INTRODUCTION
The preparation of this book has been a joint labor during the spare moments of the two authors, whose time has been occupied with subjects to which pearls are not wholly foreign—one as a gem expert, and the other in the fisheries branch of the American government. But for the views and expressions contained herein, they alone are personally responsible, and do not represent or speak for any interest whatever. For many years the writers have collected data on the subject of pearls, and have accumulated all the obtainable literature, not only the easily procurable books, but likewise manuscripts, copies of rare volumes, original edicts, and legislative enactments, thousands of newspaper clippings, and interesting illustrations, many of them unique, making probably the largest single collection of data in existence on this particular subject. It was deemed advisable to present the results of these studies and observations in one harmonious volume, rather than in two different publications. This publication is not a pioneer in an untrodden field. As may be seen from the appended bibliography, during the last two thousand years hundreds of persons have discussed pearls—mystically, historically, poetically, and learnedly. Among the older writers who stand out with special prominence in their respective periods are the encyclopedist Pliny, in the first century A.D.; Oviedo and Peter Martyr of the sixteenth century; the physician Anselmus De Boot, and that observant traveler and prince of jewelers, Tavernier, in the seventeenth century. It would be difficult to do justice to the many writers of the nineteenth century and of the present time; but probably most attention has been attracted by the writings of Hessling and Möbius of Germany; Kelaart, Streeter, Herdman, and Hornell of Great Britain; Filippi of Italy, and Seurat and Dubois of France. While the book is a joint work in the sense that each writer has contributed material to all of the chapters and has critically examined and approved the entire work, the senior author has more closely applied himself to the latter half of the text, covering antiquity values, commerce, wearing manipulation, treatment, famous collections, aboriginal use, and the illustrations, while the junior author has attended to the earlier half of the book, with reference to history, origin, sources, fisheries, culture, mystical properties, and the literature of the pearl.
The senior author has had exceptionally favorable opportunities to examine the precious objects contained in the various imperial and royal treasuries. Through the courtesy of the late Count Sipuigine, Court Chamberlain, and of the late General Philamanoff, custodian of the Ourejena Palata, he was permitted to critically examine the Russian crown jewels in the Summer Palace on the Neva, and in the Palata in the Kremlin, at Moscow, he examined the crowns and jewels of all the early czars. Through the courtesy of Baron von Theile, he was permitted to inspect carefully and in detail the wonderful jewels of the Austrian crown, which are beautifully ordered and arranged. The English and Saxon crown jewels were also seen under favorable conditions which permitted detailed examination, and the jewel collections of almost all the principal museums of Europe and America were carefully studied. As regards the literature of the subject, the senior author has gathered together the largest known existing collection of works treating of pearls and precious stones.
In covering so comprehensive a subject, many obligations have been incurred from individuals and officials, to whose courtesy and assistance is due much of the interest of this work. To list all of these is impossible, yet it would be ungrateful not to note the following: her Majesty Queen Margherita of Italy; his Royal Highness the Gaikwar of Baroda; to H. R. H. le Prince Ruprecht of Bavaria, of Munich; to the late Prince Sipuigine, then chamberlain of the Russian Imperial Appanages; to Sir Edward Robert Pearce Edgcumbe for data relative to fisheries of East Africa; Dr. H. C. Bumpus, director of the American Museum of Natural History, New York, for many courtesies in regard to materials and illustrations; Sir Caspar Purdon Clarke, director, Dr. Edward Robinson, assistant director, J. H. Buck, curator of Metal-work, and A. G. St. M. D’Hervilly, assistant curator of Paintings, all of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, for numerous courtesies; Archer M. Huntington, founder of the Hispanic Society and Museum in New York City; Dr. Bashford Dean, Prof. Friedrich Hirth, Chinese professor, Dr. Berthold Laufer, Prof. A. V. Williams Jackson, professor of Indo-Iranian languages, and Prof. M. H. Saville, all of Columbia University, New York City; J. Pierpont Morgan, for the right to publish the illustration of Ashburnham missal; Dr. W. Hayes Ward, Assyriologist; Dr. Charles S. Braddock, formerly Chief of Medical Inspection for the King of Siam; Robert Hoe, for the two plates of unique Persian illustrations from his manuscripts; Edmund Russell, for East Indian material; F. Cunliffe-Owen, the author of diplomatic subjects; Ten Broeck Morse; Walter Joslyn; Stansbury Hagar; Henri de Morgan, explorer; Dr. Nathaniel L. Britton, director New York Botanical Garden, J. H. Lawles, and Ludwig Stross, for many courtesies; Miss M. de Barril and Miss Belle da Costa Greene, all of New York; Dr. Stewart W. Culin, of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences; the Contessa Casa Cortez, for Peruvian information, of Brooklyn; Dr. Charles B. Davenport, of the Carnegie Institution Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor; Arthur C. Parker, archæologist, State Museum, Albany, N. Y.; A. S. Clark, antiquarian, Peekskill, N. Y.; Dr. Richard Rathbun, assistant secretary, Dr. Cyrus Adler, curator, Dr. Otis S. Mason, curator of Ethnology, all of the Smithsonian Institution; Dr. S. W. Stratton, chief of the Bureau of Standards; Miss E. R. Scidmore; Gilbert H. Grosvenor, editor, National Geographic Magazine; Hon. William Eleroy Curtis; his Excellency Enrique C. Creel, Embajador de Mexico, and James T. Archbold, war correspondent, all of Washington, D. C.; Prof. W. P. Wilson, director Philadelphia Commercial Museum, Clarence B. Moore, Academy of Natural Sciences, and T. Louis Comparette, curator Numismatic Collection, U. S. Mint, all of Philadelphia; Prof. Henry Montgomery, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada; Dr. Warren K. Moorehead, archæologist, Andover, Mass.; H. D. Story, and Theo. M. Davis, curators of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Mass.; Miss Mathilde Laigle of Wellesley College; Prof. F. W. Putnam and Alfred M. Tozzer, Peabody Museum of Archæology, Cambridge, Mass.; Prof. Edward S. Morse, Salem, Mass.; Dr. Hiram Bingham, Yale University; W. E. Frost, Providence, R. I.; Dr. Edgar J. Banks, University of Chicago, Chicago, Ill.; Hon. F. J. V. Skiff, director, for several photographs of museum material, and Dr. George A. Dorsey, curator of Anthropology of the Field Columbian Museum; Dr. A. R. Crook, curator of the Museum of Natural History, Springfield, Ill.; Richard Hermann, director Hermann Museum, Dubuque, Ia.; Charles Russell Orcutt, San Diego, Cal.; David I. Bushnell, St. Louis, Mo.; Dr. J. H. Stanton, Prairie du Chien, Wis.; Joe Gassett, Clinton, Tenn.; Prof. Wm. C. Mills, University of Ohio, Columbus, O., for material covering the new Ohio mound discoveries; Mrs. Marie Robinson Wright, author and South American traveler, New York City; Miss Helen Woolley of Judson College, Alabama; Prof. Dr. Eugene Hussak, Rio Janeiro; Hon. George E. Anderson, Consul General of the United States, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Señor L. E. Bonilla, Consul General of Colombia; Madam Zelia Nuttall, Coyoacan, Mexico; Prof. Waldstein, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, England; Dr. O. F. Bell, assistant keeper Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; Dr. Stephen W. Bushell, Chinese authority; Lady Christopher Johnston, Dr. William F. Petrie, University College, Dr. Charles Hercules Read, director of the department of Archæology, British Museum, for illustrations and data; Cyril Davenport, antiquarian writer of the British Museum, for the illustration of the English crown, and crown information; to Sir John Evans, late veteran archæologist and writer; Thomas Tyrer, chemist, W. Talbot Ready, A. W. Feaveryear, E. Alfred Jones, author on metal-work, Edwin W. Streeter, all of London, England; Prof. H. P. Blackmore, curator Blackmore Museum, Salisbury, England; Dr. Thos. Gann, Harrogate, England; Prof. Arthur E. Shipley, Cambridge, England; Dr. Wilfred Grenfell, Labrador; T. W. Lyster, librarian of the National Library of Ireland, Prof. R. F. Scharff, director of the National Museum of Ireland, Dublin, W. Forbes Hourie, all of Ireland; Mr. James Hornell, Dr. W. A. Herdmann, all on information concerning the Ceylon fisheries; Prof. James M. Milne, Belfast, Ireland; David MacGregor, Perth, Scotland; Joseph Baer & Co., Frankfurt, Germany; Herrn C. W. Kesseller, Idar, Germany; Prof. Dr. Carl Sapper, University of Tübingen, Germany; Geheimrath Prof. Dr. Max Bauer, University of Marburg, Germany; Herrn Prof. Dr. Hofer, director Biologische Versuchsstation, Munich; Herrn Ernst Gideon Bek, Pforzheim, Germany; Hon. Albert H. Michelsen, American Consul at Turin; Sabbatino De Angelis, of Naples, Italy; Mons. Alphonse Falco, of the Chambre Syndicale Pierres Précieuses of Paris; Prof. A. Lacroix, Musée Histoire Naturale, Paris; Mons. Georges Pellisier, Paris; Sr. Gaston J. Vives, La Paz, Mexico; Prof. R. Dubois, Faculté des Sciences, University of Lyons, France; Prof. P. Candias, director of the National Museum, Athens, Greece; Prof. G. A. F. Molengraaff, University of Delft, Holland; the late Prof. Dr. Furtwängler of Munich; Dr. Otto Leiner, Custus Landes-Museum at Constanz, Baden; Herrn Dr. A. B. Meyer, Herrn Carl Marfels, Berlin; Prof. Dr. H. Schumacher, University of Bonn; Geheimrath C. F. Hintze, Breslau; Herrn R. Friedlaender & Sohn, Berlin; Herrn Reg.-Rath Dr. W. von Seidlitz, Dresden; Dr. R. Jacobi, director König Zoologichen Museum, Dresden, Germany; his Excellency Dr. Szalaz, director Hungarian National Museum; Dr. S. Radischi, director National Industrial Museum of Budapest; and to Herrn A. B. Bachrach, Budapest, Hungary; Frau Melanie Glazer, of Prague, and Herrn V. Fric, Prague, Bohemia; Herrn Prof. Dr. F. Heger, Custus Imperial Archæological Collection, Vienna; Herrn H. von Willer and Herrn Max Zirner, of Vienna; Herrn Leopold Weininger, the artisan goldsmith of Austria, for many courtesies; Prof. W. Vernadskij, University of Moscow; Mons. C. Faberje, Joaillier de la Cour, St. Petersburg, Russia; his Excellency Baron P. Meyerdorff, assistant director, Musée des Antiques, Ermitage Impériale, St. Petersburg, for important data and illustrations; his Excellency N. J. Moore, Premier, Western Australia; Dr. K. Van Dort, engineer of Bankok, Siam; Dr. J. Henry Burkill, of the India Museum, Calcutta, India; Alphaeus E. Williams, manager of the De Beers Mine, Kimberley; Capt. E. L. Steever, District Governor of Jolo, Philippine Islands; Dr. T. Nishikawa, Zoölogical Institute; K. Mikimoto, both of Tokio, Japan; Dr. S. M. Zwemer of Bahrein, Persian Gulf; Mr. Hugh Millman of Thursday Island, Australia; Julius D. Dreher, American Consul at Tahiti, Society Islands; and not least, by any means, the uniform promptness and completeness with which the officials of the British Colonial Service have responded to the many inquiries which the writers have addressed to them.
The Authors.
September, 1908.
I
PEARLS AMONG THE ANCIENTS
THE BOOK OF THE PEARL
I
PEARLS AMONG THE ANCIENTS
The richest merchandise of all, and the most soveraigne commoditie throughout the whole world, are these pearles.
Pliny, Historia naturalis.
Lib. IX, c. 35.
Perfected by nature and requiring no art to enhance their beauty, pearls were naturally the earliest gems known to prehistoric man. Probably the members of some fish-eating tribe—maybe of the coast of India or bordering an Asiatic river—while opening mollusks for food, were attracted by their luster. And as man’s estimation of beauty developed, he found in them the means of satisfying that fondness for personal decoration so characteristic of half-naked savages, which has its counterpart amid the wealth and fashion of the present day.
Pearls seem to be peculiarly suggestive of oriental luxury and magnificence. It is in the East that they have been especially loved, enhancing the charms of Asiatic beauty and adding splendor to barbaric courts celebrated for their display of costume. From their possession of the rich pearl resources it is natural that the people of India and of Persia should have early found beauty and value in these jewels, and should have been among the first to collect them in large quantities. And no oriental divinity, no object of veneration has been without this ornament; no poetical production has lacked this symbol of purity and chastity.
In a personal memorandum, Dr. A. V. Williams Jackson, professor of Indo-Iranian languages in Columbia University, states that it is generally supposed that the Vedas, the oldest sacred books of the Brahmans, contain several allusions to pearl decorations a millennium or more before the Christian era, as the word krisana and its derivatives—which occur a half dozen times in the Rigveda, the oldest of the Vedas—are generally translated as signifying “pearl.” Even if this interpretation of the term be called into question on the ground that the Hindus of the Panjab were not well acquainted with the sea, there can be little or no doubt that the Atharvaveda, at least five hundred years before the Christian era, alludes to an amulet made of pearls and used as a sort of talisman in a hymn[[1]] of magic formulas.
Those two great epics of ancient India, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, refer to pearls. The Ramayana speaks of a necklace of twenty-seven pearls, and has pearl drillers to accompany a great military expedition.[[2]] An old myth recounts the offerings made by the elements as gifts worthy of the deity: the air offered the rainbow, the fire a meteor, the earth a ruby, and the sea a pearl. The rainbow formed a halo about the god, the meteor served as a lamp, the ruby decorated the forehead, and the pearl was worn upon the heart.
The literature of Hinduism frequently associates the pearl with Krishna, the eighth avatar or incarnation of Vishnu, the most popular god of Hindu worship. One legend credits its discovery to the adorable Krishna, who drew it from the depths of the sea to adorn his daughter Pandaïa on her nuptial day. Another version makes the pearl a trophy of the victory of Krishna over the monster Pankagna, and it was used by the victor as a decoration for his bride.
In the classic period of Sanskrit literature, about the first century of the Christian era, there were abundant references to pearls, generally called mukta (literally “the pure”); and there are dozens of words for pearl necklaces, circlets, strings, and ornamental festoons, particularly in the dramas of Kalidasa—the Hindu Shakspere, who lived about the third century A.D.—and of his successors.
In the Mahavansa and the Dipavansa, the ancient chronicle histories of Ceylon in the Pali language, are several early Cingalese records of pearl production and estimation.[[3]] The Mahavansa lists pearls among the native products sent from Ceylon about 550 B.C., King Wijayo sending his father-in-law gifts of pearls and chanks to the value of two lacs of rupees; and notes that about 300 B.C., several varieties of Ceylon pearls were carried as presents by an embassy to India.
