All the Spanish accounts of the invasion of Mexico agree in the great abundance of emeralds, both in the adornment of the chiefs and nobles and also in the decoration of the gods, the thrones and the paraphernalia. The Mexican historian Ixtlilxochitl says the throne of gold in the palace of Tezcuco was inlaid with turquoises and other precious stones—that a human skull in front of it was crowned with an immense emerald of a pyramidal form.
The great standard of the republic of Tlascala was richly ornamented with emeralds and silver-work. The fantastic helmets of the chiefs glittered with gold and precious stones, and their plumes were set with emeralds. The mantle of Montezuma was held together by a clasp of the green chalchivitl (jade), and the same precious gem, with emeralds of uncommon size, ornamented other parts of his dress.
The Mexicans carved the obdurate jade and emerald with wonderful skill, using, like the Peruvians, nothing but silicious powder and copper instruments alloyed with tin. They also worked with exquisite taste in gold and silver, and they represented Nature so faithfully and so beautifully that the great naturalist Hernandez took many of these objects thus portrayed for his models when describing the natural history of the country.
When Cortés returned home he displayed five emeralds of extraordinary size and beauty, and presented them to his bride, the niece of the duke de Bejar. On his famous expedition along the Pacific coast and up the Gulf of California he was reduced to such want as to be obliged to pawn these jewels for a time. One of them was as precious as Shylock's turquoise, and Gomara states that some Genoese merchants who examined it in Seville offered forty thousand golden ducats for it. One of the emeralds was in the form of a rose; the second in that of a horn; the third like a fish with eyes of gold; the fourth was like a little bell, with a fine pearl for a tongue, and it bore on its rim the following inscription in Spanish: "Blessed is he who created thee!" The fifth, which was the most valuable of all, was in the form of a small cup with a foot of gold, and with four little chains of the same metal attached to a large pearl as a button: the edge of the cup was of gold, on which was engraved in Latin words, "Inter natos mulierum non surrexit major." These splendid gems are now buried deep in the sand on the coast of Barbary, where they were lost in 1529, when Cortés was shipwrecked with the admiral of Castile whilst on their way to assist Charles V. at the siege of Algiers.
The quantity of emeralds obtained by the Spaniards in their pillage of Mexico was large, but it was trifling when compared with that collected by Pizarro and his remorseless followers in the sack of Peru. Many large and magnificent stones were obtained by the Spaniards, but the transcendent gem of all, called by the Peruvians the Great Mother, and nearly as large as an ostrich egg, was concealed by the natives, and all the efforts of Pizarro and his successors to discover it proved unavailing.
The immense uncut Peruvian emerald given by Rudolph II. to the elector of Saxony is still preserved in the Green Vaults at Dresden. This collection is the finest in the world, and is of the value of many millions of dollars. The treasures are arranged in eight apartments, each surpassing the previous one in the splendor and richness of its contents. This museum dates from the early period when the Freyburg silver-mines yielded vast revenues, and made the Saxon princes among the richest sovereigns in Europe. With lavish hand these potentates purchased jewels and works of art, and the treasures they have thus accumulated are of immense value, and remind the traveler of the gorgeous descriptions of Oriental magnificence.
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. The grand state sceptre is surmounted by another emerald of great size. The sceptre of Poland, which is now treasured in the Kremlin, has a long green stone, fractured in the middle. It is not described, and may be one of the Siberian tourmalines, some of which closely approach the emerald in hue. The imperial orb of Russia, which is of Byzantine workmanship of the tenth century, has fifty emeralds. This fact alone would seem to prove that emeralds were known in Europe or Asia Minor long before the discovery of America; but, on the other hand, the ancient crown which was taken when Kasan was subjugated in 1553 is destitute of emeralds. And hence we are inclined to believe the imperial orb to be of modern workmanship, especially as some of the ancient state chairs do not exhibit emeralds among their decorations of gems and precious stones.
Nowhere in North America do the true emeralds occur. Professor Cleaveland, who was one of the best authorities of his day, maintained nearly half a century ago that emeralds which exhibited a lively and beautiful green hue were found in blasting a canal through a ledge of graphic granite in the town of Topsham in Maine. Several of the crystals presented so pure, uniform and rich a green that he ventured to pronounce them precious emeralds. But to-day we are unable to verify the assertion, or point to a single specimen similar in hue to the emerald from the above-mentioned locality.
The nearest approach to the emerald in color, with the exception of the incomparable green tourmalines from Maine, are the beryls of North and South Royalston in the State of Massachusetts. These beautiful stones exhibit the physical, characteristics of emeralds with the exception of the color, in which they differ very perceptibly. But to appreciate fully the difference in hue we must compare the two gems. Then the lively green of the beryl fades away before the overpowering hue of the emerald, whose rich prismatic green may be taken as the purest type of that color known to the chemist or the painter.
Two summers ago we visited the localities in Massachusetts which were famous in the days of Hitchcock and Webster. We found that the beryls occurred in a very coarse granite, where the quartz appeared in masses and the felspar in huge crystals. These also occur in finer granite, and exhibit no indications of veins or connection with each other. They are few in number, and are soon exhausted by blasting, being generally very superficial. After removing several tons of the rock at the locality at North Royalston, where the beryls appear on the summit of the loftiest hill, our labors were at length rewarded with two beautiful crystals. One of them was a fine prism an inch in diameter, of perfect transparency and of a deep sea-green color, which, however is far from being similar to the transcendent hue of the Granada emeralds, which exhibit an excess of neither blue nor yellow. The other was yellowish-green, resembling the chrysoberyls of Brazil.