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Updated: July 27, 2025
The finest emerald in Europe is said to belong to the emperor of Russia. It weighs but thirty carats, but it is of the most perfect transparency and of the most beautiful color. There are many other fine emeralds among the imperial jewels of the czar, some of which are of great size and rare beauty. The ancient crown of Vladimir glitters with four great stones of unusual brilliancy.
To us a gold piece worth fifty cents seems almost impossible; but the New English Dictionary quotes, under the year 1611: "Florin or Franc: an ancient coin of gold in France, worth ij s. sterling." As the gold coins of those times were not made of pure gold, rarely 17 carats fine, the possibility may be granted.
There was the mine, for example. In each two Earth-weeks of working, the mine-colony nearly filled up a three-gallon cannister with greasy-seeming white crystals shaped like two pyramids base to base. The filled cannister would weigh a hundred pounds on Earth. Here it weighed eighteen. But on Earth its contents would be computed in carats, and a hundred pounds was worth millions.
I once had a friend who inflicted so exorbitant a sentence in respect to a criminal commission which he held, that it exceeded by many carats the amount of guilt incurred by the crime of the delinquents. I inquired of him wherefore he had uttered so cruel a sentence, and committed so manifest an injustice?
He was in European dress, his coat, waistcoat and trousers being of spotless white duck, his linen irreproachable, his feet inclosed in patent leathers, and a diamond of eight or ten carats scintillated in his snowy shirt front. He had been heard to boast that this remarkable gem had been taken from the mountains of his own province.
SPIRIT. A diamond of one hundred and forty carats, submitted to electro-magnetic currents for a long period, will experience a rearrangement of its atoms inter se, and from that stone you will form the universal lens. I. Will great discoveries result from the use of such a lens? SPIRIT. So great, that all that has gone before is as nothing.
There's more roguery here than even I knew of! Hark you, Gilderman, and you other sharks and keep your hands up. Professor, and you, Sydney listen! These other men are thieves all; they've paid us to salt every patch they've tried, so far! They brought over a thousand carats of diamonds stolen from Kolman's Kop to do it with; I know who they bought them from!
Master Tavernier discourses at some length on the ingenious methods adopted by the laborers to conceal diamonds which they have found, sometimes swallowing them, and he tells of one miner who hid in the corner of his eye a stone of two carats!
Gold of an inferior touch, called amas muda from the paleness of its colour, is found in the same countries where the other is produced. I had some assayed which was two carats three grains worse than standard, and contained an alloy of silver, but not in a proportion to be affected by the acids.
One end is of a very fine color, and would afford the largest gem of this mineral yet found, and one which would probably weigh 5½ carats. With this there was a number of superior crystals and some ounces of common pieces of the same mineral. The company estimates the value of this entire yield of hiddenite at about $2,500.
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