Page:A treatise on diamonds and precious stones including their history Natural and commercial.djvu/91

 decline, they were obliged to relinquish the undertaking, and retired with a loss of one third of their funds.

the best accounts that I have been able to procure, it appears that for some ages the native princes of India had employed from thirty to fifty thousand, or more, of their vassals, in the washing and search for Diamonds. Solong as they collected as many as would cover the expenses incurred, the labor was continued. It would not be difficult to form a rude estimate of the amount of money thus acquired; and it is matter of great astonishment, that, in so many centuries, so few large Diamonds should have been found. In India, Diamonds of great size, as I have already observed, are never sold by the Rajahs, or persons of rank, but are preserved in families, from generation to generation, with religious care.