Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

violent volcanic heat on small particles of carbon contained in the rock, or on a substance comprised of a large proportion of carbon and a smaller quantity of hydrogen. By this theory, as he conceives, we are best able to account for the cracks and flaws so often noticed in the gem, and the frequent occurrence of included particles of black carbonaceous matter. Baron Liebig, on the other hand, claims the credit of offering a simple explanation of the probable process which actually takes place in the formation of the diamond. His contention is that science can point to no process capable of accounting for the origin and production of diamonds, except the pow ers of decay. If we suppose decay to proceed in a liquid containing carbon and hydrogen, then a compound with still more carbon must be formed; and if the compound thus formed were itself to undergo further decay, the final result, says this eminent authority, must be the separation of carbon in a crystalline form.

Some very fine specimens of the diamond crystal have long been found near the town of Purnaor Pannah, in Bundelcund. The mines producing them are situated in a range of hills, called Bund-Ahill by the natives, extending about twenty miles in length by between two and three in breadth, and are said to be partitioned into twenty-one divisions; but we do not know that the whole belonged to Bundelcund. Of these, the mines of Rajepoor, Maharajepoor, Kimmerah, and Guddaseah con. tain the best diamonds; and one dug from the last-mentioned mine has been reputed one of the largest in the world. It was kept in the fort of Callinger, among other treasures of Rajah Himmut Bahadur. A number of rajahs are proprietors of the mines, each having a charge of his own, without any interest in the produce of the rest. A superintendent is appointed to inspect the produce, and every diamond as soon as found is registered, valued, and, if the rajah does not choose to keep it, is offered for sale. When sold he receives two thirds of its value. In the reign of the Emperor Ackbar, the mines of Pannah produced to the amount of £100,000 annually, and were then a considerable source of revenue; but for many years they have not been so profitable, although some diamonds of exceptional size and value are discovered occasionally in the Guddaseah mine.

Diamonds are also found in the ferruginous sand and gravel which forms the beds or banks of rivers in various parts of the Indian peninsula, from Bengal to Cape Comorin, especially

in Golconda and Visapore; and good samples of this precious gem have now and again been found in the district of Banjar, in the East India Island of Borneo, some of wonderful lustre and size, and very superior quality. An enormous diamond found in this island, weighing 367 carats, is said to be now in the possession of the Rajah of Mattan. Considerable quantities of diamonds of all sizes and values have, dur. ing the last hundred and fifty years, been ob. tained from the Brazils. The diamond mines are situated due north of the Rio Janeiro; and great numbers are also collected from the river Jigitenhona, the waters of which being turned aside, or dammed out, the mud at the bottom is first removed, under which is a stratum of rounded pebbles and gravel. In this gravel the diamonds are found, and separated by washing them with great care. The system of diamond-washing adopted in Brazil is bor. rowed from the methods employed in Hindo. stan, and is an interesting and exhaustive operation. The washing begins with the rains, about November. The upper parts of the troughs are charged with cascalbs (diamond earth), and a man, standing before the open end or at the side, dashes water upon the contents; he then stirs the mass with his fingers to relieve it of the worthless earth, dust and clay, and when the water runs clear the washing is repeated. A pocket of diamonds may thus sometimes, but very rarely, be hit upon; but often after the gravel has received as many as twelve separate washings, diamonds, although of diminutive size, will still be found in it. A good washer takes from half an hour to three quarters of an hour in order to exhaust a single pan-full. Sometimes, to encourage the other laborers, a slave who is fortunate enough to find a stone weighing more than an oitava and a half receives his freedom, but the discovery of diamonds of this size is few and far between. Magnifying glasses are not yet in use, although they would save much trouble and prevent loss. The present rude system is very severe upon the sight, which soon fails, and past twenty-five years of age few eyes can be trusted. In fact, children are always the best washers. It is during this operation that robberies are mostly effected. The civilized thief pretends to be short-sighted, and picks up the plunder with his tongue, but most of the stones disappear by being tilted or thrown over the lip of the pan during the washing, and are picked up at leisure. In India the miner has been seen to jerk the stone into his mouth, or stick it in

the corner of his eye; and so clever, indeed, are some of these diamond thieves that from twelve to fifteen overseers are required per gang of fifty light-fingered men.

