I’m always digging up excellent old New Yorker articles. I seldom get them finished the week they arrive and they end up in a stack that I slowly work through. A few minutes every night before sleep.

Last night I started “The Path of Stones” from last October. It tells about “discovery” of gems on the African island of Madagascar. The gems have been there for eons; the gem-hungry Westerners didn’t really catch on to their presence until the 1990s.

A couple hundred million years ago, Madagascar was part of the former continent known as Gondwanaland, lodged between East Africa and India. When the supercontinent was torn apart, Madagascar drifted off into the Indian Ocean and now resides about 300 miles off the coast of southern Africa. It was never populated by humans until about 2,000 years ago.

In the 18th century, there was a king known as Andrianampoinimerinandriantsimitoviaminandriampanjaka, meaning the beloved prince of Imerina who surpasses the reigning prince.