Until diamonds were found in South Africa Brazil was the cradle of the most important diamonds put on foreign markets; the stones are still sought by native _garimpeiros_, mostly, in the interior of Minas and Bahia, and from the _grutas_ of the latter State are obtained the finest white diamonds known. But they have practically disappeared from export lists together with the black _carbonados_, even more valuable, for a reason commented upon by the _Diario Official_ of Bahia, discussing 1915 trade: “If diamonds and carbonados have been, since the war, sent to Europe or North America, their exportation, which is for the most part unknown, has been realized by the habitual processes of smuggling.” Brazil is the main source of these “carbonados,” black diamonds of great hardness and therefore value, used industrially. The precious stones openly shipped from all Brazil during 1915 were worth only about one hundred and seventy-six contos of reis (say forty-four thousand dollars), of which about fifty-five per cent went to the United States and the rest to France. During 1916 the export of precious and semi-precious Brazilian stones to North America has been greatly stimulated by the access of luxury-purchasing which has coincided with the accumulation of war profits, and out of American purchases of jewels from abroad at the rate of a million dollars a week Brazil has her share. The stones of Brazil have long been appreciated in Europe—I am thinking of a certain shop in the Rue de la Paix in Paris and another at the top of Regent Street in London—and deserve to be better known in North America; the diamonds are beautiful, and their distribution among not only the wealthy but the “middle” classes in Brazil is so usual, the possession of good diamonds is so universally considered the right of every woman, that a gala night at the theatre in São Paulo or Rio is a display of brilliant stones which would put, for choice jewels, many capitals of the world to shame. The lovely sea-blue _agua-marinhas_, with exquisite transparency and lustre, the soft green _tourmalinas_, the pink and golden topazes and purple amethysts are all found in great quantities in the Brazilian interior: many are native cut, and the wheel of the lapidary using beautiful coloured stones may be seen at work in Bello Horizonte, Rio, Bahia, and São Paulo.