Ancient Chinese crown with pearls
Ancient Chinese pearl rosary
Chinese priests keeping guard over the tombs of the kings, in Mukden, where the crowns are preserved
In the ancient civilization of China, pearls were likewise esteemed; this is evidenced by the frequent mention of them in traditional history, their employment in the veneration of idols, and as tribute by foreign princes to the emperor. One of the very earliest of books, the Shu King (dating from about 2350–625 B.C.), notes that, in the twenty-third century B.C., Yü received as tribute oyster pearls from the river Hwai, and from the province of King Kau he received “strings of pearls that were not quite round.”[[4]] That ancient Chinese dictionary, the Nh’ya, originating thirty centuries ago, speaks of them as precious jewels found in the province of Shen-si on the western frontier.
Many fantastic theories regarding pearls are to be found in ancient Chinese literature. Some writers credited them as originating in the brain of the fabled dragon; others noted that they were especially abundant during the reign of illustrious emperors, and they were used as amulets and charms against fire and other disasters. Curious allusions were made to pearls so brilliant that they were visible at a distance of nearly a thousand yards, or that rice could be cooked by the light from them. And one found about the beginning of the Christian era, near Yangchow-fu, in the province of Kiang-su, was reported so lustrous as to be visible in the dark at a distance of three miles.
In Persia, the popularity of pearls seems to date from a very early period. Professor Jackson states that if they are not mentioned in the extant fragments of the ancient Zoroastrian literature, the Avesta and the Pahlavi, or by the Middle Persian books from the seventh century B.C. to the ninth century A.D., it is probably a mere accident, due to the character of the work or to the fragmentary condition of the literature; for pearls were well known during that entire period, and seem to be indicated in extant sculptures. The coin and the gem portraits of Persian queens commonly show ear-pendants of these. The remains of a magnificent necklace of pearls and other gems were recently found by J. de Morgan in the sarcophagus of an Achæmenid princess exhumed at Susa or Shushan, the winter residence of the kings of Persia. This necklace, perhaps the most ancient pearl ornament still in existence, dates certainly from not later than the fourth century B.C., and is now preserved in the Persian Gallery of the Louvre.[[5]] Even if we had no other evidence, it would be natural to assume that the knowledge of pearls was as wide-spread among the Iranians in antiquity as it was among the Hindus, since the Persian Gulf, like the Indian Ocean, has been famous for its fisheries from ancient times.
In the ruins of Babylon no pearls have been found; indeed, it would be surprising if they could survive for so many ages in the relatively moist soil which contains much saltpeter. Inlays of mother-of-pearl and decorations of this material have been secured from the ruins of Bismaya, which Dr. Edgar J. Banks refers to about 4500 B.C.
There is likewise little evidence that pearls were extensively employed by the ancient Assyrians, notwithstanding that excavations at Nineveh and Nimrud have furnished much information regarding their ornaments; and the collars, bracelets, sword-hilts, etc., wrought in gold and ornamented with gems, show that the jewelers’ art had made much progress. This is not wholly trustworthy as determining the relative abundance; for being of organic or non-mineral origin, pearls would not have survived the burial for thousands of years so well as the crystal gems. An inscription on the Nineveh Obelisk, which states, according to Sir Henry Rawlinson, that in the ninth year of his reign Temenbar received, as “tribute of the kings of the Chaldees, gold, silver, gems, and pearls,”[[6]] shows that the sea-born gems were highly valued there.
The mother-of-pearl shell was in use as an ornament in ancient Egypt certainly as early as the sixth dynasty (circa 3200 B.C.), the period of the Tanis Sphinx. In a recent letter from Luxor, where he is studying the ruins of ancient Thebes, Dr. James T. Dennis states that he has found several of these shells bearing cartouches of that period; and in the “pan-bearing graves” of the twelfth dynasty (2500 B.C.), the shell occurred not only complete, but cut in roughly circular or oblong angular blocks and strung on chains with beads of carnelian, pottery, etc.
So far as can be determined from the representations of ancient Egyptian costumes, pearls do not seem to have been employed to any great extent in their decoration. The necklaces, earrings, and other jewels found in the tombs, which are composed largely of gold set with crystal gems, contain the remains of a few pearls, but give no indication that they were numerous. In fact, no evidence exists that they were used extensively before the Persian conquest in the fifth century B.C.; and probably it was not until the time of the Ptolemies that there began the lavish abundance which characterized the court of Alexandria at the height of her power.
The authorities differ in regard to the mention of pearls in ancient Hebrew literature; although in the Authorized Version of the Old Testament, this significance has been given to the word gabîsh in Job xxviii. 18, where the value of wisdom is contrasted with that of gabîsh. Some writers claim that this word refers to rock crystal. Other authorities are of the opinion that the word peninim in Lam. iv. 7, which has been translated as “rubies,” actually signifies pearls. In Gen. ii. 12, Prof. Paul Haupt has proposed to render shoham stones by pearls, since the Hebrew word translated “onyx,” if connected with the Assyrian sându, might mean “the gray gem.” It does not appear that they entered into the decorations of the Tabernacle and the Temple, or were largely employed in the paraphernalia of the synagogue.
In the New Testament, however, there are numerous references to the estimation in which pearls were held. In his teachings, Christ repeatedly referred to them as typifying something most precious: “The kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man, seeking goodly pearls: who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it” (Matt. xiii. 45, 46); and in “casting pearls before swine,” in that great Sermon on the Mount (Matt. vii. 6). In picturing the glories of the Heavenly City, St. John made the twelve gates of pearls (Rev. xxi. 21); and what could better serve as portals through the walls of precious stones?
In the Talmud, pearls are frequently mentioned, and usually as signifying something beautiful or very costly, as “a pearl that is worth thousands of zuzim” (Baba Batra, 146a); a “pearl that has no price” (Yerushalmi, ix. 12d); the coats which God made for Adam and Eve were “as beautiful as pearls” (Gen. R. xx. 12), and the manna was “as white as a pearl” (Yoma, 75a). Their purchase formed one of the exceptions to the law of Ona’ah (overcharge), for the reason that two matched pearls greatly exceeded the value of each one separately (Baba Mezi’a, iv. 8).
The high value attached to pearls by the ancient Hebrews is illustrated by a beautiful Rabbinical story in which only one object in nature is ranked above them. On approaching Egypt, Abraham hid Sarah in a chest, that foreign eyes might not behold her beauty. When he reached the place for paying custom dues, the collectors said, “Pay us the custom”; and he replied, “I will pay your custom.” They said to him, “Thou carriest clothes”; and he stated, “I will pay for clothes.” Then they said to him, “Thou carriest gold”; and he answered, “I will pay for gold.” On this they said to him, “Surely thou bearest the finest silk”; and he replied, “I will pay custom for the finest silk.” Then said they, “Truly it must be pearls that thou takest with thee”; and he answered, “I will pay for pearls.” Seeing that they could name nothing of value for which the patriarch was not willing to pay custom, they said, “It cannot be but that thou open the box and let us see what is within.” So the chest was opened, and the land was illumined by the luster of Sarah’s beauty.[[7]]
The love which the early Arabs bore to pearls is evidenced by the references to them in the Koran, and especially the figurative description given of Paradise. The stones are pearls and jacinths; the fruits of the trees are pearls and emeralds; and each person admitted to the delights of the celestial kingdom is provided with a tent of pearls, jacinths and emeralds; is crowned with pearls of incomparable luster, and is attended by beautiful maidens resembling hidden pearls.[[8]]
The estimation of pearls among the art-loving Greeks may be traced to the time of Homer, who appears to have alluded to them under the name τρίγληνα (triple drops or beads) in his description of Juno; in the Iliad, XIV, 183:
In three bright drops,
Her glittering gems suspended from her ears.
and in the Odyssey, XVIII, 298:
Earrings bright
With triple drops that cast a trembling light.
Classical designs of Juno usually show the three pear-shaped pearls pendent from her ears. The ancient Greeks probably obtained their pearls from the East through the medium of Phenician traders, and a survival of the word τρίγληνα seems to exist in the Welsh glain (bead), the name having been carried to Britain by the same traders, who exchanged textiles, glass beads, etc., for tin and salt.
The Persian wars in the fifth century B.C., doubtless extended the acquaintance which the Greeks had with pearls, as well as with other oriental products, and increased their popularity. One of the earliest of the Greek writers to mention pearls specifically appears to have been Theophrastus (372–287 B.C.), the disciple and successor of Aristotle, who referred to them under the name μαργαρίτης (margarites), probably derived from some oriental word like the Sanskrit maracata or the Persian mirwareed. He stated that pearls were produced by shell-fish resembling the pinna, only smaller, and were used in making necklaces of great value. In Pliny’s “Historia naturalis,” that great storehouse of classical learning, reference is made to many other writers—mostly Greeks—who treated of gems; but virtually all of these writings have disappeared, except fragments from Theophrastus, Chares of Mytilene, and Isidorus of Charace.
GRECIAN PEARL AND GOLD NECKLACE
Of about third century B.C.
Now in Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
From Greece admiration for pearls quickly extended to Rome, where they were known under the Greek word margaritæ. However, a more common name for this gem in Rome was unio, which Pliny explained by saying that each pearl was unique and unlike any other one. The conclusion of the historian Ammianus Marcellinus (330–395 A.D.), that it was because each one was found singly in a shell,[[9]] seems scarcely correct. Claude de Saumaise, the French classical scholar, thought that the common name for an onion was transferred to the pearl, owing to its laminated construction.[[10]] According to Pliny, the Romans used the word unio to distinguish a large perfect pearl from the smaller and less attractive ones, which were called margaritæ.[[11]]
It was not until the Mithridatic Wars (88–63 B.C.) and the conquests by Pompey that pearls were very abundant and popular in Rome, the great treasures of the East enriching the victorious army and through it the aristocracy of the republic. In those greatest spectacular functions the world has ever known—the triumphal processions of the conquering Romans—pearls had a prominent part. Pliny records that in great Pompey’s triumphal procession in 61 B.C. were borne thirty-three crowns of pearls and numerous pearl ornaments, including a portrait of the victor, and a shrine dedicated to the muses, adorned with the same gems.[[12]]
The luxuries of Mithridates, the treasures of Alexandria, the riches of the Orient were poured into the lap of victory-fattened Rome. From that time the pearl reigned supreme, not only in the enormous prices given for single specimens, but also in the great abundance in possession of the degenerate descendants of the victorious Romans. The interior of the temple of Venus was decorated with pearls. The dress of the wealthy was so pearl-bedecked that Pliny exclaimed in irony: “It is not sufficient for them to wear pearls, but they must trample and walk over them”;[[13]] and the women wore pearls even in the still hours of the night, so that in their sleep they might be conscious of possessing the beautiful gems.[[14]]
It is related that the voluptuous Caligula (12–41 A.D.)—he who raised his favorite horse Incitatus to the consulship—decorated that horse with a pearl necklace, and that he himself wore slippers embroidered with pearls; and the tyrannical Nero (37–68 A.D.), not content with having his scepter and throne of pearls, provided the actors in his theater with masks and scepters decorated with them. Thus wrote the observant Philo, the envoy of the Jews to the Emperor Caligula: “The couches upon which the Romans recline at their repasts shine with gold and pearls; they are splendid with purple coverings interwoven with pearls and gold.”
Yet not all the men of Rome were enthusiastic over the beautiful “gems of the sea, which resemble milk and snow,” as the poet Manlius called them. Even then, as now, there were some faultfinders. The immortal Cæsar interdicted their use by women beneath a certain rank; Martial and Tibullus inveighed against them; the witty Horace directed his stinging shafts of satire against the extravagance. Referring to a woman named Gellia, Martial wrote: “By no gods or goddesses does she swear, but by her pearls. These she embraces and kisses. These she calls her brothers and sisters. She loves them more dearly than her two sons. Should she by some chance lose them, the miserable woman would not survive an hour.”[[15]] Hear what stern old Seneca had to say: “Pearls offer themselves to my view. Simply one for each ear? No! The lobes of our ladies have attained a special capacity for supporting a great number. Two pearls alongside of each other, with a third suspended above, now form a single earring! The crazy fools seem to think that their husbands are not sufficiently tormented unless they wear the value of an inheritance in each ear!”[[16]]
The prices reported for some choice ones at that time seem fabulous. It is recorded by Suetonius, that the Roman general, Vitellius, paid the expenses of a military campaign with the proceeds of one pearl from his mother’s ears: “Atque ex aure matris detractum unionem pigneraverit ad itineris impensas.” In his “Historia naturalis,” Pliny says that in the first century A.D., they ranked first in value among all precious things,[[17]] and reports sixty million sestertii[[18]] as the value of the two famous pearls—“the singular and only jewels of the world and even nature’s wonder”—which Cleopatra wore at the celebrated banquet to Mark Antony. And Suetonius[[19]] places at six million sestertii the value of the one presented by Julius Cæsar as a tribute of love to Servilia, the mother of Brutus, who thus wore
The spoils of nations in an ear,
Changed to the treasure of a shell.
Or, as St. Jerome expressed it in his “Vita Pauli Eremitæ”:
Uno filo villarum insunt pretia.
We are told by Ælius Lampridius that an ambassador once brought to Alexander Severus two remarkably large and heavy pearls for the empress. The emperor offered them for sale, and as no purchaser was found, he had them hung in the ears of the statue of Venus, saying: “If the empress should have such pearls, she would give a bad example to the other women, by wearing an ornament of so much value that no one could pay for it.”
The word “margarita” was used symbolically to designate the most cherished object; for instance, a favorite child. In an inscription published by Fabretti, p. 44, No. 253, the word margaritio has the same significance. (Sex. Bruttidio juveni margaritioni carissimo, vixit annis II mensibus VII, diebus XVIII.)[[20]]
While the ancient writers were familiar with the pearl itself, they knew little of the fisheries, and related many curious stories which had come to Athens and Rome. Pliny and Ælianus quoted from Megasthenes that the pearl-oysters lived in communities like swarms of bees, and were governed by one remarkable for its size and great age, and which was wonderfully expert in keeping its subjects out of danger, and that the fishermen endeavored first to catch this one, so that the others might easily be secured. Procopius, one of the most entertaining of the old Byzantine chroniclers, wrote of social relations between the pearl-oysters and the sharks, and of methods of inducing the growth of pearls.
The principal fisheries of antiquity were in the Persian Gulf, on the coasts of Ceylon and India, and in the Red Sea. The pearls referred to in ancient Chinese literature appear to have been taken from the rivers and ponds of that country, while those in Cochin China and Japan seem to have come from the adjoining seas. The pearls were distributed among the nations in control of the fisheries, and from them, other people received collections, either as presents, in conquest, or by way of trade. History makes no mention of pearls having been obtained elsewhere than in the Orient up to the time of Julius Cæsar, when small quantities of inexpensive ones were collected in Britain by the invading Romans. And in the first century A.D., Pliny states that small reddish pearls were found about Italy and in the Bosphorus Straits near Constantinople.
