16 
MR. J. T. HOTBLACK ON PRECIOUS STONES. 
always called rightly a diamond. The off colour or yellowish 
stones are the least valuable, and, generally speaking, the whiter 
a stone the moi’e its value, an average quality white stone of one 
carat weight, such a one as shown about the size of a small pea, 
would be worth about ten pounds, perhaps more at the present 
time, and the price always of course varying very much, according 
to the purity and brilliancy of the specimen. But some of the 
colours were extremely rare, and fetched at times very fancy prices. 
I have heard lately of a red stone of one carat being valued at 
£100, and that a blue of the same weight could hardly be found 
to match it even if £1,000 were forthcoming to pay for it. I have 
a record of a green stone, but just over one carat, being sold 
for £300. 
Diamonds and their value have been known in the East from 
time immemorial, but it is only comparatively recently that the 
art of cutting and polishing has been discovered. Anciently both 
in the East and West they were all worn uncut and unpolished. 
The right recognition of their great superiority to all other stones 
is also quite recent. In ancient times stones which would now 
not be reckoned as of a hundredth part the same value as 
a diamond the same size, were by the ancients considered almost 
if not quite as valuable. Until comparatively recent times all 
diamonds came from the East. When they were first discovered 
in Brazil, it was said the stones brought from there were only the 
refuse of the Indian mines sent there and brought back again. 
Now we recognise fine Brazilian stones as the very best, and 
dealers are fond of dilating on the inferiority of those from the 
Cape, but there have been many fine stones brought from the 
Cape. Still, there is something in the whiteness of a Cape stone 
easily recognised by almost any dealer, and which I must confess 
does not please me so well as the limpid light of what is called fine 
old Brazilian stuff. 
At and near Kimberley are what perhaps may be properly called 
the only diamond mines in the world — all other workings for 
diamonds which I have ever heard of have been nothing but 
alluvial washings, or the findings of stones which have by some 
agency been dispersed sparsely over a considerable area — but at 
Kimberley we have mines where in a comparatively very small 
space diamonds are as thick in the ground as they well can be. 
