by twelve broad
and five thick, weighing sixteen and three-quarter pounds troy. This
group shows twenty crystals from a half inch to five inches long,
and from one to two inches broad. They were discovered by a peasant
cutting wood near the summit of the mountain. His eye was attracted
by the lustrous sparkling amongst the decomposed mica and where the
ground had been exposed by the uprooting of a tree by the violence of
the wind. He collected a number of the crystals, and brought them to
Katharineburg and showed them to M. Kokawin, who recognized them and
sent them to St. Petersburg, where they were critically examined by
Van Worth and pronounced to be emeralds. One of these crystals was
presented by the emperor to Humboldt when he visited St. Petersburg,
and it is now deposited in the Berlin collection. Quite a number
of emeralds are now brought from the Siberian localities, and it is
believed that enterprise and capital would produce a large supply of
the gem.[B]

The supply of emeralds from South America is very limited, and may
be ascribed to want of skillful mining, as well as to climate,
the political condition of the country and the indolence of its
inhabitants. The localities cannot be exhausted, for they are too
numerous and extensive. The elevated regions in Granada admit of
scientific exploration by Europeans, and at the present day the
only emerald-mining operations conducted in South America have been
prosecuted near Santa Fe de Bogota by a French company, which has
paid the government fourteen thousand dollars yearly for the right of
mining, all the emeralds obtained being sent to Paris to be cut by the
lapidaries of that city.

In the Atacama districts, and along the banks of the River of
Emeralds, the physical obstructions are difficult to overcome, and
pestilential diseases of malignant character forbid the long sojourn
of the European. Yet the introduction of Chinese labor may prove
successful and highly remunerative, since the coolie reared among
the jungles and rice-swamps of Southern China is quite as exempt from
malarial fevers as the negro.

The price of the emerald has no fixed and extended scale, like that of
the diamond, and the fluctuations of its value during the past three
centuries form an interesting chapter in the history of gems.

In the time of Dutens (1777) the price of small stones of the first
quality was one louis the carat; one and a half carats, five louis;
two carats, ten