The diamonds are invariably valued by their weight in carats, a carat being equal to four grains. The value increases as the squares of their respective weights; thus, if a diamond of one carat be worth £8, one of two carats will be worth £32.

About one half the weight of the diamond is cut away by the lapidary, and the quantity of diamond powder used in polishing a very large diamond has sometimes cost a thousand pounds sterling. One of the most interesting objects in Amsterdam is the diamond-mill, where all the great diamonds are sent to be cut and polished and prepared for setting. It belongs to a Jew, and a very large staff of skilled men are employed in the various processes through which the stones have to go before they are ready for mounting. Four horses turn a wheel, which sets in motion a number of smaller wheels in the room above, whose cogs, acting on circular metal plates, keep them in continued revolution, Pulver. ized diamond is placed upon these, and the stone to be polished, fastened at the end of a piece of wood by means of an amalgam of zinc and quicksilver, is submitted to the friction of the adamantine particles. This is the only mode of acting on diamond, which can be ground, or even cut, by particles of the same substance. In the latter operation diamond dust is fixed on a metal wire which moves rapidly backward and forward over the stone to be cut. The largest diamonds are usually reserved for roses, which always rise in the centre to an angle, and the smaller are used as brilliants and have a flat octagon on the upper surface. There is, of course, a marked distinction between rose diamond and a brill. iant. The one is entire and set vertically, while the other is divided and set horizontally. The diamond has always enjoyed an undisputed pre-eminence among precious stones, not only on account of its rarity, but also from its unequalled brilliancy. Some of these stones have been sold for almost fabulous prices, and many of the most celebrated diamonds known to exist have changed hands from time to time under strange and roman. tic circumstances." Curiosities of Diamonds," Gentleman's Magazine.

CHRISTMAS IN CALCUTTA.-In England the

celebration of Christmas Day has become stereotyped. For children of course, its charm remain for children have not yet become too sophisticated to enjoy eating too much, and the presents inseparable from the occasion are not likely to pall with repetition. But to the givers of the feasts and the arrangers of the Christmas-trees the sport is somewhat stale and the wheels somewhat run down, as in the Kingsley ballad. And if for the givers of Christmas parties and the parents of the rising generation Christmas Day is a rather labored kind of festivity, much worse is it for the lonely and the bachelor. In the same way the typical Christmas weather has been settled for all time. It very seldom comes off; but when it does there is a general chorus of approval. There should be a hard white frost, all the land should look white, and the sun shine red through the faint morning mist. The ponds should be frozen hard, and skating by daylight and torchlight should dispel the fiend Indigestion which dogs the steps of turkey and plum pudding. So deeply is this picture engraved on our minds, so often is it presented to us on cards and in almanacs, in colored supplements and in picture-books, that it seems quite unnatural to the healthy English mind that Christmas Day should ever dawn otherwise than glittering white with snow or hoar frost, and in the Antipodes our brothers are inclined to resent the brilliant sunshine and balmy air as a sort of desecration of the national feast-day. They eat their plum pudding with its sprig of holly with a sense of injury, as something whose mere presence ought to have been enough to cause a change in the weather, and they complain bitterly that it is impossible to "feel like Christmas" without Christmas weather.

It is human to grumble and not unpleasant. Otherwise it would be difficult to understand how any one can take exception to warmth and sunlight in place of those December fogs which we know so well. And much may be done at Christmas time in the East which is impossible in the West. Let us take a typical Christmas Day in Calcutta, and spend it as it should be spent undeterred by the fetich of English Christmas traditions. Let us take the Victo. ria and drive down to Garden Reach, a few miles down the Hooghly, and picnic. Our way lies across the Maidan, and a paternal Administration has sent out legions of coolies, each with his leathern water-bottle, to shake water over the road and lay the dust. The sun