A number of specimens of pearls of the artistic Greeks and of the luxurious Romans are yet in existence, and some of these are in a fairly good state of preservation. A notable and interesting example is a superb Greek necklace of pearls and gold, referred to the third century B.C., and now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Several earrings now in that museum, in the Hermitage at St. Petersburg, the British Museum, the Louvre in Paris, and in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, are shown in this book. Some of these may have decorated ears that listened to the comedies of Aristophanes, the tragedies of Euripides, the philosophies of Plato, or the oratory of Demosthenes. A number of classic statues have the ears pierced for earrings, notably the Venus de Medici now in the Tribuna of the Uffizi, Florence; and a magnificent pair of half-pearls is said to have decorated the Venus of the Pantheon in Rome.[[21]] Pearl grape earrings are shown on the artistic intaglio by Aspasios, representing the bust of the Athene Parthenos of Phidias, which has been in the Gemmen Münzen Cabinet at Vienna since 1669.
The beautiful Tyszkiewicz bronze statuette of Aphrodite was acquired in 1900 by the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and has even yet a pearl in a fairly good state of preservation suspended from each ear by a spiral thread of gold which passes quite through the gem and also through the lobe of the ear. This statuette has been described as “the most beautiful bronze Venus known.”[[22]] Professor Froehner considers that it belongs nearer to the period of Phidias (circa 500–430 B.C.) than to that of Praxiteles (circa 400–336 B.C.); but Dr. Edward Robinson does not concur in this opinion, and refers it to the Hellenic period (circa 330–146 B.C.).
However, considering the very large accumulations, relatively few pearls of antiquity now remain, and none of these is of great ornamental value. Those in archæological collections and art museums are more or less decayed through the ravages of time and accident to which they have been subjected. While coins, gold jewelry, crystal gems, etc., of ancient civilizations are relatively numerous, the less durable pearls have not survived the many centuries of pillage, waste, and burial in the earth.
A well-known instance of this decay is found in the Stilicho pearls, which owe their prominence to the incident of their long burial. The daughters of this famous Roman general, who were successively betrothed to the Emperor Honorius, died in 407 A.D., and were buried with their pearls and ornaments. In 1526, or more than eleven centuries afterward, in excavating for an extension of St. Peter’s, the tomb was opened, and the ornaments were found in fair condition, except the pearls, which were as lusterless and dead as a wreath of last year’s flowers.
II
MEDIEVAL AND MODERN HISTORY
II
MEDIEVAL AND MODERN HISTORY OF PEARLS
I’ll set thee in a shower of gold, and hail
Rich pearls upon thee.
Antony and Cleopatra, Act II, sc. 5.
The popularity of pearls in Rome has its counterpart in the Empire of the East at Byzantium or Constantinople on its development in wealth and luxury after becoming the capital of that empire in 330 A.D. Owing to its control of the trade between Asia and Europe, and the influence of oriental taste and fashion, enormous collections were made; and for centuries after Rome had been pillaged, this capital was the focus of all the arts, and pearls were the favorite ornaments. The famous mosaic in the sanctuary of San Vitale at Ravenna, shows Justinian (483–565) with his head covered with a jeweled cap, and the Empress Theodora wearing a tiara encircled by three rows of pearls, and strings of pearls depend therefrom almost to the waist. In many instances the decorations of the emperors excelled even those of the most profligate of Roman rulers. An examination of the coins, from those of Arcadius in 395 to the last dribble of a long line of obscure rulers when the city was captured and pillaged by Venetian and Latin adventurers in 1204, shows in the form of diadems, collars, necklaces, etc., the great quantity of pearls worn by them. The oldest existing crown in use at the present time, the Hungarian crown of St. Stephen, which is radiant with pearls, is of Byzantine workmanship.
Outside of Constantinople, the demand and fashion for pearls did not cease with the downfall of the Roman Empire and the spoliation of Rome in the fifth century. The treasures accumulated there, and the gems and jewels, were carried away by the conquering Goths and scattered among the great territorial lords of western and northern Europe.
In the ancient cities of Gaul, in Toulouse and Narbonne, the Ostrogoth and the Visigoth kings collected enormous treasures. The citadel of Carcassonne held magnificent spoils brought from the sacking of Rome in 410 by Alaric, king of the Ostrogoths, consisting in part of jewels from the Temple, these having been carried to Rome after the spoliation of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. Several beautiful objects of this and somewhat later periods are yet in existence, notably the Visigothic crowns and crosses, in the Musée de l’Hôtel de Cluny, Paris, the most beautiful of which are probably the crown and the cross of Reccesvinthus.[[23]]
Even as the treasures of Rome were despoiled by the Ostrogoths and the Visigoths, so, later, their collections were depleted by the military operations of the Franks, when Narbonne was pillaged; when Toulouse was sacked by Clovis, or Chlodowig, in 507; when the churches of Barcelona and Toledo were despoiled by Childebert in 531 and 542; and by various expeditions in succeeding years.
The military triumphs of the Franks placed them in the highest rank among the peoples of Europe, in the sixth and seventh centuries, in the possession of treasures of jewels which enriched their palaces and great churches. And the taste which the triumphs of war had developed was maintained by the trade carried on by the Jewish and Syrian merchants. The inhabitants of Gaul were extremely fond of objects of art, of rich costumes, and of personal decorations; and the courts of some of the early kings rivaled in magnificence those of oriental monarchs. Especially was this true during the reign of King Dagobert (628–638), who competed in splendor with the rulers of Persia and India. His skilful jeweler, Eligius (588–659), was raised to the bishopric of Noyon, and eventually—under the name of St. Eloi—became one of the most popular saints in Gaul. Under direction of this artistic bishop, the ancient churches received shrines, vestments, and reliquaries superbly decorated with pearls and other gems. Indeed, for several centuries following the time of Eligius, the greatest treasures of jewels seem to have been collected in the churches.
The use of gems in enriching regalia, vestments, and reliquaries in Europe, advanced greatly during the reign of Charlemagne (768–814); and princes and bishops competed with each other in the magnificence of their gifts to the churches, sacrificing their laical jewels for the sacred treasures. Few of the great ornaments of Charlemagne’s time are now in existence in the original form. Doubtless the most remarkable pieces are the sacred regalia of the great emperor, preserved among the imperial treasures in Vienna.
FRONT COVER OF ASHBURNHAM MANUSCRIPT OF THE FOUR GOSPELS
From the ninth century. One quarter of the actual dimensions.
Owned by J. Pierpont Morgan, Esq.
An artistic use for pearls at that time was in the rich and elegant bindings of the splendidly written missals and chronicles, finished in the highest degree of excellence and at vast expense. An artist might devote his whole life to completing a single manuscript, so great was the detail and so exquisite the finish. Vasari states that Julio Clovio devoted nine years to painting twenty-six miniatures in the Breviary of the Virgin now in the royal library at Naples. The library at Rouen has a large missal on which a monk of St. Andoen is said to have labored for thirty years. These books were among the most valued possessions of the churches, and their bindings were enriched with gold and pearls and colored stones. The wealthy churches had many such volumes; Gregory of Tours states that from Barcelona in 531 A.D. Childebert brought twenty “evangeliorum capsas” of pure gold set with gems. Several of these superbly bound volumes are yet in existence, in the Basilica of St. Mark in Venice; in the treasury of the cathedral at Milan; among the imperial Russian collections in the Ourejenaya Palata at Moscow, etc.; and they furnish probably the most reliable examples of artistic jewel work of the Dark Ages.
The most remarkable specimen of these books in America is doubtless the Ashburnham manuscript of the Four Gospels, now owned by J. Pierpont Morgan, Esq., which affords an interesting example of the jeweler’s art. For many centuries it belonged to the Abbey of the Noble Canonesses, founded, in 834, at Lindau, on Lake Constance. After an extended examination, Mr. Alexander Nesbit concluded that the rich cover of the manuscript was probably made between 896 and 899 by order of Emperor Arnulf of the Carolingian dynasty. Most of the ninety-eight pearls appear to be from fresh water, and probably all of them were obtained from the rivers of Europe. This is one of the few remaining pieces of the magnificent ecclesiastical jeweling of that period.
After the death of Charlemagne, internal dissensions, separations and the division of the Empire into the nations of Europe, annihilated commerce, oppressed the people, and impoverished the arts. In the ninth century, the Normans pillaged many of the palaces and churches in Angoulême, Tours, Orléans, Rouen, and Paris, and destroyed or carried away large treasures. The tenth and the eleventh centuries were indeed the Dark Ages in respect to the cultivation of the arts; yet even during that period the churches of western Europe received many gems from penitent and fear-stricken subjects. The heart of man, filled with the love of God, laid its earthly treasure upon the altar in exchange for heavenly consolation. Pious faith dedicated pearls to the glorification of the ritual; altars, statues, and images of the saints, priestly vestments, and sacred vessels, were surcharged with them. The great museums and the imperial collections contain some beautiful and highly venerated objects of this nature.
In the meantime pearls of small size and of fair luster had been collected in the rivers of Scotland, Ireland, and France, the headwaters of the Danube, and in the countries north thereof. In England, as noted in the preceding chapter, they were obtained by Cæsar’s invading legions, who carried many to Rome. Ancient coins indicate that pearls formed the principal ornament of the simple crowns worn by the early kings of Britain previous to Alfred the Great.
The river pearls were not so beautiful as oriental ones; but, owing to the ease with which they were obtained, they were employed more extensively and especially in ecclesiastical decorations, the principal use for pearls from the eighth to the eleventh century. Apparently authentic specimens of fresh-water pearls of an early period are the four now in the coronation spoon of the English regalia, which is attributed to the twelfth century.
From the most ancient times until the overthrow of the Roman Empire, practically the only use for pearls was ornamental; but after the eighth century there developed a new employment for these as well as for other gems. Natural history was little studied in Europe from the ninth to the fourteenth century, except for the effect which its subjects had in medicine and magic, which were closely allied. Largely through Arabic influence, the practice of medicine had developed into administering most whimsical remedies, among which gems, and especially pearls, played a prominent part, and belief in the influence of these was as strong as in that of the heavenly bodies. For this application, large demands had arisen for pearls, which seem to have been prescribed for nearly every ill to which the flesh was heir. On account of their cheapness, the small ones—seed-pearls—were used principally; though larger ones were preferred by persons who could afford them. While many of these so-called medicinal pearls were obtained from the Orient, most of them were secured from the home streams in the north of Europe and in the British Isles.
After the decadence of Roman power in the East, the rulers of India and Persia, through their control of the fisheries, again accumulated enormous quantities of pearls. All of the early travelers to those countries were astonished at the lavish display of these gems in decorative costume.
The manuscript of Renaudot’s two Mohammedans, who visited India and China in the ninth century, notes that the kings of the Indies were rich in ornaments, “yet pearls are what they most esteem, and their value surpasses that of all other jewels; they hoard them up in their treasures with their most precious things. The grandees of the court, the great officers and captains, wear the like jewels in their collars.”[[24]]
FRANCIS I, KING OF FRANCE, 1494–1547
Louvre, Paris
ISABELLE DE VALOIS
By Pantoia de la Cruz, Prado Museum, Madrid
Inventories of some of the oriental collections of later times seem to be extravagant fiction rather than veritable history. In that interesting book dictated in a Genoese prison to Rusticiano da Pisa, accounts are given by Marco Polo of great treasures seen by the first Europeans to penetrate into China. He describes the king of Malabar as wearing suspended about his neck a string of 104 large pearls and rubies of great value, which he used as a rosary. Likewise on his legs were anklets and on his toes were rings, all thickly set with costly pearls, the whole “worth more than a city’s ransom. And ’tis no wonder he hath great store of such gear; for they are found in his kingdom. No one is permitted to remove therefrom a pearl weighing more than half a saggio. The king desires to reserve all such to himself, and so the quantity he has is almost incredible.”[[25]]
Later travelers give wonderful descriptions of this excessive passion for pearls. Literature is full of this appreciation, and of the part which these gems played in the affairs of the Orientals. Who has not dwelt with delight upon those imperishable legends such as are embodied in the Arabian Nights, of the pearl voyages by Sindbad the Sailor, of the wonderful treasure chests, and of the superb necklaces adorning the beautiful black-eyed women!
The returning Crusaders in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and the development of the knightly orders, had much to do with spreading through Europe a fondness for pearls in personal decoration. Those who, like Chaucer’s knight, had been with Peter, King of Cyprus, at the capture and plunder when “Alexandria was won,” returned to their homes with riches of pearls and gold and precious stones. And learning much relative to decorative art from Moorish craftsmen, the jewelers of western Europe set these in designs not always crude and ineffective.
Although they were well known and valued, pearls do not seem to have been much used in England before the twelfth century, as the Anglo-Saxons were not an especially art-loving people. The word itself is of foreign derivation and occurs in a similar form in all modern languages, both Romance and Teutonic; perle, French and German; perla, Italian, Portuguese, Provençal, Spanish, and Swedish; paarl, Danish and Dutch. Its origin is doubtful. Some philologists consider it Teutonic and the diminutive of beere, a berry; Claude de Saumaise derives it from pirula, the diminutive of pirum, a sphere; while Diez and many others refer it to pira or to the medieval Latin pirula, in allusion to the pear shape frequently assumed by the pearl.[[26]]
The word pearl seems to have come into general use in the English language about the fourteenth century. In Wyclif’s translation of the Scriptures (about 1360), he commonly used the word margarite or margaritis, whereas Tyndale’s translation (1526) in similar places used the word perle. Tyndale translated Matt. xiii. 46: “When he had founde one precious pearle”; Wyclif used “oo preciouse margarite.” Also in Matt. vii. 6, Tyndale wrote, “Nether caste ye youre pearles before swyne”; yet Wyclif used “margaritis,” although twenty years later he expressed it “putten precious perlis to hoggis.” Langland’s Piers Plowman (1362), XI, 9, wrote this: “Noli mittere Margeri perles Among hogges.” The oldest English version of Mandeville’s Travels, written about 1400, contained the expression: “The fyn Perl congeles and wexes gret of the dew of hevene”; but in 1447, Bokenham’s “Seyntys” stated: “A margerye perle aftyr the phylosophyr Growyth on a shelle of lytyl pryhs”; and Knight de la Tour (about 1450) stated: “The sowle is the precious marguarite unto God.”
