Slave Trail to the City of Diamonds

The Royal Road-Slave Trail, cuts through Diamantina

My road trip continues. City of Gold, City of Iron, City of Steel, and on to Diamantina, city of diamonds. Built on a steep slope that faces the prehistoric rocky profile of the Espinhaço mountains, the colonial era town owes its existence to the discovery of rich reserves of diamonds in the alluvial soil and sand of nearby rivers and streams. As I walked along the same gravely paths trodden by garimpeiros at the turn of the eighteenth century, I was transfixed by the hypnotic pools of water filled with sparkling iron flakes, deceptive silvery stones and lustrous milky quartz, geological signals of both gold and the hardest stone on earth. Before the ascension of the diamond industry in India and South Africa, Brasil was the biggest supplier of diamonds to the world market, and as with gold, coffee and sugar cane, their extraction was dependent on the widespread use of kidnapped Africans, many of whom were experienced miners and metallurgists.  As with all the other historic towns in Brasil, it is difficult to reconcile the picture postcard town centre with its origins in abject misery. In the museum of diamonds, a disturbing sepia photograph shows a tall white man, hand on hips with wide brimmed hat. He is supervising children pan handling the river grit for the precious stones that will find their way to Antwerp and from there to the tiaras, rings, and brooches of those bewitched by sparkling ostentation. It is from Diamantina that the Estrada Real (Royal Road),  begins its journey through the mountains to Ouro Preto and down the Serra to the ports of Paraty and Rio.  Otherwise known as the Caminho dos Escravos (Slave Trail), it was built to aid the movement of troops and the transportation of the vast quantities of precious metals and stones destined for Europe. Built out of compacted rock across unforgiving hostile terrain, and without the benefit of modern technology, it is an extraordinary feat of engineering, but one that is haunted by the army of slaves who lived and died breaking mountains in scenes that must have resembled the construction sites of antiquity. I tread lightly, conscious of what lay beneath my feet. It had been my intention to hike the 10 kilometres down to Diamantina, but after twenty minutes I stopped, overwhelmed by the sensation that this was not so much a road, as a linear cemetery.