shines brilliantly, but it is not too hot; for the weather is still "cold" (in the Calcutta sense). There is a gentle breeze blowing, and the two stout horses whirl us along at a pleasant rate between the tall trees through Alipore, where Belvidere, the Lieutenant-Governor's house, gleams white in the sunlight, over the bridge, and past the British Indian Docks and the King of Oudh's palace, to the ghâl by the river. Here we take a native boat, and, sitting under the shade of its covered stern, are ferried across to the Botanical Gardens. The river gleams broad in the sunlight. Before us are the green trees of the Gardens, behind the half ruinous buildings of the palace of the King of Oudh. They look grim and forbidding, those sorrowful remains of a grandeur that is so utterly past. These were the houses where the King kept his wives, his wild beasts, and his huge broods of trained pigeons who were wont to circle to and fro over the broad river, following the signals of his flag. The wives are all pensioned off by the Indian Government, and dispersed to seek fresh homes; the wild beasts are dispersed also, and the pigeons manœuvre no longer in answer to the wavings of the King's flag. The King himself sleeps with his fathers, and no one hitherto has had the assurance to write his epitaph as one endowed with all the virtues and the graces of a monarch. Peace be with him! We land at the Gardens, having narrowly escaped shipwreck several times, or so it seemed, from the many laden boats passing to and fro at this point; and, such are the advantages of a nervous temperament, the passage has proved quite exciting. But once on shore a deep peace falls upon us. We climb a few steps up from the river, and there, immediately before us, stretches a wide avenue of palms. No one who has not seen a palm avenue can realize the grandeur of this sight. The stems rise clear of branches perhaps fifty feet, and then the fronds spread out, so that the effect is that of a cathedral aisle flanked by gray pillars and topped with green shade. Between the trunks are planted shrubs with leaves of gorgeous red, rising to a height of perhaps seven feet, and between them and the green above is some forty feet of clear air between gray-white stems, tall and tapering, till the whole looks like some majestic colonnade. No wonder the Egyptians, when they built the Hall of Pillars at Karnak, drew their inspiration from avenues of palms, and since the original is so majestic, the pillared halls of their temple

may well be among the most impressive conceptions ever executed in architecture.

us.

The sun shines gloriously overhead, the sky is a pale cloudless blue, and the foliage around us shows every shade and tint from brown to scarlet, from the palest to the deepest green. We saunter along the grass under the trees beside the avenue, and find a quiet spot with a pool of clear water haunted by swans before The ground is carpeted with soft grass, and shaded with trees. On one side, three hundred yards away, is a bank of shrubs with the most gorgeous variety of coloring from mauve and lilac to crimson red. On the other three, cool restful green leaves. On such a Christmas morning it is good to be alive. Let us think of it as we shiver over our fires in England. We spread our rugs and coats on the ground and lie down and smoke lazily. Presently the Khidmutgars arrive with hampers. We do not move, for in India we have not that irrational and idiotic notion that a picnic is no picnic unless you wait upon yourselves, lay your own lunch, and burn your own fingers over your kettle. The lunch is admirable, from the solids to the fruit, from the drinks to the ice. Nothing has been forgotten, for once a Khidmutgar has been taught a thing, he may be relied upon to do it again with absolute exactitude on a similar occasion till the crack of Doom, unless he is idi. otic.

A picnic is a complete rest, with nothing to do save to lie still and enjoy. No one even talks unless the spirit moves him. For the most part we sit quiet, drinking in the beauty of the scene. The servants pass silently to and fro, handing dishes, which are accepted or rejected as silently. It is waste of energy to speak. The cool breeze fans us gently; there are no mosquitoes; all is peace. Last of all come the coffee and the cigars. Those estimable men who remembered the ice did not forget the coffee, and we smoke peacefully and talk desultorily of England and of India, of a fatuous ochlocracy at home, and a scarcely less fatuous bureaucracy in India. But there is no argument, no heated discussion, only quiet, careless expressions of opinion which while away the time and trouble no man. Presently we get up, and stroll slowly toward the orchid houses-not glaring steaming glass erections, with a temperature somewhere between a Turkish bath and the infernal regions, as in England, but cool green structures of wire netting, supported on iron girders. The

netting overhead is thinly thatched with wisps of grass, and overgrown with leafy creepers, which make the interior cool and inviting. Within all kinds of green things flourish, while at intervals strange gaudy orchids show them selves in flower. Through this dim and quiet twilight, looking like some leafy tunnel, we saunter leisurely. Then across a patch of grass and along sunny paths by the water to the big house, cooler and greener still, where the huge palms rear their heads to the dome fifty feet above our heads. When the cool of the evening approaches, we return to the river, and are ferried back to the carriage. As we drive back the shadows gather, the sun sinks in the west, and a red glow spreads and deepens over the horizon. In the distance the white houses and the spires and towers of Calcutta loom faintly in the gathering mist and twilight. The horses are fresh after their rest, and bowl us along at a great rate through the cool air. On our right is the racecourse, being got ready for the Viceroy's Cup on the next day; on the left the white tents ou the Maidan stand white and ghostlike. It is Christmas night, and we have spent our feast-day as it should be spent in the Golden East.-Saturday Review.

