ere was anything of value among the
many thousand grains of sand was wonderful. I endeavoured in a very
considerable heap of the gravel thus hastily examined, to find a
single small piece of precious stone which had escaped the glance of
the examiner, but without success.

The yield is very variable, sometimes abundant, sometimes very
small, and though precious stones found in Ceylon are yearly sold
for large sums, the industry on the whole is unprofitable, although
now and then a favourite of fortune has been enriched by it. The
English authorities, therefore, with full justification, consider it
demoralising and unfavourable to the development of the otherwise
abundant natural resources of the region. For the numerous loose
population devotes itself rather to the easy search for precious
stones, which is as exciting as play, than to the severer but surer
labours of agriculture, and when at any time a rich _find_ is made,
it is speedily squandered, without a thought of saving for the times
when the yield is little or nothing. A large number of the precious
stones are polished at special polishing places at Ratnapoora, but
the work is very bad, so that the stones which come into the market
are often irregular, and have uneven, curved, ill-polished surfaces.
Most of them perhaps are sold in the Eastern and Western Indian
peninsulas and other parts of Asia, but many are also exported to
Europe. The precious stones which are principally found at
Ratnapoora, consist of sapphires, commonly blue, but sometimes
yellow or violet, sometimes even completely colourless. In the last
case they have a lustre resembling that of the diamond[389]. Rubies
I saw here only in limited numbers.

[Illustration: GEM DIGGINGS AT RATNAPOORA. ]

The precious stones occur in nearly every river valley which runs
from the mountain heights in the interior of the island down to the
low land. According to a statement by Mr. Tennent (i. p. 33), the
river-sand at many places contains so much of the harder minerals
that it may be used directly for the polishing of other stones. The
same writer, or more correctly Dr. GYGAX, who appears to have
written the rather scanty mineralogical contributions to Tennent's
famous work, states that a more abundant yield ought to be obtained
by working in the solid rock than by the usual method. This idea is
completely opposed to the experience of mineralogy. The finest gems,
the largest gold nuggets, as is well known