pebbles were given as pretty baubles to children, or used as counters for
marking the points of their favourite game of voltarete. At last an
officer, who had been some years at Goa, in the East Indies, arrived in
the Commarca: he was struck with the peculiar form of these pebbles, and
from several experiments he made, it struck him that they were diamonds.
He immediately collected a few, and sent them to Holland, where, to the
astonishment of the lapidaries, they were found to be brilliants of the
finest water. It will easily be imagined, that on the arrival of this
intelligence in Brazil, the hitherto despised counters suddenly became the
objects of universal research, and almost immediately disappeared.

The government of Portugal now issued a decree, declaring all diamonds a
monopoly of the crown. For a length of time it was considered that
diamonds were confined solely to the district of Serro Frio. But this is
an error; they are found in almost every part of the empire, particularly
in the remote provinces of Goyazes and Matto Grosso, where there exist
several districtos diamantescos. These gems have been even found on the
tops of the highest mountains; indeed, it is the opinion of the Brazilian
mineralogists that the original diamond formations are in the mountains,
and that they will one day or other be discovered in such quantities, as
to render them objects of comparatively small value.

The largest diamond in the world was found in the river Abaite; about
ninety-two leagues to N.W. of Serro do Frio. The history of its discovery
is romantic:--three Brazilians, Ant. de Souza, Jose Felix Gomes, and
Thomas de Souza, were sentenced, for some supposed misdemeanour, to
perpetual banishment in the wildest part of the interior. Their sentence
was a cruel one; but the region of their exile was the richest in the
world; every river rolled over a bed of gold, every valley contained
inexhaustible mines of diamonds. A suspicion of this kind enabled these