A DAUGHTER'S VIEW OF THE REVOLT.- Let every girl then claim her right to individual development, not merely for her own welfare and enjoyment or for that of her family, but chiefly that she may become a more perfect instrument to perform her allotted part in the world's work. It must be a matter of principle, not a matter of self-indulgence She must be able to say not merely, "I want to do this or that," but "I believe I ought to do it." It is as fatal to a woman to live her life merely for her own enjoyment as it is for her to sacrifice her own life to other people's enjoyment. She must sacrifice herself, not to people, but for principles. She must ask herself frankly and honestly, "Have I any worthy purpose in my life? Am I doing the best with such pow. ers as God has given me, or am I allowing them to be unused and wasted? Am I grow ing stronger and better with each year, or am I narrowing and deteriorating? Shall I be able rightly to fulfil my duties to the world in which I live if I allow myself to be frittered away in little nothings, and fail to strengthen and develop all my powers? Is it not my duty, even for the sake of others, to realize my

best and highest self, and to make the most of all my capacities? If the community were only alive to its own highest interests, it would hail with heartiest welcome the advent of girls such as these, and all true lovers of humanity would reach out a hand to help them break through the trammels of prejudice or conventionality that have hitherto held them in check. Hundreds of avenues are opening for the girls of to-day in which they can get the development and find the work they need. It ought, therefore, to be a matter of principle for every girl who has reached maturity to consider what is her own especial gift or capability; and, having discovered it, she ought to be as conscientious in trying to carry it out as she would be conscientious in carrying out any of the domestic duties which hitherto may have seemed to her to have been the only career allowed her. The revolt of the daughter is not, if I understand it, a revolt against any merely surface conventionalities, that are after all of not much account one way or another, but it is a revolt against a bondage that enslaves her whole life. In the past she has belonged to other people, now she demands to belong to herself. In the past other people have decided her duties for her, now she asks that she may decide them for herself. She asks simply and only for freedom to make out of her own life the highest that can be made, and to develop her own individuality as seems to her the wisest and the best. She claims only the ordinary human rights of a human being, and humbly begs that no one will hinder her.-Miss Alys W. Pearsall Smith, in the Nineteenth Century.

A NEW Competitor of the silkworm has been found on the Dalmatian coast, according to a report of the French Consulate in Trieste. This is the Bombyx Lasiocampa otus. The moth of this is similar to that of the silkworm, but the cocoon is much larger, and the silk finer and snow white. The worm feeds on the leaves of the evergreen Quercus llex. Experi ments are being made with the intent of raising this newly discovered worm for commercial purposes. It goes without saying that the usual "revolution in the silk trade of the world and dethronement of the silkworm," which have threatened the poor innocent spin. ner for over a thousand years, will be the natural consequence of the alleged discovery.— Manufacturers' Gazette.

[graphic][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

I.

FABIAN ECONOMICS.

SECOND PAPER.

BY W. H. MALLOCK.

[blocks in formation]

I POINTED out in my previous paper the one fundamental doctrine in which Socialism differs from Individualism. I showed that this, reduced to its simplest form, was one single, bald, definite doctrine with regard to the process of production in the modern world, which all Socialists implicitly affirm, and which everybody else implicitly sets aside as a piece of raving. The doctrine I refer to is neither more nor less than this-That the men who, year by year, create by their exceptional ability, by far the larger part, and the only growing part, of our national income, would NEW SERIES.-VOL. LIX., No. 5.

continue to produce the same number of millions under a Government specially organized to take all they produced away from them, as they produce now under a Government which confirms them in the possession of threefifths of it. The Fabian essayists, one and all of them admit-though they fail to realize clearly what this admission implies that the growing amount of wealth produced in the modern world depends not on the labor contributed by the average laborers, but on the ability of those "scarce brains," to quote Mr. Shaw's words, "which are not the law of nature's capricious gifts" -that is to say, on the ability of the exceptionally gifted few by whom the exertions of the laboring many are organ

37

« ZurückWeiter »