The word is given “perle” in the earliest manuscripts of those old epic poems of the fourteenth century, “Pearl” and “Cleanness,” which have caused so much learned theological discussion and which testify to the great love and esteem in which the gem was held. The first stanza of “Pearl” we quote from Gollancz’s rendition:
Pearl! fair enow for princes’ pleasance,
so deftly set in gold so pure,—
from orient lands I durst avouch,
ne’er saw I a gem its peer,—
so round, so comely-shaped withal,
so small, with sides so smooth,—
where’er I judged of radiant gems,
I placed my pearl supreme.[[27]]
The fourteenth-century manuscript in the British Museum gives this as follows:
Perle plesaunte to prynces paye,
To clanly clos in gold so clere,
Oute of oryent I hardyly saye,
Ne proved I never her precios pere,—
So rounde, so reken in uche a raye,
So smal, so smothe her sydez were,—
Queresoever I jugged gemmez gaye,
I sette hyr sengeley in synglere.
And from a modern rendering of “Cleanness” we quote:
The pearl is praised wherever gems are seen,
though it be not the dearest by way of merchandise.
Why is the pearl so prized, save for its purity,
that wins praise for it above all white stones?
It shineth so bright; it is so round of shape;
without fault or stain; if it be truly a pearl.
In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries throughout Europe pearls were very fashionable as personal ornaments, and were worn in enormous quantities; the dresses of men as well as of women were decorated and embroidered with them, and they were noted in nearly every account of a festive occasion, whether it were a marriage, a brilliant tourney, the consecration of a bishop, or the celebration of a victory in battle.
The faceting of crystal gems was not known at that time, and those dependent on artifice for their beauty were not much sought after. Although the diamond had been known from the eighth century, it was not generally treasured as an ornament, and not until long after the invention of cutting in regular facets—about 1450—did it attain its great popularity.
In the Dark Ages, it was customary for princes and great nobles to carry their valuables about with them even on the battle-fields; first, in order to have them always in possession, and second, on account of the mysterious power they attributed to precious stones. Since jewels constituted a large portion of their portable wealth, nobles and knights went into battle superbly arrayed. In this manner the treasures were easily lost and destroyed; consequently, relatively few of the personal ornaments of that period are preserved to the present time.
Among the greatest lovers of pearls in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were the members of the ducal house of Burgundy, and especially Philip the Bold (1342–1404), Philip the Good (1396–1467), and Charles the Bold (1433–77), and some of the gems which they owned are even now treasured in Austria, Spain, and Italy. When Duke Charles the Bold, in the year 1473, attended the Diet of Treves, accompanied by his five thousand splendidly equipped horsemen, he was attired in cloth of gold garnished with pearls, which were valued at 200,000 golden florins.[[28]] We are told that “almost a sea of pearls” was on view at the marriage of George the Rich with Hedwig, the daughter of Casimir III of Poland, at Landshut, in 1475. Among the many ornaments was a pearl chaplet valued at 50,000 florins which Duke George wore on his hat, and also a clasp worth 6000 florins.[[29]] Members of the related houses of Anjou and Valois also held great collections. Nor in this account should we omit some of the English sovereigns, including especially Richard II (1366–1400), one of the greatest dandies of his day.
During the fifteenth century, enormous quantities of pearls were worn by persons of rank and fashion. A remarkable 1483 portrait of Margaret, wife of James III of Scotland, which is now preserved at Hampton Court, shows her wearing such wonderful pearl ornaments that she might well be called Margaret from her decorations. As this queen was praised for her beauty, we fear the artist has scarcely done justice to her appearance; or possibly since that period tastes have changed as to what on a throne passes for beauty. Her head-dress is undoubtedly the most remarkable pearl decoration which we have seen of that century.
The uxorious and sumptuous Henry VIII of England (1491–1547) spent much of the great wealth accumulated by his penurious father, Henry VII, in enriching the appearance of his semi-barbaric court. In this reign, the spoliation of the Catholic cathedrals and churches contributed many pearls to the royal treasury; and onward from that time, they were prominently displayed among the ornaments of the women of rank in England. Most of the portraits of Henry’s wives show great quantities of these gems; many of them with settings doubtless designed by artistic Hans Holbein the Younger (1497–1543); and during the succeeding reigns the women near the throne were commonly depicted with elaborate pearl decorations.
The cold, unflattering portraits by Holbein of the court celebrities of that period, not only of the gracious women and of the dandified men, but of the clergy as well, show the prominence of pearls. Note his portrait of Jane Seymour, of Anne of Cleves, of Christina of Denmark, and the pearl-incrusted miter of Archbishop Warham of Canterbury.
An interesting story is told of Sir Thomas More, the learned chancellor of Henry VIII, showing his view of the great display of jewels which distinguished the period in which he lived:
His sonne John’s wife often had requested her father-in-law, Sir Thomas, to buy her a billiment sett with pearles. He had often put her off with many pretty slights; but at last, for her importunity, he provided her one. Instead of pearles, he caused white peaze to be sett, so that at his next coming home, his daughter-in-law demanded her jewel. “Ay, marry, daughter, I have not forgotten thee!” So out of his studie he sent for a box, and solemnlie delivered it to her. When she, with great joy, lookt for her billiment, she found, far from her expectation, a billiment of peaze; and so she almost wept for verie griefe.[[30]]
Meanwhile, in the yet unknown America, pearls were highly prized, and their magic charm had taken an irresistible hold on aborigines and on the more highly civilized inhabitants of Mexico and Peru. In Mexico the palaces of Montezuma were studded with pearls and emeralds, and the Aztec kings possessed pearls of inestimable value. That they had been collected elsewhere for a long time is evidenced by the large quantities in the recently opened mounds of the Ohio Valley, which rank among the ancient works of man in America. As in the Old World, so in the New, they had been used as decoration for the gods and for the temples, as well as for men and women.
The principal immediate effect of Columbus’s discovery and of the commercial intercourse with the New World, was the great wealth of pearls which enriched the Spanish traders. The natives were found in possession of rich fisheries on the coast of Venezuela, and somewhat later on the Pacific coast of Panama and Mexico, whence Eldorado adventurers returned to Spain with such large collections that—using an old chronicler’s expression—“they were to every man like chaff.” For many years America was best known in Seville, Cadiz, and some other ports of Europe, as the land whence the pearls came. Until the development of the mines in Mexico and Peru, the value of the pearls exceeded that of all other exports combined. Humboldt states that till 1530 these averaged in value more than 800,000 piastres yearly.[[31]] And throughout the sixteenth century the American fisheries—prosecuted by the Spaniards with the help of native labor—furnished Europe with large quantities, the records for one year showing imports of “697 pounds’ weight” into Seville alone.
For two centuries following the discovery of America, extravagance in personal decoration was almost unlimited at the European courts, and the pearls exceeded in quantity that of all other gems. Enormous numbers were worn by persons of rank and fortune. This is apparent, not only from the antiquarian records and the historical accounts, but also in the paintings and engravings of that time; portraits of the Hapsburgs, the Valois, the Medicis, the Borgias, the Tudors, and the Stuarts show great quantities of pearls, and relatively few other gems.
Probably the largest treasures were in possession of the Hapsburg family, which furnished so many sovereigns to the Holy Roman Empire, to Austria, and to Spain, and which, by descent through Maria Theresa, continued to rule the Holy Roman Empire until its abolition in 1806, and has since ruled Austria and Hungary.
A number of superb pieces of jewelry owned centuries ago by members of this illustrious family are yet in existence; notably the buckle of Charles V, and especially the imperial crown of Austria, made in 1602 by order of Rudolph II.[[32]]
Two great women of that period are noted for their passion for pearls, Catharine de’ Medici (1519–89), and Elizabeth of England (1533–1603). It requires but a glance at almost any of their portraits, wherein they are represented wearing elaborate pearl ornaments, to see to what an extent they carried this fondness. And many other women were not far behind them, among whom were Mary Stuart, Marie de’ Medici, and Henrietta Maria. And not only by the women, but by the men also, pearls were worn to what now seems an extravagant extent. Nearly all the portraits of Francis I (1494–1547), Henry II (1519–59), Charles IX (1550–74), and Henry III (1551–89) of France; of James I (1566–1625), and of Charles I (1600–49) of England, and likewise of other celebrities, show a great pear-shaped pearl in one ear. Many portraits also show pearls on the hats, cloaks, gloves, etc.
When the Duke of Buckingham went to Paris in 1625, to bring over Henrietta Maria to be queen to Charles I, he had, according to an account in the “Antiquarian Repertory,” in addition to twenty-six other suits, “a rich suit of purple satin, embroidered all over with rich orient pearls, the cloak made after the Spanish mode, with all things suitable, the value whereof will be twenty thousand pounds, and this, it is thought, shall be for the wedding day at Paris.”
In the rich and prosperous cities of southern Europe, pearls were no less popular. From its share of the spoils of the Byzantine Empire, after its partition in 1204, pearls and other riches were plentiful in Venice, and they were increased by the rapidly developing trade with the Orient. In the rival maritime cities, Genoa and Pisa, the gem was equally popular; and likewise in Florence “the Beautiful.” When Hercule d’Este sought Lucrezia Borgia (1480–1519) in marriage for his son, her father, Pope Alexander VI, plunging both hands in a box filled with pearls, said: “All these are for her! I desire that in all Italy she shall be the princess with the most beautiful pearls and with the greatest number.”[[33]]
Separated by three centuries of time and by the intervening simplicities of puritanism and democracy, it is difficult for us to appreciate the passion for pearls in Europe at that period, which may well be called the Pearl Age.
MARIA THERESA (1717–1780), QUEEN OF HUNGARY
By Martin de Mytens, 1742
The sumptuary laws which prevailed at different times in France, England, Germany, and other countries, did not overlook this extravagance; and an entire volume might be devoted to the efforts to curb the excessive use. In France they were probably most stringent during the reign of Philip IV (1285–1314), of Louis XI (1461–83), of Charles IX (1560–74), of Henry III (1574–89), and of Louis XIII (1610–43). In Germany almost every city had its special restrictions. A sumptuary law of Ulm, in 1345, provided that no married woman or maiden, either among the patricians or the artisans, should wear pearls on her dresses; and another, in 1411, restricted them to “one pearl chaplet,” and this should not exceed twelve loth (half ounce) in weight. A Frankish sumptuary law of 1479 provided that ordinary nobles serving a knight at a tourney should not wear any pearl ornaments, embroidered or otherwise, excepting one string around the cap or hat. The regulations decreed by the Diet of Worms, in 1495, set forth that the citizens who were not of noble birth, and nobles who were not knights, must withhold from the use of gold and pearls. A similar provision was enacted by the Diet of Freiburg in 1498, and likewise by the Diet of Augsburg in 1530, which permitted the wives of nobles four silk dresses, but without pearls. In the sumptuary law of Duke John George of Saxony, April 23, 1612, we read: “the nobility are not allowed to wear any dresses of gold or silver, or garnished with pearls; neither shall the professors and doctors of the universities, nor their wives, wear any gold, silver or pearls for fringes, or any chains of pearls, or caps, neck ornaments, shoes, slippers, shawls, pins, etc., with gold or silver or with pearls.” Beadles, burgomasters, and those connected with the law-courts were forbidden to wear chains of pearls and ornaments of precious stones on their dresses, caps, etc., or slippers or chaplets with pearls.
Probably in no place were these laws more stringent than in the art-loving republic of Venice from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century. This seems remarkable in view of the fact that this city was largely dependent for its wealth and prominence on commerce with the East, of which pearls constituted a prominent item.
The earliest Venetian restriction that we have found regarding pearls was made in 1299; when, in a decree determining the maximum number of guests at a marriage ceremony and the extent of the bridal trousseau, the grand council of the republic provided that no one but the bride should wear pearl decorations, and she should be permitted only one girdle of them on her wedding dress. This enactment was modified in 1306, but numerous other restrictions were substituted, notably in 1334, 1340, 1360, 1497, and 1562. These differed in many particulars: some forbade ornaments or trimmings of pearls, gold, or silver on the dresses of any women except a member of the Doge’s family; and other enactments required that, after a definite period of married life, no woman should be permitted to wear pearls of any kind. But an examination of the documents and of the paintings of that period shows that these decrees had little effect, and the luxury of the “Queen of the Adriatic” in the use of pearls at the most brilliant epoch in her history is aptly reproduced in the portraits by Giovanni Bellini, Lorenzo Lotto, the great Titian, Tintoretto, Paul Veronese, and other artists of the highest rank. In the engraving by Hendrik Goltzius of a marriage at Venice in 1584, not one of the many women present seems to be without her necklace and earrings of pearls, and some of them have several necklaces.[[34]] And the same appears true of the principal female figures in Jost Amman’s noted engraving, “The Espousal of the Sea,” executed in 1565.[[35]]
As preservation of the republic became more difficult with declining resources and with the continued growth of dazzling splendor, a resolution in the Senate, dated July 8, 1599, set forth that “the use and price of pearls has become so excessive and increases to such an extent from day to day, that if some remedy is not provided, it will cause injury, disorders, and notable inconvenience to public and private well-being, as each one of this council in his wisdom can very easily appreciate.” And then it was enacted: “That, without repealing the other regulations which absolutely prohibit the wearing of pearls, it shall be expressly enjoined that any woman, whether of noble birth or a simple citizen, or of any other condition, who shall reside in this our city for one year (except her Serenity the Dogaressa and her daughters and her daughters-in-law who live in the palace), after the expiration of fifteen years from the day of her first marriage, shall lay aside the string of pearls around her neck and shall not wear or use, either upon her neck or upon any other part of her person, this string or any other kind of pearls or anything which imitates pearls, neither in this city nor in any other city or place within our dominion, under the irremissible penalty of two hundred ducats.”
And yet ten years later, on May 5, 1609, another law enacted in the Senate stated:
Although in the year 1599 this council decided with great wisdom that married women should be permitted to wear pearls for only fifteen years after their first marriage, nevertheless it is very evident that the desired end has not been attained, and the extravagance has continued up to the present time and still continues with the gravest injury to private persons. Therefore, as it is necessary to remedy, by a new provision, not only this considerable incommodity, but also to prevent in the future the introduction into the city of a greater quantity of pearls than are found here at present, it is enacted, that married women as well as those who shall marry in the future (except the Serene Dogaressa and her daughters and her daughters-in-law living in the palace) of whatever grade and condition they may be, who have resided in this city for one year, cannot wear pearls of any kind except for ten years immediately following the day of their first marriage; and after that period they must lay aside these pearls which they are forbidden to wear on any part of their persons, at home or abroad, and as well in this as in the other cities, lands, and other places of our dominion, under the penalty of two hundred ducats. And if the husband of the offending wife is a noble, he shall be proclaimed in the greater council and declared a debtor to the office of the governors of the revenue in the sum of twenty-five ducats for each fine; and if he is a citizen or of any other condition, besides the penalty of two hundred ducats and the fine of twenty-five ducats above mentioned, he shall be banished for three years from Venice and the Duchy, and the same for each offence. And pearls or anything which imitates pearls, shall be forbidden to all other women, men and boys or girls of every age and condition at all times and in all places, under the same penalty of two hundred ducats. In the future no one shall in any manner bring pearls to this city as merchandise, under the penalty of their seizure and forfeiture. And the merchant shall be imprisoned for five consecutive years; and if he flees, he shall be banished from the city and district of Venice and from all other cities, lands, and places of our dominion for eight consecutive years.... And all who at present have pearls to sell are required to deposit a list of them with the sumptuary office, so as to avoid all fraud which could be practiced in this matter.
