REGAL GEMS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 175, 4 August 1876, Page 9

REGAL GEMS.

1 1 1. The Orloff of Amsterdam ; 194f carats ; latest price, 450,000 rubles.

Cut in the old rhomboid shape. Forms the extremity of the Russian sceptre. It came from the old mines of India, and is said to have once formed one of the eyes of the celebrated statue of Sherigan in the temple of Brahma. At a later period it was found, with another large diamond, in the throne of the Shah Nadir of Persia. When he was murdered, it was taken by a French grenadier who had taken service there, and who fled with it to Malabar, and sold it to a ship captain for 14,000 thalers, and he handed it over to a Jew for 84,000 thalers. The Jew sold it at a greatly advanced price to the Arminian merchant Schafras, from whom the Empress Catharine 11. obtained it in 1775, at Amsterdam, for 450,000 rubles, an annuity of 2,000 rubles, and a diploma of nobility. 2. The Eegent, or Pitt carats; perfect diamond; value, 1,200,000 thalers.

Among the |French"'crown jewels. It 'came from Jthe mines of Parteal, twenty miles from Mazulipatam (Golconda, East Indies), where it was found in 1702 by a slave, who, in order to conceal it, wounded himself in the leg and hid it under the bandage. He promised the stone to a sailor if he would procure him his liberty. The eailor enticed him on board his ship, took the stone, drowned the slave, sold the diamond to the Governor of Fort St. George (whose name was Pitt) for £1,000 sterling, squandered the money, and hanged himself. It was purchased from Pitt in 1717 by the then Eegent of France, the Duke of Orleans, for Louis XV., its price being 3,375,000 francs. It weighed at that time 410 carats, and was afterwards cut and polished in perfect diamond form, by which, however, it lost twothirds of its size. This operation took almost two .'years, and cost 27,000 thalers. In 1792 it was stolen, together with all the crown diamonds, at the plundering of the Tuileries, and was lost sight of until, in an anonymous letter to the Minister of Police at Paris, the place of its concealment in the Champs Elysees was accurately described. It was actually found there, together with Ihe most valuable crown jewels. (Probably the thief had become convinced that it was dangerous for him to sell jewels of such value). The Eepublic then pawned it to the merchant Trescow in Berlin. After its redemption it adorned the sword of Napoleon. 3. The Koh-i-nor — mountain of light; 106 1-16 carets; aflat, oval diamond; belongs to the Queen of England; value, 800,000 thalerjs.

Its history is lost in the darkness of Indian tradition, and can be traced with certainty only since the beginning of the fourteenth century. It was for hundreds of years the crown jewel of the Badschas of Malwa, and was rightfully regarded as a talisman of sovereignty, because it was always the booty of the strongest conqueror. In this manner, after it had repeatedly changed owners, in 1813 it came into the possession of the ruler of Lahore, where it was captured by the English in 1850, at the rebellion of the Sikh troops, and presented to Queen Victoria. It weighed at that time 186 1-15 carats, but it had been so awkwardly cvt — several hundred years before, by the Venetian lapidary, Hortensio Borgio — that it produced little effect. (Exhibited in London in 1851.) Queen Victoria had it newly cut by Herr Vorsanger, the most skilful workman in the celebrated diamond-cutting establishment of Herr Coster, at Amsterdam. The workjwascompleted in 1852, in thirtyeight days. 4. Florentine or Tuscan; 139 1-2 carats; value, 700,000 thalers among the treasures of the Emperor of Austria; pure but of a yellowish color, jprobably the largest of the diamonds lost by Charles the Boldiin the battle of Granson in 1476.

It was found by a Swiss, on the public road in a casket, in which there also lay a costlyipearl. At first the man scornfully threw away the diamond, but.then picked it up again, and sold it for a florin to a clergyman, and he sold it for three francs to the Bernese. Here it was purchased for 5,000 florins by the wealthy merchant prince Bartholomew May. Then a Genoese purchased it for a little more, and sold it for double the price to Ludovico Moro Sforza, the regent of Milan. On the occasion of the dispersion of treasures of Milan, Pope Julius 11. procured it at auction for 20,000 ducats. It is now in the Imperial treasury at Vienna. — Dr. Theodore Schuchardt.