extreme, the dukes of Infantado and Albuquerque had millions in diamonds, rubies and precious stones, yet hardly possessed a single sou.  So impoverished was the land, and so slender were the purses of all, that the duke of Albuquerque dined on an egg and a pigeon, yet it required six weeks to make an inventory of his plate.  At this period, when the nobles gave fetes the lamps were often decorated with emeralds and the ceilings garlanded with precious stones.  The women fairly blazed with sparkling gems of fabulous value, while the country was starving.  Most, if not all, of this missing treasure was transferred to Asia, and with the silver current which flowed steadily from the Spanish coffers into India went many of the emeralds also; for in those regions this gem is regarded as foreign stone, and the natives, investing it with the possession of certain talismanic properties, prize it above all earthly treasures.

When the Spaniards commenced their march toward the capital of Mexico, they were astonished at the magnificence of the costumes of the chiefs who came to meet them as envoys or join them as allies, and among the splendid gems which adorned their persons they recognized emeralds and turquoises of such rare perfection and beauty that their cupidity was excited to the highest degree.  During the after years of conquest and occupation the avaricious spoilers sought in vain for the parent ledge where these precious stones were found.  Recent times have, however, revealed the home of the Mexican turquoise, which has proved to be in the northern part of Mexico, as the Totonacs informed the inquiring Spaniards.  The first of these mines, which is of great antiquity, is situated in the Cerrillos Mountains, eighteen miles from Santa Fe.  The deposit occurs in soft trachyte, and an immense cavity of several hundred feet in extent has been excavated by the Indians while searching for this gem in past times.  Probably some of the fine turquoises worn by the Aztec nobles at the time of the Spanish Conquest came from this mine.  Another mine is located in the Sierra Blanca Mountains in New Mexico, but the Navajos will not allow strangers to visit it.  Stones of transcendent beauty have been taken from it, and handed down in the tribe from generation to generation as heirlooms.  Nothing tempts the cupidity of the Indians to dispose of these gems, and gratitude alone causes them to part with any of these treasures, which, like the mountaineers of Thibet, they regard with mystical reverence.  The Navajos wear them as ear-drops, by boring them and attaching them to the ear by means of a deer sinew.  Lesser stones are pierced, then strung on sinews and worn as neck-laces.  Even the nobler Ute Indians, when stripping the ornaments of turquoise from the ears of the conquered Navajos, value them as sacred treasures, and refuse to part with them even for gold or silver.

All the Spanish accounts of the invasion of Mexico agree in the great abundance of emeralds, both in the adornment of the chiefs and nobles and also in the decoration of the gods, the thrones and the paraphernalia.  The Mexican historian Ixtlilxochitl says the throne of gold in the palace of Tezcuco was inlaid with turquoises and other precious stones—­that a human skull in front of it was crowned with an immense emerald of a pyramidal form.