A copy of the title-page of this enactment is presented above.
The decrees and edicts were not confined to Venice, or to Italy, France, or Germany; they made their appearance quite generally throughout western and northern Europe and the interdictions of the civil authorities were strengthened by the voice of the bishops and other clergy, especially in the imperial cities of southern Germany. Yet the united authority of church and state was ineffectual in stemming the tide of fashion and personal fancy, and whether or not pearls should be worn became one of the much discussed questions of that period.
To the question, “Whether the statute and regulation of Bishop Tudertinus, who had excommunicated all women who wore pearls, was binding,” Joannes Guidius replied that many denied that this was so, and made the subtle defense that “the women had not accepted it and all had worn pearls, and it was considered that such a law was binding only when it was accepted by those for whom it was intended.”[[36]]
And as to the validity of the statutes requiring that women should not wear more than a definite number of pearls, he decided that “such a statute is valid and in itself good. And if the question is put whether every woman who infringes incurs the penalty, an answer may be gathered from the sayings of the doctors, who distinguish between married and unmarried women. They consider that an unmarried woman is obliged to obey the statute and regulation or to incur the penalty. But as to a married woman, if her husband approves, she should obey the statute; if, however, the husband objects, then the wife ought to wish to obey the statute, but in effect she should rather obey her husband, for she is most immediately and strongly bound to do this.”[[37]] Aided by such ingenious opinions as these, the women continued to follow their own inclinations notwithstanding the opposition of church and state.
Other fine distinctions were drawn by the lawyers of that day regarding ownership of gems under certain conditions. For instance, it was decided that pearls given by a father to his unmarried daughter remained her property after marriage because “they are given for a reason, namely to induce a marriage”; yet “pearls handed to a wife by her husband are not considered as her property, but must be given to his heirs, since it is supposed that they were given only for her adornment. The same holds good as respects pearls handed to a daughter-in-law by her father-in-law.”[[38]]
However, the greed of fashion, which law-makers and bishops could not arrest, was gradually satiated; and, influenced probably by the horrors of the Thirty Years’ War, more simple taste prevailed in the latter part of the seventeenth century.
In the meantime, improvements in cutting and polishing had greatly increased the beauty and popularity of diamonds and other crystal gems, and this adversely affected the demand for pearls. Furthermore, cleverly fashioned imitations manufactured at a low cost also served to decrease the relative rank and fashion of the sea-born gems. In the eighteenth century, pearls were relatively scarce; the resources of the American seas were largely exhausted, likewise the Ceylon and Red Sea fisheries were not to be depended on, and practically the entire supply came from the Persian Gulf, with a few from European rivers and the waters of China. As a result, although they continued to be prized by connoisseurs, pearls were not so extensively sought after by the rank and file of jewel purchasers.
It should be noted, however, that from the most ancient times, the princes of India and of Persia have had their pick and choice of the output from Ceylon and the Persian Gulf; and the largest single collections of the Western world have never equaled the possessions of some of those rulers. Some Indian princes have loaded themselves with thousands of pearls, and individual ornaments have been valued not only by oriental, but by European experts, at several millions of dollars.
The great diamond resources of Brazil were discovered in 1727, and after a few years these came on the market at the rate of 140,000 carats annually. At that time ladies of rank did not esteem diamonds so highly as pearls. This distinction was accentuated by Lord Hervey in his account of the coronation, in 1727, of George II and his consort Caroline, who wore not only the great pearl necklace inherited from Queen Anne, but “had on her head and shoulders all the pearls she could borrow of the ladies of quality at one end of the town, and on her petticoat all the diamonds she could hire of the Jews and jewelers at the other; so that the appearance and the truth of her finery was a mixture of magnificence and meanness not unlike the éclat of royalty in many other particulars, when it comes to be nicely considered and its source traced to what money hires or flattery lends.”[[39]] In a portrait of Charlotte (1744–1818), wife of George III, the pearls and diamonds appear equally popular.
On the entry of the British into possession of Ceylon in 1796, the fisheries of that country were resumed with great success after thirty years of idleness, resulting in very large outputs for several seasons. But owing to exhaustion of the areas, they were soon reduced, and the yield became small and uncertain.
About 1845, pearls came on the market from the Tuamotu Archipelago and other South Sea islands, and the industry was revived on the Mexican coast. The pearls from these localities are noted for their range of coloration, and particularly for the very dark shades, black or greenish black being especially prominent. But the fashion, and thus, necessarily, the demand, had always been for white and yellow pearls; consequently, these black ones were of little value in the markets until about ten years later, when they became fashionable in Europe largely through their popularity with Empress Eugénie of France, then at the height of her power. To this queen, pearls owe much of their high rank in fashion in the nineteenth century; and on her head they were royal gems royally worn, as appears from Winterhalter’s portrait of her, showing her magnificent necklace.
The discovery of the resources on the Australian coast about 1865, and the development of the fishery there for mother-of-pearl, resulted in many large white pearls coming from that coast. The search was confined to the relatively shoal waters, until the introduction of diving-suits about 1880. The use of these facilitated a considerable extension of the fisheries not only on the Australian coast, but also in Mexico, the Malay Archipelago, several of the South Sea islands, and some minor localities.
In America, few jewels were worn previous to the Civil War, owing to the absence of great wealth and to the simplicity of taste in personal decorations. The rapid increase in wealth and luxury, on the termination of that war, resulted in a great demand for gems, and the most brilliant and showy ones were selected, especially diamonds. This demand was the more readily supplied by the discovery of the South African mines, with their great yield from 1870 to the present time. So popular did that gem become that many a young man invested his first earnings in a “brilliant,” and an enormous diamond in the shirt-front became the caricatured emblem of a prosperous hotel clerk.
But in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, in Europe, as well as in America and elsewhere where gems are worn, luxury found in pearls a refinement, associated with richness and beauty, exceeding that of diamonds and other crystal gems, and in the last few years they have taken the highest rank among jewels. This change in fashion and the increase in wealth among the people developed vastly greater demands and consequently very much higher prices. These have resulted in greatly extending the field of search, and during the last two or three decades many new territories have been brought into production.
By far the most important of these new regions is the Mississippi Valley in America, the pearl resources of which were made known about a score of years ago. As the exploitation developed, the gems from these streams added very largely to the supply, especially of the baroque or irregular pearls, which have increased greatly in fashion in the last ten years.
| LADY ABINGER | MRS. ADAIR |
| LADY WIMBORNE | HON. MRS. RENARD GRÉVILLE |
| MARCHIONESS OF LANSDOWNE | |
| LADY LONDONDERRY | |
| BARONESS DE FOREST | |
Notwithstanding the popular idea that pearls are scarce owing to depletion of the fisheries, they are doubtless produced in greater quantities at present than ever before in the history of the world. True, they were more plentiful in Rome after the Persian conquest, and in Spain immediately following the exploitation of tropical America; but it is highly probable that in no equal period have the entire fisheries of the world yielded greater quantities than in the five years from 1903 to 1907 inclusive. Certain individual fisheries are now less productive than at the height of their prosperity; those in the Red Sea do not compare favorably with their condition in ancient times, the European resources are nearly exhausted, the supplies from the Venezuelan coast do not equal those obtained early in the sixteenth century, the yield from Mexico is not so extensive as twenty-five years ago, and the same is true of some other regions. On the other hand, the great fisheries of Persia and Ceylon are yet very prosperous, the Ceylon fishery of 1905 surpassing all records, and the number of minor pearling regions has largely increased.
The present value of pearls—which has advanced enormously since 1893—is due to the extended markets and the increased wealth and fashion in Western countries, rather than to diminished fisheries. The oriental demand still consumes the bulk of the Persian and Indian output, and the vast increase in wealth among the middle classes in America, Europe, and elsewhere, has increased the demand tenfold over that of a century ago. While women no longer appear ornamented from head to foot as in the sixteenth century, pearls are in the highest fashion, and the woman of rank and wealth usually prizes first among her jewels her necklace of pearls.
III
ORIGIN OF PEARLS
III
ORIGIN OF PEARLS
Heaven-born and cradled in the deep blue sea, it is the purest of gems and the most precious.
S. M. Zwemer.
The origin of pearls has been a fruitful subject of speculation and discussion among naturalists of all ages, and has provoked many curious explanations. Most of the early views—universally accepted during those centuries when tradition had more influence than observation and experiment—have no standing among naturalists at the present time. And although much information has been gained as to the conditions accompanying their growth, and many theories are entertained, each with some basis in observed fact, science does not yet speak with conclusive and unquestioned authority as to the precise manner of their origin and development.
Owing to the chaste and subdued beauty of pearls, it is not strange that poets of many countries have founded their origin in tears—tears of angels, of water-nymphs, of the lovely and devoted. Sir Walter Scott in “The Bridal of Triermain” refers to—
The pearls that long have slept,
These were tears by Naiads wept.
In one of his most lovely and consoling thoughts, Shakspere says:
The liquid drops of tears that you have shed,
Shall come again, transform’d to orient pearl,
Advantaging their loan with interest
Of ten times double gain of happiness.
And we quote from Rückert’s “Edelstein und Perlen”:
I was the Angel, who of old bowed down
From Heaven to earth and shed that tear, O Pearl,
From which thou wert first-fashioned in thy shell.
To thee I gave that longing in thy shell,
Which guided thee and caused thee to escape,
O Pearl, from the bewitching sirens’ song.
In luster they so closely resemble the limpid, sparkling dewdrop as it first receives the sun’s rays, that the ancients very naturally conceived that pearls are formed from drops of dew or rain. The usual legend is, that at certain seasons of the year, the pearl-oysters rise to the surface of the water in the morning, and there open their shells and imbibe the dewdrops; these, aided by the breath of the air and the warmth of the sunlight, are, in the course of time, transformed into lustrous pearls; but if the air and the sunlight are not received in sufficient quantities, the pearls do not attain perfection and are faulty in form, color, and luster. However remarkable and even absurd this may seem at present, it appears to have been universally accepted for centuries by the most learned men of Europe as well as by primitive people who delight in the mystical and fantastic. This opinion was recorded in the Sanskrit books of the Brahmans and in other oriental literature. The classical and medieval writings of Europe contain numerous references to it; and it is found even yet in the traditions and folk-lore of some peoples.
In the first century A.D., Pliny wrote in his “Historia naturalis,” according to Dr. Philemon Holland’s quaint translation:
The fruit of these shell fishes are the Pearles, better or worse, great or small, according to the qualitie and quantitie of the dew which they received. For if the dew were pure and cleare which went into them, then are the Pearles white, faire, and Orient; but if grosse and troubled, the Pearles likewise are dimme, foule, and duskish; pale they are, if the weather were close, darke and threatening raine in the time of their conception. Whereby (no doubt) it is apparent and plaine, that they participate more of the aire and sky, than of the water and the sea; for according as the morning is faire, so are they cleere: but otherwise, if it were misty and cloudy, they also will be thicke and muddy in colour. If they may have their full time and season to feed, the Pearles likewise will thrive and grow bigge: but if in the time it chance to lighten, then they close their shells together, and for want of nourishment are kept hungrie and fasting, and so the pearles keepe at a stay and prosper not accordingly. But if it thunder withall, then suddenly they shut hard at once, and breed only those excrescences which be called Physemata, like unto bladders puft up and hooved with wind, no corporal substance at all: and these are the abortive & untimely fruits of these shell fishes.[[40]]
PANAMA SHELL
(Margaritifera margaritifera mazatlanica)
With pearls attached
VENEZUELA SHELL
(Margaritifera radiata)
Showing growth of pearls
Pliny’s views were probably derived from the ancient authorities of his time, particularly from Megasthenes, Chares of Mytilene, and Isidorus of Charace; and these curious fictions were incorporated by subsequent writers and influenced popular opinion for many centuries. With scarcely a single exception, every recorded theory from the first century B.C. to the fifteenth century evidences a belief in dew-formed pearls.
This theory is referred to by Thomas Moore in his well-known lines:
And precious the tear as that rain from the sky,
Which turns into pearls as it falls in the sea.
The Spanish-Hebrew traveler Benjamin of Tudela, in his “Masaoth” in Persia (from 1160 to 1173), wrote: “In these places pearls are found, made by the wonderful artifice of nature: for on the four and twentieth day of the month Nisan, a certain dew falleth into the waters, which being sucked in by the oysters, they immediately sink to the bottom of the sea; afterwards, about the middle of the month Tisri, men descend to the bottom of the sea, and, by the help of cords, these men bringing up the oysters in great quantities from thence, open and take out of them the pearls.”[[41]]
From the “Bustan,” one of the most popular works of Sadi, the Persian poet (1190–1291 A.D.), Davie quotes:
From the cloud there descended a droplet of rain;
’Twas ashamed when it saw the expanse of the main,
Saying: “Who may I be, where the sea has its run?
If the sea has existence, I, truly, have none!”
Since in its own eyes the drop humble appeared,
In its bosom, a shell with its life the drop reared;
The sky brought the work with success to a close,
And a famed royal pearl from the rain-drop arose.
Because it was humble it excellence gained;
Patiently waiting till success was attained.
Even the usually well-informed William Camden (1551–1623), in whose honor the Camden Historical Society of England was named, accepted the theory of dew-formed pearls. He stated that the river Conway in Wales “breeds a kind of shells, which being pregnated with dew, produce pearl.”[[42]] Also, speaking of the Irt in county Cumberland, England, he said: “In this brook, the shell-fish, eagerly sucking in the dew, conceive and bring forth pearls, or (to use the poet’s word) shell berries (Baccas concheas).”[[43]]
A recent letter from the American consul at Aden indicates that this view is held even yet by the Arabs of that region. In giving their explanation for the present scarcity in the Red Sea, he states: “There is a belief among them that a pearl is formed from a drop of rain caught in the mouth of the pearl-oyster, which by some chemical process after a time turns into a pearl; and as there has been very little rain in that region for several years past, there are few pearls.”
