I have already mentioned that besides gold this country does likewise produce diamonds. The discovery of these valuable stones is much more recent than that of gold, it being as yet scarce 20 years since the first were brought to Europe. They are found in the same manner as the gold, {55} in the gullies of torrents and beds of rivers, but only in particular places, and not so universally spread through the country. They were often found in washing the gold before they were known to be diamonds, and were consequently thrown away with the sand and gravel separated from it; and it is very well remembered that numbers of very large stones, which would have made the fortunes of the possessors, have passed unregarded through the hands of those who now with impatience support the mortifying reflection. However, about twenty years since a person acquainted with the appearance of rough diamonds conceived that these pebbles, as they were then esteemed, were of the same kind: but it is said that there was a considerable interval between the first starting of this opinion and the confirmation of it by proper trials and examination, it proving difficult to persuade the inhabitants that what they had been long accustomed to despise could be of the importance represented by this discovery, and I have been informed that in this interval a governor of one of their places procured a good number of these stones, which he pretended to make use of at cards to mark with instead of counters. But it was at last confirmed by skilful jewellers in Europe, consulted on this occasion, that the stones thus found in Brazil were truly diamonds, many of which were not inferior, either in lustre, or any other quality, to those of the East Indies. On this determination, the Portuguese, in the neighbourhood of those places where they had first been observed, set themselves to search for them with great assiduity. And they were not without great hopes of discovering considerable masses of them, as they found large rocks of chrystal in many of the mountains, from whence the streams came which washed down the diamonds.