If the awe-inspiring miracle of this peerless gemstone is overwhelming, the adventures that some of the famous diamonds took are enthralling. Most of them originated in India. Thus, the legendary Hope, a blue diamond of 44.5 carats, believed to be identical with the Blue Tavernier, reached the court of Louis XIV in 1668. After it had been stolen during the French Revolution and probably recut to prevent recognition, it was acquired by the English banker and art lover Henry Thomas Hope. Its restless wanderings ended in 1958 when the New York diamond merchant Harry Winston gave it to the Smithsonian Institution. Also of Indian origin is the "Mountain of Light" or Koh-i-noor, which must once have weighed 700 carats. Its history can be traced back to the fourteenth century, when it belonged to the family of the Rajahs of Malwa. Wars accompanied its way to the Peacock

Throne of the Great Mogul; intrigue delivered it into the hands of Nadir Shah. When the Persian conqueror invited his former adversary to a banquet, he tricked him into the customary gesture of friendship in the Orient—the exchange of turbans—knowing full well, from the spying of a slave girl, that the coveted gem was hidden in the folds of the latter's headdress. Later, after its return to India, diamond wedding rings the East India Company presented it in 1850 to Queen Victoria. Under her orders it was recut, the work taking thirty-eight days and its weight being reduced to 108 carats. As one of the most valuable diamonds the world has ever seen, it now decorates the Queen Mother's crown. The Orloff, weighing almost 200 carats, was one of the eyes of the Hindu god Sri-Ranga before it was stolen from a temple in Mysore in southern India, by a French soldier clad as a monk. The Russian Count Alexei Grigorievich Orloff purchased it in 1774 from Amsterdam, in order to honor Catherine the Great with it. The rose-cut rose cut diamond ring , which is outstanding for its extraordinary clarity, was then mounted at the tip of the Russian scepter.

The Indian occurrences, exploited over thousands of years, gradually became exhausted. Then, suddenly in the year 1728, just at the right moment, the first Brazilian diamonds appeared in Lisbon; since 17 21 the gold panners of Brazil had used these glittering stones as counters, never dreaming that they were far more valuable than the scarce gold which they, with daily toil, were washing out of the rivers. After news of the diamond find became known a very active search began in all the rivers, and—lo! the effort was not in vain: every shaped diamond band  river yielded diamonds. At first, to be sure, the European market bristled distrustfully against the new Brazilian diamonds. It was asserted that they were too hard to be cut, or that they were far less valuable stones. Only when the Brazilians smuggled their diamonds into India through the port of Goa did the latter find entry, through the trading centers there, into Europe. The Star of the South, a diamond

with an uncut weight of more than 260 carats, brought a Brazilian slave girl, who discovered it in 1853, freedom and a lifelong income. In 1938 the President Vargas, weighing nearly 600 carats, was found in the Sao Antonio River and was cut by Harry Winston into twenty-nine smaller gem diamonds.