So firmly established throughout Europe was the belief in dew-formed pearls, that its non-acceptance by the native Indians of America excited the commiseration of the Italian historian Peter Martyr, in his “De Orbe Novo,” one of the very first books on America, published in 1517. He states: “But that they [pearls of Margarita Island on the present coast of Venezuela] become white by the clearnesse of the morning dewe, or waxe yelowe in troubled weather, or otherwise that they seeme to rejoice in fayre weather and dear ayre, or contrary-wise, to be as it were astonished and dymme in thunder and tempests, with such other, the perfect knowledge hereof is not to be looked for at the hands of these unlearned men, which handle the matter but grossly and enquire no further than occasion serveth.”[[44]] Peter Martyr was distinguished for his learning, was an instructor at the court of Spain at the height of its power, and came in contact with the most enlightened men of Europe, consequently it may be assumed that he reflected the best opinions of his time.
It was not long before the aborigines of America were not alone in discrediting the views which had prevailed in Europe for more than fifteen hundred years. That practical old sailor Sir Richard Hawkins concluded that this must be “some old philosopher’s conceit, for it can not be made probable how the dew should come into the oyster.”[[45]] A similar view is expressed by Urbain Chauveton in his edition of Girolamo Benzoni’s “Historia del Mondo Nuovo,” published at Geneva in 1578. From his reference to pearl-oysters on the Venezuelan coast, we translate:
Shells from Venezuela (Margaritifera radiata) with attached pearls
Exterior view of same
X-ray photograph of shell, printed through exterior of shell and showing encysted pearls
Around the island of Cubagua and elsewhere on the eastern coast, are sandy places where the pearl-oysters grow. They produce their eggs in very large quantities and likewise pearls at the same time. But it is necessary to have patience to let them grow and mature to perfection. They are soft at the beginning like the roe of fish; and as the mollusk gradually grows, they grow also and slowly harden. Sometimes many are found in one shell, which are hard and small, like gravel. Persons who have seen them while fishing say that they are soft as long as they are in the sea, and that the hardness comes to them only when they are out of the water. Pliny says as much, speaking of the Orientals in Book IX, of his Natural History, ch. 35. But as to that author and Albert the Great and other writers upon the generation of pearls, who have said that the oysters conceive them by means of the dew which they suck in, and that according as the dew is clear or cloudy the pearls also are translucent or dark, etc., etc.,—all this is a little difficult to believe; for daily observation shows that all the pearls found in the same shell are not of the same excellence, nor of the same form, the same perfection of color, nor the same size, as they would or must be if they were conceived by the dew all at one time. Besides this, in many of the islands the Indians go fishing for them in ten or twelve fathoms depth, and in some cases they are so firmly attached to the rocks in the sea that they can be wrenched off only by main strength. Would it not be difficult for them to inhale the quintessence of the air there? It seems then that it is the germ and the most noble part of the eggs of the oyster which are converted into pearls rather than any other thing; and the diversities of size, color, and other qualities, proceed from the fact that some are more advanced than others, as we see eggs in the body of the hen.[[46]]
The old theory of dew-formed pearls was illustrated even as late as 1684 on a medal struck in honor of Elena Piscopia of the Corraro family of Venice. This bore an oyster-shell open and receiving drops of dew, and underneath was engraved the motto “Rore divino” (By divine dew). Even yet one hears occasionally from out-of-the-way places—as in the instance reported by the American consul at Aden—of pearls formed from rain or dew, notwithstanding that there seems to exist absolutely no justification for it in scientific zoölogy.
Probably the most popular theory entertained from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century was that pearls were formed from the eggs of the oyster. This was intimated by Chauveton in the quotation above given, and it was also referred to by many naturalists.
In an interesting letter, dated Dec. 1, 1673, and giving as his authority the testimony of an eye-witness, “Henricus Arnoldi, an ingenious and veracious Dane,” Christopher Sandius wrote: “Pearl shells in Norway do breed in sweet waters; their shells are like mussels, but larger; the fish is like an oyster, it produces clusters of eggs; these, when ripe, are cast out and become like those that cast them; but sometimes it appears that one or two of these eggs stick fast to the side of the matrix, and are not voided with the rest. These are fed by the oyster against her will and they do grow, according to the length of time, into pearls of different bigness.”[[47]] This possibly hit the mark with greater accuracy than the observations of the “ingenious and veracious Dane” warranted, for he seems to have had quite a different idea as to the manner in which the pearls are “fed by the oyster against her will” from those generally entertained by naturalists at the present time.
However, Oliver Goldsmith settled the matter by declaring briefly: “Whether pearls be a disease or an accident in the animal is scarce worth enquiry.”[[48]] Thus it seems that notwithstanding all that had been written and the extended attention given to the subject, theory prevailed to the almost complete exclusion of practical investigation, with little intelligent advance over Topsy’s “’spect they just growed.”
Owing, doubtless, to the scarcity of pearl-bearing mollusks in their vicinities, naturalists of Europe were somewhat slow in giving attention to the origin of pearls. This is further accounted for by the fact that the gems occur more frequently in old and diseased shells than in the choice specimens which have naturally attracted the notice of conchologists.
One of the first of the original observations made on this subject was that by Rondelet, who, in 1554, advanced the idea that pearls are diseased concretions occurring in the mollusca, similar to the morbid calculi in the mammalia.[[49]]
The first writer to intimate the similarity in structural material or substance between pearls and the interior of the shell in which they are formed, appears to have been Anselmus de Boot (circa 1600), who wrote that the pearls “are generated in the body of the creature of the same humour of which the shell is formed; ... for whenever the little creature is ill and hath not strength enough to belch up or expel this humour which sticketh in the body, it becometh the rudiments of the pearl; to which new humour, being added and assimilated into the same nature, begets a new skin, the continued addition of which generates a pearl.”[[50]] The Portuguese traveler, Pedro Teixeira (1608), stated: “I hold it for certain that pearls are born of and formed of the very matter of the shell and of nothing else. This is supported by the great resemblance of the pearl and the oyster-shell in substance and color. Further, whatever oyster contains pearls has the flesh unsound and almost rotten in the parts where the pearls are produced, and those oysters that have no pearls are sound and clean fleshed.”[[51]]
Somewhat more than one hundred years later, this theory was confirmed by investigations made by the famous physicist Réaumur (1683–1757). Microscopic examination of cross sections of pearls show that they are built up of concentric laminæ similar, except in curvature, to those forming the nacreous portion of the shell. In a paper published by the French Academy of Science in 1717,[[52]] Réaumur noted this condition, and suggested that pearls are misplaced pieces of organized shell, and are formed from a secretion which overflows from the shell-forming organ or from a ruptured vessel connected therewith, and that the rupture or overflow is ordinarily produced by the intrusion of some foreign or irritating substance.
Sir Edwin Arnold calls attention to this theory in his beautiful lines:
Know you, perchance, how that poor formless wretch—
The Oyster—gems his shallow moonlit chalice?
Where the shell irks him, or the sea-sand frets,
He sheds this lovely lustre on his grief.
In pursuance of this idea, we find, in 1761, the Swedish naturalist Linnæus, “the father of natural history,” experimenting in the artificial production of pearls by the introduction of foreign bodies in the shell, and meeting with some degree of success. His discovery was rated so highly that it has been announced by some writers as the reason why the great naturalist received the patent of nobility, which is generally supposed to have been the reward for his services to science.
It seems that Linnæus’s discovery but verified the old saying that there is nothing new under the sun, for later it was announced[[53]] that in China—where so many inventions have originated—this idea had been put to practical account for centuries preceding, and the crafty Chinaman had succeeded in producing not only small pearly objects, but even images of Buddha, with which to awe the disciples of that deified teacher.
The method consisted in slightly opening or boring through the shell of the living mollusk and introducing against the soft body a small piece of nacre, molded metal, or other foreign matter. The irritation causes the formation of pearly layers about the foreign body, resulting, in the course of months or of years, in a pearl-like growth. While these have some value as objects of curiosity or of slight beauty, they are not choice pearls, nor for that matter were those produced by Linnæus.
It will be observed that the theory of Réaumur, and also that of Linnæus, required the intrusion of some hard substance, such as a grain of sand, a particle of shell, etc., to constitute a nucleus of the pearl; and this is the accepted explanation at the present time as to the origin of many of the baroque or irregular pearls, and likewise the pearly “blisters” and excrescences attached to the shell. But not so as to the choice or gem pearls, those beautiful symmetrical objects of great luster which are usually referred to in speaking of pearls.
Examinations of many of these have failed, except in rare instances, to reveal a foreign nucleus of sand or similar inorganic substance. In searching many fresh-water mussels, Sir Everard Home frequently met with small pearls in the ovarium, and he further noticed that these, as well as oriental pearls, when split into halves, often showed a brilliant cell in the center, about equal in size to the ova of the same mollusk. From these observations, in 1826 he deduced his “abortive ova” theory, and announced:
A pearl is formed upon the external surface of an ovum, which, having been blighted, does not pass with the others into the oviduct, but remains attached to its pedicle in the ovarium, and in the following season receives a coat of nacre at the same time that the internal surface of the shell receives its annual supply. This conclusion is verified by some pearls being spherical, others having a pyramidal form, from the pedicle having received a coat of nacre as well as the ovum.[[54]]
Naturalists generally accepted these conclusions, that pearls originate in pathological secretions formed, either as the result of the intrusion of hard substances, or by the encysting or covering of ova or other objects of internal origin; and there was no important cleavage of opinion until the development of the parasitic theory, as a result of the researches of the Italian naturalist Filippi, and those following his line of investigations. This theory is not severely in conflict with those of Réaumur, Linnæus, Home, etc., but relates principally to the identity of the irritating or stimulating substance which forms the nucleus of the pearl.
In examining a species of fresh-water mussel, the Anodonta cygnea, occurring in ponds near Turin, and especially the many small pearly formations therein, Filippi observed that these were associated with the presence of a trematode or parasitic worm, which he named Distomum duplicatum, and which appears to be closely allied to the parasite which causes the fatal “rot” or distemper in sheep. Under the microscope, the smallest and presumably the youngest of these pearls showed organic nuclei which appeared undoubtedly to be the remnants of the trematode. In Anodonta from other regions, which were not infested with the distoma, pearls were very rarely found by Filippi. In a paper,[[55]] published in 1852, containing a summary of his observations, he concluded that a leading, if not the principal, cause of pearl-formation in those mussels was the parasite above noted; and in later papers[[56]] he included such other forms as Atax ypsilophorus within the list of parasitic agencies which might excite the pearl-forming secretions, comparing their action to that of the formation of plant-galls.
Mexican pearl-oyster (Margaritifera margaritifera mazatlanica) with adherent pearl
Group of encysted pearls in shell of Australian pearl-oyster (Margaritifera maxima)
American Museum of Natural History
Mexican pearl-oyster (Margaritifera margaritifera mazatlanica) with encysted fish
American Museum of Natural History
Group of encysted pearls (Oriental)
Reverse of same group, showing outline of the individual pearls
The discovery of the parasitic origin of pearls was extended to the pearl-oysters and to other parasites by Küchenmeister[[57]] in 1856, by Möbius[[58]] in 1857, and by several other investigators. Prominent among these were E. F. Kelaart and his assistant Humbert, who, in 1859[[59]] disclosed the important relation which the presence of vermean parasites bears to the origin of pearls in the Ceylon oysters. These naturalists found “in addition to the Filaria and Cercaria, three other parasitical worms infesting the viscera and other parts of the pearl-oyster. We both agree that these worms play an important part in the formation of pearls.” Dr. Kelaart likewise found eggs from the ovarium of the oyster coated with nacre and forming pearls, and also suggested that the silicious internal skeletons of microscopic diatoms might possibly permeate the mantle and become the nuclei of pearls. Unfortunately, Dr. Kelaart’s investigations were terminated by his death a few months thereafter.
In 1871, Garner ascribed the occurrence of pearls in the common English mussel (Mytilus edulis) to the presence of distomid larvæ.[[60]] Giard,[[61]] and other French zoölogists, made similar discoveries in the case of Donax and some other bivalves. In 1901, Raphael Dubois confirmed the observations of Garner, associating the production of pearls in the edible mussels on the French coasts with the presence of larvæ of a parasite, to which he gave the name of Distomum margaritarum, and boldly announced: “La plus belle perle n’est donc, en définitive, que le brillant sarcophage d’un ver.”[[62]]
Prof. H. L. Jameson, in 1902, disclosed the relation which exists between pearls in English mussels (Mytilus) and the larvæ of Distomum somateriæ.[[63]] The life history of this trematode, as revealed by Dr. Jameson, is especially interesting from a biological standpoint, since it is entertained by three hosts at different times: the first host is a member of the duck family; the second is the Tapes clam (Tapes decussatus), or perhaps the common cockle (Cardium edule), which incloses the first larval stage, and the third is the edible mussel, in which the second larval stage of the parasite stimulates the formation of pearls. At the Brighton Aquarium and the Fish Hatchery at Kiel, Dr. Jameson claims to have succeeded in artificially inoculating perfectly healthy mussels with these parasites by associating them with infested mollusks, and thereby producing small pearls.
From Dr. Jameson’s interesting paper we abridge the following account of the manner in which the pearls are developed. The trematode enters Mytilus edulis as a tailless cercaria, and at first may often be found between the mantle and the shell. The larvæ, after a while, enter the connective tissue of the mantle, where they come to rest, assuming a spherical form, visible to the naked eye as little yellowish spots about one half millimeter in diameter. At first the worm occupies only a space lined by connective-tissue fibrils, but soon the tissues of the host give rise to an epithelial layer, which lines the space and ultimately becomes the pearl-sac. If the trematode larva completes its maximum possible term of life, it dies, and the tissues of the body break down to form a structureless mass which retains the form of the parasite, owing to the rigid cuticle. In this mass arise one or more centers of calcification, and the precipitation of carbonate of lime goes on until the whole larva is converted into a nodule with calcospheritic structure. The granular matter surrounding the worm, if present, also undergoes calcification. The epithelium of the sac then begins to shed a cuticle of conchiolin, and from this point the growth of the pearl probably takes place on the same lines and at the same rate as the thickening of the shell.[[64]]
Fully as remarkable as the observations of Dr. Jameson are the results claimed by Professor Dubois in experimenting with a species of pearl-oyster (M. vulgaris) from the Gulf of Gabes on the coast of Tunis, where they are almost devoid of pearls, a thousand or more shells yielding on an average only one pearl. Conveying these to the coast of France in 1903, he there associated them with a species of trematode-infested mussel (Mytilus gallo-provincialis), and after a short period they became so infested that every three oysters yielded an average of two pearls.[[65]] This claim has not been without criticism; but who ever knew scientists to agree?
