If the stone which is known by the name of the "Braganza," or the "Regent of Portugal," is a diamond, it is undoubtedly the largest that was ever found in either ancient or modern times. But then it is by no means certain that it is a diamond at all. It would be quite easy to establish the fact by submitting the stone to the examination of experts, but apparently the Royal House of Portugal holds that the Braganza, like Cæsar's wife, should be above suspicion. At all events the fact remains that this monster diamond has never been seen by any independent expert whose judgment would be accepted without appeal. When the learned are in doubt it would ill become us to decide; therefore, without offering an opinion, we shall, provisionally at least, class the Braganza among the diamonds of this series; and when its true character is established beyond dispute we shall know whether to call it the Monarch of Diamonds or only a vulgar impostor. The stated weight of the Braganza reaches the astounding figure of one thousand six hundred and eighty carats. Of course this is in its rough state, for the giant gem has refused to trust itself to the hands of any cutter however skillful. Yet this weight exceeds by more than double the weight, in the rough, of the next largest diamond known to history, namely, the Great Mogul. When we think of the price of the Regent--over six hundred thousand dollars, while weighing only four hundred and ten carats in the rough--and then turn to the Braganza with its sixteen hundred carats, the mind staggers before the money-value thus suggested. All the other famous diamonds of which we have treated have been Asiatic; but the Braganza, like the Pelegrina Pearl, hails from the New World. Consequently its history does not reach back into those misty past ages whither we went groping after the Orloff and the Koh-i-nûr. The Braganza is a diamond of yesterday, hence the account of its finding is clear, minute and accurate. Here it is. The speaker is Joseph Mawe, a geologist, merchant and traveler who visited Brazil in the first decade of this century and whose book on the countries which he saw is our best authority on that part of South America.