A nose-jewel from the New Hebrides consists of a crystal of hyaline quartz reduced to a cylindrical form, one extremity having been pointed, while the other retains the natural faces of the crystal. This was passed through the septum of the nose, and was most likely worn as an amulet.[[701]]
Rock-crystal has been used extensively in the past year with ornaments of ribbon-like or plaque-like effects. Sometimes all the parts are made into the exact shape of a bowknot, with a bordering of platinum and diamonds, or of platinum and diamonds with a calibre-cut onyx; that is, the rock-crystal material is cut into minute square or oblong stones, which are run into double triangular edges that hold them. The crystals are dulled, and frequently have the appearance of moonstones. At times, indeed, moonstones are used in their place. Sometimes these panels, or bits and pieces of rock-crystal, are drilled, diamonds set in platinum are inserted into the drill-holes, and the ornament is engraved in classic designs of Watteau-like effects.
The origin of Burmese rubies is thus explained in a Burmese legend current in the region of the Ruby Mines. According to this legend, in the first century of our era three eggs were laid by a female naga, or serpent; out of the first was born Pyusawti, a king of Pagan; out of the second came an Emperor of China, and out of the third were emitted the rubies of the Ruby Mines.[[702]]
Dealing in precious stones was by no means an unusual occupation in Europe more than four hundred years ago, as is shown by the fact that a certain Peter, one of the secret agents of Perkin Warbeck, a pretender to the throne of England in Henry VIII’s reign, was called in the secret correspondence of the conspirators, “The Merchant of the Ruby.” Such dealers frequently travelled from place to place, and usually offered their wares to princes and nobles; hence the statement in a letter that the Merchant of the Ruby “was not able to sell his wares in Flaunders” might not seem suspicious if the letter were intercepted and read, although the meaning was that the emissary had been unable to obtain succor in Flanders for the cause of the pretender.[[703]] Probably this designation also contained a covert allusion to the Red Rose of York, for Perkin Warbeck gave himself out to be Richard, Duke of York.
A sixteenth-century traveller, the Portuguese Duarte Barbosa, after saying that “the rubies grow in India,” proceeds to state that those of finest quality and greatest value were for the most part gathered in a river called Pegu and were named nir puce by the Malabars. As a test of their fineness, the Hindus would touch them with the tip of the tongue, the coldest (densest) being the best. When a superior ruby was thus picked out, the examiner would attach a little wax to its finest point, and so pick it up and look through it against a bright light; by this means any blemish would immediately become apparent. These rubies came not only from the river of Pegu but from other parts of the land of the same name, often being discovered in deep mountain clefts. However, they were not cut and polished in that country, but were merely cleaned and sent for cutting to “Palecote and the country of Narsynga.”[[704]]
The balas-ruby (originally a spinel from Badakshan) was one of the most admired precious stones in medieval times, before the diamond was helped to its proud preëminence by having its beauties revealed through the exercise of the diamond-cutters’ skill. Almost all the large “rubies” of which we read, those of Europe at least, were balas-rubies, as were also by far the greater part of the so-called rubies in Oriental royal collections of that and later times. The great Italian poet Dante uses this stone (balascio) as a symbol of the glowing radiance of divine joy in the following lines from the Divina Commedia (Paradiso, ix, 67–69):
L’altra letizia, che m’era già nota
Preclara cosa, mi si fece in vista
Qual fin balascio in che lo sol percota.
In very ancient times as well as at the present day (if we admit that the anthrax of Theophrastus really was ruby and not a pyrope garnet), the ruby was the most valuable of all precious stones, the Greek writer stating that at the time he wrote, about 260 B.C., an exceedingly small specimen would sell for as much as forty gold pieces. His statement that these stones came from Carthage and Marseilles should not induce us to prejudge the question as to their real character, as many articles of Asiatic commerce were distributed from these parts, more especially from the great Carthaginian seaport.[[705]]