In the pearl-oyster of the Gambier Islands (M. margaritifera cumingi), Dr. L. G. Seurat found that the origin of pearls was due to irritation caused by the embryo of a worm of the genus Tylocephalum, the life of which is completed in the eagle-ray, a fish which feeds on the pearl-oyster.[[66]]
In 1903, Prof. W. A. Herdman, who, at the instance of the colonial government, and with the assistance of Mr. James Hornell, examined the pearl-oyster resources of Ceylon, announced: “We have found, as Kelaart did, that in the Ceylon pearl-oyster there are several different kinds of worms commonly occurring as parasites, and we shall, I think, be able to show that Cestodes, Trematodes, and Nematodes may all be concerned in pearl formation. Unlike the case of the European mussels, however, we find that in Ceylon the most important cause is a larval Cestode of the Tetrarhynchus form.”[[67]]
In his investigation of the Placuna oyster in 1905, Mr. James Hornell found that the origin of pearls was due to minute larva of the same stage and species as that which causes the pearls in the Gulf of Manar oyster.[[68]]
The spherical larvæ of this tapeworm sometimes occur in great abundance, and there is evidence of forty having been found in a single pearl-oyster. Mr. Hornell states that the living worm does not induce pearl formation, this occurring only when death overtakes it while in certain parts of the oyster. As a consequence, pearls are more numerous in oysters which have been long infected, where the worms are older and more liable to die. This parasitic worm has been traced from the pearl-oyster to the trigger-fishes, which eat the pearl-oysters, and thence into certain large fish-eating rays, where it becomes sexually mature and produces embryos which enter the pearl-oyster and begin a new cycle of life-phases.
It seems, therefore, that the latest conclusions of science appear entirely favorable to the parasitic theory as explaining at least one, and probably the most important, of the causes for the formation of pearls; and that some truth exists in the statement that the most beautiful pearl is only the brilliant sarcophagus of a worm. This morphological change is not peculiar to mollusks, for in most animal bodies a cyst is formed about in-wandering larvæ. Fortunately for lovers of the beautiful, in the pearl-oysters the character of the cyst-wall follows that of the interior lining of the shell, and not only simulates, but far surpasses it in luster.
While the theory that pearls are caused by the intrusion of some unusual substance has the evidence of actual demonstration in many instances, and is unquestionably true to a large extent, yet microscopic examination of some pearls suggests the theory that a foreign substance is not always essential to their formation, and that they may originate in calcareous concretions of minute size, termed “calcospherules.” As regards their origin, Professor Herdman classifies pearls into three sorts: (1) “Ampullar pearls,” which are not formed within closed sacs of the shell-secreting epithelium like the others, but lie in pockets or ampullæ of the epidermis. The nuclei may be sand-grains or any other foreign particles introduced through breaking or perforation of the shell. (2) “Muscle pearls,” which are analogous to gallstones, formed around calcospherules at or near the insertion of the muscles. And (3) “Cyst pearls,” in which concentric layers of nacre are deposited on cysts containing parasitic worms in the connective tissue of the mantle and within the soft tissues of the body.[[69]]
Even a particle of earth, clay, or mud may form the nucleus of a pearl. This was illustrated a few years ago in a fine button-shaped pearl, which was accidentally broken under normal usage and was found to consist of a hard lump of white clay surrounded by a relatively thin coating of nacre. More remarkable yet are the cases in which a minute fish, a crayfish, or the frustule of a diatom has formed the nucleus.
Several instances have been described by Woodward, Gunther, Putnam, Stearns, and others, where small fish have penetrated between the mantle and the shell of the mollusk, and the latter has resented the intrusion by covering the intruder with a pearly coating. In two or three instances the secretion occurred in so short a time that the fish suffered no appreciable decomposition, and its species is readily identified by observation through the nacreous layer. Among the remarkable specimens of this nature which have come under our observation are two very curious shells received in March, 1907, from the Mexican fisheries. One of these specimens shows an encysted fish, so quickly covered and so perfectly preserved that even the scales and small bones are in evidence; indeed, one can almost detect the gloss on the scales of the fish; and in the other—with a remarkable comet-like appearance—a piece of ribbed seaweed is apparently the object covered.
From the foregoing, it appears that the pearl is not a product of health associated with undisturbed conditions, but results from a derangement in the normal state of the mollusk. Unable to resist, to rid itself of the opposing evil, it exercises the powers given to it by a beneficent Creator and converts the pain into perfection, the grief into glory. Nature has many instances of the humble and lowly raised to high degree, but none more strikingly beautiful than this. One of the lowest of earth’s creatures, suffering a misfortune, furnishes a wonderful lesson upon the uses of pain and adversity by converting its affliction into a precious gem symbolical of all that is pure and beautiful. As written by a forgotten poet: “Forasmuch as the pearl is a product of life, which from an inward trouble and from a fault produces purity and perfection, it is preferred; for in nothing does God so much delight as in tenderness and lustre born of trouble and repentance.” As the great Persian poet Hafiz says:
Learn from yon orient shell to love thy foe,
And store with pearls the wound that brings thee woe.
IV
STRUCTURE AND FORMS
IV
STRUCTURE AND FORMS OF PEARLS
“This maskellez perle that boght is dere,
The joueler gef fore alle hys gold,
Is lyke the reme of hevenes clere”;
So sayde the fader of folde and flode,
“For hit is wermlez, clene and clere,
And endelez rounde and blythe of mode,
And commune to all that ryghtwys were.”
Fourteenth-century mss. of “Pearl,”
in the British Museum.
As Kadir Munshi says, “pearls have no pedigree”; their beauty is not to be traced to their origin, but exists wholly in the excellence of the surroundings in which they develop.
The pearl-bearing mollusks are luxurious creatures, and for the purpose of protecting their delicate bodies they cover the interior of their shells with a smooth lustrous material, dyed with rainbow hues, and possessing a beautiful but subdued opalescence. No matter how foul, how coral covered, or overgrown with sponges or seaweeds the exterior may be, all is clean and beautiful within. This material is nacre or mother-of-pearl. It consists ordinarily of an accumulation of extremely thin semi-transparent films or laminæ of a granular organic substance called conchiolin, with the interstices filled with calcareous matter. The nacre decreases in thickness from the hinge toward the lip of the shell, and terminates a short distance from the extreme edge.
Next to the nacre is the middle layer or the shell proper. In species of Margaritifera, this stratum is commonly formed of layers of calcareous prisms arranged vertically to the shell surface. External to this middle or prismatic layer is the epidermis or periostracum, the rough outer coating of varying shades, usually yellow or brown. Where the waves are rough, and the bottom hard and rocky, this covering is thick and heavy, to afford greater protection; but where the waters are smooth and gentle, and the bottom free from rocks, Nature—never working in vain—furnishes only thin sides and slight defense. As is the case with the nacre, the prismatic layer and the periostracum decrease in thickness from the hinge to the edge, and the inside lip of the shell shows the gradual union of the three superimposed layers. The two outer layers are formed by the thick edge of the mantle, the remaining portion—or nearly the entire surface—of this organ secretes the nacral layer.
Not only is the interior of the shell made lustrous and beautiful, but this tendency is exerted toward all objects that come in contact with the soft body of the mollusk, either by intrusion simply within the shell, or deeply within the organs and tissues of the animal itself. All foreign bodies—such as small parasites, diatoms, minute pebbles, etc.,—irritate the tender tissues of the mollusk, and stimulate the pearly formation which in course of time covers them. At first the nacreous covering is very thin; but with added layer after layer the thickness is enhanced, and the size of the object increases as long as it remains undisturbed and the mollusk is in healthful growth.
Chemically considered, aside from the nucleus, the structure of pearls is identical in composition with that of the nacre of the shell in which they are formed. Analyses have shown that those from the fresh-water mussels of England and Scotland, and from the pearl-oysters of Australia and of Ceylon, have nearly identical composition in the proportion of about 5.94 per cent. of organic matter, 2.34 of water, and 91.72 per cent. of carbonate of lime.[[70]] The specific gravity ranges from nearly 2 to about 2.75, increasing with the deposit of the nacreous coatings. The following summary by Von Hessling[[71]] shows the results of certain determinations of specific gravity:
| Authority | Specific Gravity | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Muschenbroet | 2.750 | at moderate temperature |
| Brisson | 2.684 | at 14° Réaumur |
| Möbius | 2.686 | 4 fine pearls, weighing 2.396 gms. |
| Möbius | 2.650 | 24 pearls, weighing 6.221 gms. |
| Möbius | 2.336 | 63 brown pearls from Mazatlan, weighing 4.849 gms. |
| Voit | 2.722 | Bavarian pearls, 33⁄16 carats, medium quality |
| Voit | 2.616 | Bavarian pearls, 3⅝ carats, finer quality |
| Voit | 2.724 | Bavarian pearls, 1¾ carats, very fine |
| Voit | 2.578 | Bavarian pearls, gray, with some luster |
| Voit | 2.765 | Bavarian pearls, brown, ranking between good & black |
| Voit | 2.238 | Bavarian pearls, poor black pearls, impure |
Cross section of an irregular pearl, magnified 80 diameters
Cross sections of pearls, magnified 30 diameters
Thin section of mother-of-pearl, magnified, showing sponge borings which traversed the pearl shell
Structure of conch pearl produced by fracturing, magnified 80 diameters
The distinctive characteristic, the great beauty of a true pearl, is its luster or orient, which is a subdued iridescence, rather than the glittering brilliance of the diamond; and unless the shelly growth be lustrous it does not rank as a gem pearl, no matter how perfect its form or beautiful its color. This luster is due to the structural arrangement of the surface as well as to the quality of the material. The nacreous material forming true pearls, and likewise mother-of-pearl, is commonly deposited in irregular tenuous layers, very thin and very small in area compared with the surface of the pearl. These laminæ overlap one another, the surfaces are microscopically crumpled and corrugated, and the edges form serrated outlines. The greater the angle which the laminæ form with the surface, the closer will be these serrated outlines, and where the plane of the exterior lamina is parallel with the plane of the surface the lines are not present. This arrangement causes the waves of light to be reflected from different levels on the surface, just as in a soap bubble, and the minute prisms split the rays up into their colored constituents, producing the chromatic or iridescent effect.
The cause is wholly mechanical, and an impression of the surface made in very fine wax shows a similar iridescence. Also, if a piece of mother-of-pearl be immersed in acid until the surface lime or shelly matter is dissolved, the pellucid membrane shows the iridescence until it is so compressed that the corrugations are reduced. About two score years ago an Englishman invented steel buttons with similar minute corrugations producing pearly effect, but the manufacture was unprofitable, owing, principally, to their liability to tarnish.
In the shells of some mollusks—as the edible oysters (Ostrea) or the giant clam (Tridacna),—there is almost a total absence of the crumpled corrugated laminæ, and, consequently, there is little luster. In others the nacre is of better quality, resulting in superior orient, and it probably reaches its highest degree of perfection in the pearl-oyster (Margaritifera).
As the curvature of the surface of pearls is greater, and the minute striæ are more numerous, than in ordinary mother-of-pearl, it follows that the iridescence is likewise greater.
Superior nacre is more or less translucent, depending on its quality; and to the iridescence of the outer laminæ is added that of many interior ones, so that the luster is vastly increased. The position of the pearl within the shell may greatly affect the quality of the material and, consequently, the orient. The choicest are commonly found within the soft parts of the animal, and those of poorer quality are at the edges of the mantle, or within the fibers of the adductor muscle of bivalves.
The structure of pearls may be studied by examining thin cross sections under the microscope, or by transmitted polarized light. It appears that ordinarily a pearl is made up of many independent laminæ superimposed one upon another “like the layers of an onion,” or, rather, resembling the leaves near the upper part of a well formed cabbage. When subjected to sufficient heat, the laminæ separate from each other, as do shells of edible oysters and similar mollusks under like conditions. When broken by a hammer, a pearl may exhibit this laminated formation. If not split directly through the center, the central section may retain the spherical form; and as this commonly remains attached to one of the parts, its concave impression appears in the other portion of the broken pearl. The outer laminæ of many pearls may be removed with a fair prospect of finding a good subjacent surface, and this may be continued until the size is greatly reduced. These laminæ are not always similar in color or luster.
However, not all pearls are laminated in this manner. Instead of superimposed layers, some of them exhibit a crystalline form, composed of beautiful prismatic crystals radiating from the center to the circumference. In at least one oriental pearl examined, these crystals were in well defined arcs, and were further separated into concentric rings of different degrees of thickness, depth of color, and distance apart. Another specimen—a Scotch pearl—combined in separate layers both the laminated form and the crystalline structure.
Dr. Harley points out that some crystalline pearls apparently originate in mere coalescences of mineral particles, rather than in well defined nuclei.[[72]] Microscopic sections of crystalline pearls convey the idea that the prisms branch and interlace with one another, and also that in some instances they are of fusiform shape. However, these appearances seem to be due simply to the cross sections having cut the prisms at different angles.
Pearls showing these types were exhibited at a meeting of the Royal Society of London, June 8, 1887. That exhibit also contained a section of a west Australian pearl of curiously complex crystalline formation; instead of one central starting-point, it had more than a dozen scattered about, from which the crystalline prisms radiated in all directions.
Since the three superimposed layers of the shell are secreted by separate parts of the mantle, viz., the nacre by the general surface, the prismatic layer by the inner edge, and the epidermis by the outer edge, it follows that if a pearl in course of formation is moved from one of these distinctive portions of the palial organ to another, the nature of its laminæ changes. Thus, if a pearl formed on the broad surface of the mantle is moved in some way to the inner edge of that organ, it may be covered with a prismatic layer; if then moved to the outer edge it may receive a lamina of epidermis, and then by changing again to the broad surface of the mantle it receives further coats of nacre.
Pearls from common clam (Venus mercenaria) of eastern coast of America
Pearl “nuggets” from the Mississippi Valley
Wing pearls from the Mississippi Valley
Dog-tooth pearls from the Mississippi Valley
The structure of pearls from univalve mollusks, such as the conch, the abalone, etc., as well as those from some bivalves, as the Pinna, for instance, differs from that of the true pearls formed in species of Margaritifera. Instead of the alternate layers of conchiolin and of carbonate of lime, many of these have an alveolar structure. When greatly magnified, the surface of a Pinna pearl appears to be formed of very small polygones, which, as decalcification shows, are the bases of small pyramids radiating from the nucleus. The walls of these pyramids are formed of conchiolin, and they are filled with carbonate of lime of a prismatic crystalline structure. This is simply a modification of the parallel laminæ in the Margaritifera pearls, for, as Dubois points out, in some sections we can see portions where the alveolar formation has proceeded for a time coincidentally with the lamellar form.
