Almost impatiently, however, when great gems are discussed, everyone turns from the other precious stones to talk of diamonds. At the Crystal Palace Exhibition in London, the pride of Prince Albert in 1851, stones of all sorts were on view. The collection of gems from India, the great subcontinent that was soon to change the Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland into an Empire, was stupendous. Queen Victoria noted in her diary: “The girdle of nineteen emeralds is beautiful, all set round with diamonds and fringed with pearls. The rubies are even more wonderful and one is the biggest in the world ... I shall certainly make them Crown Jewels.” Among the pieces exhibited by the lapidaries of Calcutta were strange creations never seen in the western world before: gowries (“blackamoors’ teeth”), golden gothas, ferozahs, a gallobund set with diamonds, and other wonders that have since fallen out of the dictionary. There were also educational exhibits, new and world-shaking inventions like Nasmyth’s steam-propelled engine, the Folkestone express locomotive, and McCormack’s reaping machine from America. But the gaping crowd passed by all these prizes to gather and stare before the diamonds. _The Diamonds_ There were diamonds for which there should have been automation to count the value. The great collection of Henry Thomas Hope and his son was displayed, all the glory of their Hope chest, including the mysterious blue stone that came to be called the Hope diamond. There on white velvet lay the great Black Diamond of Bahia, weighing 350 carats, so hard that no one had been able to shape it with facets. And there, not far from a replica of the ship that had just brought it from India, was shown for the first time in England what the catalogue called “the great diamond of Runjeet Singh called the Mountain of Light or the Koh-in-noor.” This is what the millions came to see. (They were disappointed by the sight, for the diamond had been poorly cut and did not reveal all its brilliance.) The Kohinoor lay on a velvet cushion in an iron bird cage on an iron pedestal. When the doors of the Crystal Palace closed each night, wheels began to turn, and the bird cage descended into the pedestal. Safe from all the itching fingers of international thiefdom, the Kohinoor rested in its cage. _The Kohinoor_ Mountain of light! The Kohinoor. First worn in the crown, perhaps, of a great ruler in India five thousand years ago. The Koh-i-nur, or Mountain of Light, was next heard of as a great companion to the Darya-i-Nor, the Sea of Light, in the scabbard of Afrasiab around 3,000 B.C. Such are the fabulous stones of ancient times, which Tennyson called —Jewels five words long, That on the stretched forefinger of all Time Sparkle forever.