Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 1.djvu/316

208 ly defeats its pretension, the true Peruvian emerald being equal in hardness to the ruby.

Pliny* reckons up twelve kind of emeralds, and names them all by the country where they are found. Many have thought the smaragdus to be but a finer kind of jasper. Pomet assures us it is a mineral, formed in iron, and says he had one to which iron-ore was sticking. If this was the case, the finest emeralds should not come from Peru, where, as far as ever has been yet discovered, there is no iron.

regard to the Oriental emeralds, which they say come from the East Indies, they are now sufficiently known, and the value of each stone pretty well ascertained; but all our industry and avarice have not yet discovered a mine of emeralds there, as far as I have heard. That there were emeralds in the East Indies, upon the first discovery of it by the Cape, there is no sort of doubt; that there came emeralds from that quarter in the time of the Romans, seems to admit of as little; but few antique emeralds have ever been seen; and so greatly in esteem, and rare were they in those times, that it was made a crime for any artist to engrave upon an emerald †.

is very natural to suppose, that some people of the East had a communication and trade with the new world, before we attempted to share it with them; and that the emeralds, they had brought from that quarter, were those which came afterwards