Leisure hours among the gems

by Augustus C. Hamlin

Since the time of the Spanish Conquest, New Granada has furnished the world with the most of its emeralds. The most famous mines are at Muzo, in the valley of Tunca, between the mountains of New Granada and Popayan, about seventy-five miles from Santa Fé de Bogota, where every rock, it is said, contains an emerald. At present the supply of emeralds is very limited, owing to restrictions on trade, and want of capital and energy in mining operations.

Blue as well as green emeralds are found in the Cordillera of the Cubillan. The Esmeraldas mines in Equador are said to have been worked successfully at one period by the Jesuits. The Peruvians obtained many emeralds from the barren district of Atacama, and in the times of the Conquest there were quarries on the River of Emeralds near Barbacoas. Emeralds of a poor quality are found at Limoges in France, and also in Norway. In some of the felspar quarries in Finland they occur in large thick crystals, several feet in thickness, of a fine color, but not transparent.

Emeralds are found in Siberia, and some of the localities may have furnished to the ancients the Scythian gems which Pliny and others mention. In the Wald district magnificent crystals have been found embedded in mica-slate. One of these—a twin-crystal, now in the imperial cabinet at St. Petersburg—is seven inches long, four inches broad, and weighs four and a half pounds. There is another mass in the same collection which measures fourteen inches long by twelve broad and five thick, weighing sixteen and three-quarter pounds troy. This group shows twenty crystals from a half inch to five inches long, and from one to two inches broad. They were discovered by a peasant cutting wood near the summit of the mountain. His eye was attracted by the lustrous sparkling amongst the decomposed mica where the ground had been exposed by the uprooting of a tree by the violence of the wind. He collected a number of the crystals, and brought them to Katharineburg and showed them to M. Kokawin, who recognized them and sent them to St. Petersburg, where they were critically examined by Van Worth and pronounced to be emeralds. One of these crystals was presented by the Emperor to Humboldt when he visited St. Petersburg, and it is now deposited in the Berlin collection. Quite a number of emeralds are now brought from the Siberian localities, and it is believed that enterprise and capital would produce a large supply of the gem.

Near Salsberg, in the Tyrol, the emerald occurs in a mica-slate which appears on the face of a very steep precipice difficult of access, and about 8,700 feet above the sea-level. They are of good color, but much impaired in their transparency by foreign matter and imperfect crystallization. Some of the finest stones yielded by this locality were exhibited as cabinet specimens by the Emperor of Russia at the Paris Exposition.

The supply of emeralds from South America is very limited, and may be ascribed to want of skilful mining, as well as to climate, the political condition of the country, and the indolence of its inhabitants. The localities cannot be exhausted, for they are too numerous and extensive. The elevated regions in Granada admit of scientific exploration by Europeans, and at the present day the only emerald-mining operations conducted in South America have been prosecuted near Santa Fé de Bogota by a French company, which has paid the Government $14,000 yearly for the right of mining, all the emeralds obtained being sent to Paris to be cut by the lapidaries of that city. In the Atacama districts, and along the banks of the River of Emeralds, the physical obstructions are difficult to overcome; and pestilential diseases of malignant character forbid the long sojourn of the European. Yet the introduction of Chinese labor may prove successful and highly remunerative, since the coolie reared among the jungles and rice-swamps of Southern China is quite as exempt from malarial fevers as the negro.

Hassaurek was surprised not to find emeralds for sale at Guayaquil, as they had been found in abundance in Equador at the time of the Conquest. The Alcalde of the region around the River Bechile gave Stephenson, the traveller, three emeralds which were found in the sands at the mouth of the river.

Concerning the emerald mines whence the ancients drew their supplies of gems, there remains but little positive information. They were undoubtedly established in Arabia, Africa, and Scythia, but all record of them is lost. As regards the Egyptian mines, modern travellers have proved their existence. At the ancient mines at Gebel Zabara, which were worked in the time of the Ptolemies, M. Callaud found the tools of the miners as they had left them, and also many inferior emeralds among the débris of the pits. Mehemet Ali attempted to reopen them, but was unsuccessful, as the matrix of the gem proved to be exhausted. This discovery establishes the truth of Pliny’s remark concerning some of the localities of the emerald. They are the same gems whose beauty was praised by the Persian poets. We have no evidence of ancient mines of emeralds in Asia; and Tavernier, who sought in vain to discover them, ventured to state that he believed that some of the emeralds he saw in India must have come from Peru, by way of the Philippine Islands, long before the Conquest by the Spaniards.

Other mines undoubtedly were worked in Africa; and we know that in the time of Justinian, the Abyssinians searched the coast, even as far as the equator. The African emeralds were not of the first quality; and at a later period of Roman history the Scythian emeralds were reckoned as the first in value and beauty, the Bactrian second, while the African were classed as third. About the fourth century the throne of the White Huns was famous for the splendid Scythian emeralds which adorned it.

The price of the emerald has no fixed and extended scale, like that of the diamond, and the fluctuations of its value during the past three centuries form an interesting chapter in the history of gems. In the time of Dutens (1777) the price of small stones of the first quality was one louis the karat; one and a half karats, five louis; two karats, ten louis; and beyond this weight no rule of value could be established. In De Boot’s day (1600) emeralds were so plenty as to be worth only a quarter as much as the diamond. The markets were glutted with the frequent importations from Peru, and thirteen years before the above-mentioned period one vessel brought from South America two hundred and three pounds of fine emeralds, worth at the present valuation more than seven millions of dollars. At the beginning of this century, according to Caire, they were worth no more than twenty-four francs (or about five dollars) the karat, and for a long time antecedent to 1850, they were valued at only $15 the karat. Since this period they have become very rare, and their valuation has advanced enormously. In fact, the value of the emerald now exceeds that of the diamond, and is rapidly approaching the ratio fixed by Benvenuto Cellini in the middle of the sixteenth century, which rated the emerald at four times, and the ruby at eight times, the value of the diamond. Fine stones (the emerald is exceedingly liable to flaw, the beryl is more free, and the green sapphire is rarely impaired by fissures or cracks) of one karat in weight are worth at the present day $200 or more. Fine gems of two karats weight will command $500; while larger stones are sold at extravagant prices.

Most of our aqua-marines come from Brazil and Siberia, and small stones are sold at trifling prices. Some of them, however, when perfect and of fine color, command fabulous sums. The superb little beryl found at Mouzzinskaia is valued by the Russians at the enormous sum of $120,000, although the crystal weighs but little more than one ounce. Another rough prism preserved in the Museum at Paris, and weighing less than one hundred grains, has received the tempting offer of 15,000 francs.