonds in par- 

 cels or series ; each parcel is made up 

 of the different varieties of diamonds 

 in the proportion in which each dia- 



mond is found. In this way the un- 

 popular varieties are disposed of as 

 quickly as the popular ones. 



The diamond-cutting industry in the 

 United States has advanced very rapidly 

 during recent years. American dia- 

 mond-cutters would now be able to cut 

 all the diamonds for this country if they 

 could get enough rough diamonds. As 

 it is, the rough diamonds sent over 

 supply only one-half of the demand. 



The American cutters have invented 

 a number of new mechanical labor- 

 saving devices, which have given them a 

 great advantage over the European cut- 

 ters, where diamond cutting is done by 

 the ancestral " rule of thumb " handed 

 down from father to son. 



NOTES ON PANAMA AND COLOMBIA 



IT is supposed by some that Panama 

 derived its name from the native 

 word for butterfly. Explorers of 

 the interior tell of swarms of butterflies 

 which at times rise on the slopes of the 

 mountains in dense clouds, darkening 

 the sunshine. Others maintain that the 

 name is from an Indian word meaning 

 abounding in fish. 



The Republic of Panama is believed 

 to have about 300,000 people, living in 

 towns and hamlets. It extends east 

 and west for about 450 miles, with an 

 average breadth of 70 miles from sea to 

 sea. Its area is about 31,500 square 

 miles. Thus the population of the state 

 about equals that of Washington, D. C, 

 while its area is a little greater than 

 the area of South Carolina. The com- 

 merce of Panama amounts to $3,000,000 

 per annum. These figures are supplied 

 by the Bureau of Statistics of the De- 

 partment of Commerce and Labor, and 

 are from reports of the United States 

 consuls at Panama and Colon, which 

 have just been received by the Bureau 

 and are not } T et published. 



The principal ports are Panama, on 

 the Pacific coast, and Colon, on the At- 

 lantic side, and these ports are visited 

 aunuallj" by more than one thousand 

 vessels, which land over one million tons 

 of merchandise and nearly one hundred 

 thousand passengers, chiefly for transfer 

 over the Panama Railway, 47 miles in 

 length, connecting the Pacific port of 

 Panama with the Atlantic port of Colon. 



Colon, sometimes called Aspinwall, 

 has a population of about three thousand 

 persons. It was named in honor of Co- 

 lumbus, who discovered the bay in 1502. 

 The city of Panama has a population of 

 about twenty-five thousand. It was 

 founded in 1519, burned in 1671, and 

 rebuilt in 1673. During the sixteenth 

 and seventeenth centuries Panama was 

 one of the wealthiest of the Spanish 

 towns in the New World, as all the 

 plunder from the Pacific coast passed 

 through the city. It " had eight mon- 

 asteries, a cathedral, and two churches, 

 a fine hospital, 200 richly furnished 

 houses, nearly 5,000 houses of humbler 

 sort, a Genoese chamber of commerce, 



