THE QUEEN'S DIAMONDS.
After seeing the Fairies' Retreat there remains but one other surprise, and that is "The Queen's Diamonds." These are in a casket easily accessible, and the opening to which is about three feet wide by one foot high. The jewel case itself is about four feet wide, three feet deep, and 12 feet long. When the light is turned into it the brilliancy of the scene is perfectly dazzling. The prismatic formations are wonderful, and the blaze of magnificence mocks the descriptive power of either pen or pencil. It is "labyrinth of light" which appeals to the imagination with rare force. Edgar A. Poe worked up an excellent sensation in his story of "The Gold Bug." The way in which Mr. William Legrand became possessed of the scarabæus with scales of bright metallic lustre, and of the scrap of paper which contained mysterious directions leading to hidden piratical plunder by Kidd, is not more interesting to the general reader than cryptography is to the student. The enthusiastic way in which the curator speaks of this cave and its distance and measurements recalls to memory the exciting incidents connected with the death's-head, the gold bug dropped through its eye-socket, the taping of the distance from the fall of the scarabæus to the hidden wealth, the hurried digging, and the discovery of the buried treasure. "As the rays of the lantern fell within the pit, there flashed upwards a glow and a glare from a confused heap of gold and of jewels that absolutely dazzled our eyes." The feeling produced in that case was exhaustion from excitement; but the sensation caused by a glance at the brilliance of the Queen's Diamonds is one of intense gratification. It is a most vivid and lustrous spectacle. The crystals are in clusters grouped together like the petals of flowers, and these flower-shaped forms combine with others of a similar kind, and constitute elaborate floral masses. They are much more difficult to decipher than was the cryptography left by the pirate Kidd. As Brewster puts it, "though the examination of these bodies has been pretty well pursued, we can form at present no adequate idea of the complex and beautiful organization of these apparently simple bodies" Of the 1,500 or more different crystals known to science, nearly half are composed of carbonate of lime, but "The Queen's Diamonds" are certainly among the rarest. The crystallized forms in the caves are very numerous. Some of them are irregular, on account of the substance not having been sufficiently divided before its deposition, or because of inadequate space or insufficient repose, but for the most part they are regular and perfect of their kind. None, however, are more regularly formed or more pronounced than "The Queen's Diamonds." It would be difficult to describe their geometric shape. The separate fragments of each cluster vary from about an inch to a fraction thereof. They are like three-sided prisms, tapering to points at the ends. The edges are sharp as knives from the centre to the upper point; but from the centre to the end which is joined to others, the sharp edge is replaced by a smooth surface, as though a cut had been made with a razor. The upper ends of these prisms are clear as glass; the lower ends are a little cloudy. The brilliancy of the combination is marvellous.