Pearls are affected by acids and fetid gases, and may be calcined on exposure to heat. Their solubility in vinegar was referred to by the Roman architect Vitruvius (“De Architectura,” L. viii. c. 3) and also by Pausanias, a Greek geographer in the second century (“Hellados Periegesis,” L. viii, c. 18); but it seems that there could be little foundation for Pliny’s well-known anecdote in which Cleopatra is credited with dissolving a magnificent pearl in vinegar and drinking it—“the ransom of a kingdom at a draught”—to the health of her lover Antony.[[73]] It is no more easy to dissolve a pearl in vinegar than it is to dissolve a pearl-button—for the composition is similar, and one may easily experiment for himself as to the difficulty in doing this. Not only does it take many days to dissolve in cold vinegar the mineral elements of a pearl of fair size, but even with boiling vinegar it requires several hours to extract the mineral matter from one four or five grains in weight, the acid penetrating to the interior very slowly. And in neither case can the pearl be made to disappear, for even after the carbonate of lime has dissolved, the organic matrix of animal matter—which is insoluble in vinegar—retains almost the identical shape, size, and appearance as before. If the pearl is first pulverized, it becomes readily soluble in vinegar, and might be thus drunk as a lover’s potion, but it would scarcely prove a bonne bouche.
Pearls assume an almost infinite variety of forms, due largely to the shapes of the nuclei, and also to their positions within the mollusk. The most usual—and, fortunately, also the most valuable—is the spherical, resulting from a very minute or a round body as a nucleus and the uniform addition of nacre on all sides. Of course, spherical pearls can result only where they are quite free from other hard substances; consequently they originate only in the soft parts of the mollusk and not by the fixation of some nucleus to the interior surface of the shell.
The perfectly spherical pearls range in weight from a small fraction of a grain to three hundred grains or more, but it is very, very rare that one of choice luster weighs more than one hundred grains. The largest of which we have any specific information was that among the French crown jewels as early as the time of Napoleon, an egg-shaped pearl, weighing 337 grains. The largest pearl known to Pliny in the first century A.D. weighed “half a Roman ounce and one scruple over,” or 234½ grains Troy. These very large ones, weighing in excess of one hundred grains, are called “paragons.” The small pearls—weighing less than half a grain each—are known as “seed-pearls.” The very small ones, weighing less than 1⁄25 of a grain, are called “dust-pearls.” These are too small to be of economic value as ornaments.
Slight departures from the perfect sphere, result in egg shapes, pear shapes, drop shapes, pendeloque, button shapes, etc. Some of these are valued quite as highly at the present time as the spherical pearls, and many of the most highly prized pearls in the world are of other than spherical form. Indeed, pearls of this kind are found of larger size than the perfectly round pearls. The egg-shaped pearl,[[74]] called “la Régente,”—one of the French crown jewels sold in May, 1887—weighed, as stated above, 337 grains. The great pear pearl described by Tavernier—“the largest ever discovered”—weighed about 500 grains. A button pearl received from Panama in 1906 weighed 216 grains.
Wider departures from the spherical form result in cylindrical, conical, top-shaped, etc. Some pearls present the appearance of having been turned in a lathe with intricate tooling. Remarkable examples of these “turned pearls” have been found, competing in their circular perfection with the best work of a jeweler’s lathe.
Many standard varieties of non-spherical, but normally shaped pearls, are recognized by the fishermen and the jewelers. For instance, in the nomenclature of the American fishermen, bouton, or button pearls are divided into “haystacks” and “turtle-backs,” according to the height of the projection. Also, certain imperfections result in distinguishing names: “bird’s-eye” refers to a pearl having a little imperfection on the best surface; “ring-arounds” have a dark or discolored ring about them; and “strawberries” have numerous minute projections on the surface.
During its growth, a spherical pearl may come in contact with a foreign body, such as grit or a vegetable film, and the additional nacral layers envelop the adjacent matter until it is entirely concealed within the pearl, its position being recognized only by the excrescence on one side, and, with continued increase in size, even this may be almost overcome.
ACTUAL SIZES OF PEARLS FROM ⅛ GRAIN TO 160 GRAINS
Sometimes double, triple, or multiple pearls are formed; each of these may have a separate nucleus and grow independently for a time until they adjoin each other; continuing to grow, they become so united as to form a connected mass. The “Southern Cross” is a remarkable example of this. It appears to consist of seven nearly spherical pearls attached to one another in a straight line, and one projecting from each side of the second in the row, thus forming a Roman cross.[[75]]
A few years ago, near Sharks Bay, on the coast of western Australia, a cluster was found containing about 150 pearls closely compacted. This cluster measured about one and a half inches in length, three quarters of an inch in breadth, and half an inch in thickness.
When a growing pearl is very near to the nacreous lining of the shell, the pressure between the two hard substances results in a rupture of the pearl-forming sac and the epithelial layer of the shell, and the pearl comes in actual contact with the nacre. The pearl gradually becomes attached to the shell, and the under portion is prevented from growing further; the upper or exposed surface receives other layers, resulting in the formation of a bouton. As the shell around the pearl continues to grow, it gradually closes about, and almost wholly conceals the pearl. Since it is constantly wasting away on the exterior surface as it grows on the interior, it follows that in time the shell passes the pearl quite through to the outside, where it rapidly decays. Thus the oyster virtually forces the annoying intruder directly through the wall of its house instead of by way of the open door, and magically closes the breach with its marvelous masonry.
These embedded pearls are generally faulty and of diminished luster, but in the aggregate, large quantities of imperfect ones, and especially half and quarter pearls, are secured in this manner. Sometimes—particularly in the Australian fisheries—large pearls are thus found, weighing twenty, forty, sixty, and even eighty grains; and when the faulty outside layers of nacre are removed, a subjacent surface of fine luster may possibly be revealed. In bivalves, these adherent pearls are commonly in the deep or lower valve, except in those unusual cases where the mollusks have been lying in a reverse position. At the fisheries, the surfaces of the shells are carefully inspected for evidence of pearly nodules, and these are broken open in search for encysted objects. Cutters of mother-of-pearl occasionally find embedded pearls of this kind which have escaped the vigilant eyes of the fishermen.
We read of an instance in an important paper treating of the jeweling trade of Birmingham: “A few years since [the paper was written in 1866] a small lot of shells was brought to Birmingham, which either from ignorance or mistake had not been cleared of the pearls at the fishery. A considerable number were found and sold, and one especially was sold by the man who had bought the shell for working into buttons, for £40. The purchaser, we believe, resold the same for a profit of £160; and we have heard that it was afterward held in Paris for sale at £800.”
A choice gem which was found in New York, in October, 1905, in an Australian shell, sold finally for $1200.
The intrusion and continued presence of grains of sand or similar material between the mantle and the shell causes the formation of nacre over the foreign body, resulting in a chicot (blister pearl), or possibly a quarter or a half-pearl. The growth of a chicot sometimes results from the mollusk covering a choice pearl which has become loosened from the soft tissues and adheres to the shell, as above cited. Hence, it is sometimes desirable to break a chicot to secure its more valuable inclosure. In the account of his interesting pearling experiences on the Australian coast, Henry Taunton states: “During the first season’s shelling at Roebuck Bay, we came across an old worm-eaten shell containing a large blister, which was removed in the usual manner by punching a ring of minute holes around its base; a slight tap was then sufficient to detach it. For many weeks it was untouched, no one caring to risk opening it, for if filled with black ooze, which is frequently the case, it would be of little value. At last, baffled in his attempt to solve the problem, and emboldened by an overdose of ‘square face,’ the skipper gave it a smart blow with a hammer, which cracked it open, and out rolled a huge pearl, nearly perfect, and weighing eighty grains. A few specks and discolorations were removed by a skilful ‘pearl-faker,’ and it was sold in London for £1500.”[[76]]
Blister pearls are also caused by the defensive or protective action of the mollusk in resisting the intrusion of some animal, as a boring sponge or a burrowing worm, which has begun to penetrate the outer layers of the shell. This stimulation causes the mollusk to pile nacreous material upon the spot, thus making a substantial mound closely resembling a segment of a large pearl. This walling-out of intruders is not the result of intelligent forethought or of instinct, analogous to the repairing of a damaged web by a spider, or the retunneling of a collapsed gallery by ants; it is a pathological rather than an intelligent action.
BROOCHES MADE OF PETAL, DOG-TOOTH, AND WING PEARLS
From the Upper Mississippi Valley
When the nucleus of a pearl is large and very irregular, it necessarily follows that the deposited nacre roughly assumes the irregular outline of the inclosed object. This is strikingly shown in pearls covering a minute fish, a crayfish, or a small crab. Several specimens have been found in which the species could be identified by examination through the nacreous coating.
In the American Unios there is a strong tendency to produce elongated pearls near the hinge of the shell, which are consequently known as “hinge pearls.” The occurrence and form of these suggest that their origin may not be due to nuclei, but that they result from an excess of carbonate of lime in the water, and that the animal stores a surplus of nacre in this convenient form. There are several standard forms of these hinge pearls. Many are elongated or dog-toothed, some are hammer-shaped, others resemble the wings of birds, the petals of flowers, the bodies of fish, and various other objects. A large percentage of the pearls found in Unios of the Mississippi Valley are of these types.
Some irregular pearls or baroques are very large, weighing an ounce or more. A well-known example is the Hope pearl, described on page 463, which weighs three ounces. These monster pearls sometimes assume odd shapes, such as clasped hands, the body of a man, lion, or other animal, etc.
Although baroques may have a pearly luster, they are not highly prized unless unusually attractive, and they have little permanent value, apart from their estimation in the eyes of admirers of the curious and unique. They are used largely in l’art nouveau, and in forming odd and fanciful objects of jewelry, the designer taking advantage of the resemblance which they bear to common objects of every-day life, and by additions of gold and other ornaments completing the form which nature had merely suggested.
Some remarkable examples of baroque mountings have been produced, and a few are to be found in most of the large pearl collections. In a single case in the Imperial Treasury at Vienna are baroques forming the principal parts or figures of a horse, stag, lamb, tortoise, lizard, cock, dragon, butterfly, gondola, hippopotamus, female bust, and three mermaids. Other well-known collections are those of the royal family of Saxony in the Grüne Gewölbe at Dresden; those in the Palace of Rosenberg at Copenhagen; in the Waddesden (Rothschild) collection of the British Museum; among the jewels in the Louvre in Paris; with the treasures of the Basilica of St. Mark in Venice; and in the museum of the University of Moscow.
A remarkable pearl-like ornament more common in Asia than in the Occident, is the coque de perle, which is an oval section of the globose whorl of the Indian nautilus. The exterior or convex surface is highly lustrous, but the material is very thin. It is commonly provided with a suitable filling or backing of putty or cement to impart solidity, and is used like a blister pearl. Sometimes two perfectly matched coques de perle are filled and cemented together, giving the appearance of an abnormally large oblong or nearly spherical pearl.
The color of pearls has no connection with the luster. In general it is the same as that of the shell in which they are formed. Black pearls are found in the black shells of Mexico, and pink pearls in the pink-hued Strombus of the Bahamas. Ceylon pearls are seldom of any other color than white, and Sharks Bays are almost invariably quite yellow or straw-colored, while those of Venezuela are commonly yellowish tinged. But from other localities, pearls simulate every tint of the rainbow, as well as white and black. The most common, as well as the most desirable ordinarily, is white, or rather, silvery or moonlight glint,—“la gran Margherita,” as Dante calls it; but yellow, pink, and black are numerous. They may also be piebald—a portion white and the rest pink or brown or black. Some years ago there was on the market a large bean-shaped pearl of great luster, one half of which was white and the other quite black, the dividing-line being sharply defined in the plane of the greatest circumference. The pearls from Mexico, the South Sea islands, and the American rivers are especially noted for their great variety of coloration, covering every known tint and shade, and requiring such a master as Théophile Gautier to do justice to them.
Many theories have been advanced to explain the coloration of pearls. When the old idea of dew formation prevailed, it was considered that white pearls were formed in fair weather, and the dark ones when the weather was cloudy. It was further considered that the color was influenced by the depth of the water in which they grew: that in deep water they were white, but where it was so shallow that the sunlight easily penetrated, the pearls were more likely to be dark in color. Tavernier curiously explained that the black pearls of Panama and Mexico owed their color to the black mud in which the pearl-oysters of those localities lived, and that Persian Gulf pearls were more inclined to yellow than those of Ceylon, owing to the greater putrefaction of the flesh before they were removed therefrom.[[77]] Two centuries ago the color of a pearl was attributed to that of the central nucleus, and it was concluded that if the nucleus was dark, the pearl would be of a similar hue.[[78]] This theory has also been upset, for pearls are found white on the exterior and quite dark within, and also with these conditions reversed.
GRAY PEARLS IN THE POSSESSION OF AN AMERICAN LADY AND BROOCH FROM TIFFANY & CO.’S EXHIBIT, PARIS EXPOSITION, 1900
The color of a pearl is determined by that of the conchiolin, as appears from its remaining unchanged after decalcification. While generally it is the same as that of the mother-of-pearl at the corresponding point of the shell in which it is formed, there are many exceptions to this, and the reasons for the varying tints and colors are probably to be found in the changes in position of the pearl, the ingredients of the water, the health of the mollusk, accidents of various kinds, etc. These factors will be referred to later in discussing the pearls from different mollusks and regions; but in general it is no more easy to explain the colors of pearls than it is to say why one rose is white and another is yellow.
Medieval writers had much to say regarding unripe or immature pearls, likening them to eggs in the body of a hen, which follow a uniform rate of growth; and this idea is not entirely absent even in contemporaneous writings. However, it is an interesting fact that the humble mollusks, like the five wise virgins with prepared lamps, keep their gems perfect in beauty and luster at all times. It matters not whether the pearl be removed when it is only the size of a pinhead or not until it reaches that of a marble, it is at all times a complete, a ripe, a perfect pearl, and the largest surpasses the smallest only in the characteristics and properties which are incidental to size. Imparting perfection and completion every day, every moment, the mollusk utilizes the added time simply in enlarging its beautiful work.
Although art has made wonderful progress in that direction, the pearl, like truth, is not easily imitated. There is as much difference between the ubiquitous imitations and the perfect gem as there is between a chromolithograph and a silvery Corot, or between the effects of cosmetics and the freshness of youth. While to the unskilled, or under superficial inspection, the false has some of the properties of the genuine, it is only necessary to place them side by side to make the difference apparent. However clever the imitation may be in color, in form, and in density, it always lacks in richness, in sweetness, and in blended iridescence.
V
SOURCES OF PEARLS
V
SOURCES OF PEARLS
Rich honesty dwells like a miser, sir, in a poor house, as your pearl in your foul oyster.
As You Like It, Act V, sc. 4.
In geographic range, the sources of pearls are widely distributed, each one of the six continents yielding its quota; but the places where profitable fisheries are prosecuted are restricted in area. First in point of value, and possibly of antiquity also, are the fisheries of the Persian Gulf, giving employment ordinarily to thirty thousand or more divers. The yield in the likewise ancient fisheries of the Gulf of Manaar is uncertain, but sometimes remarkably large. The Red Sea resources are now of slight importance compared with their extent in the time of the Ptolemies. Other Asiatic fisheries are in the Gulf of Aden, about Mergui Archipelago, on the coast of China, Japan, Korea, and Siam, and also in the rivers of China, Manchuria, and Siberia.
Aside from those produced in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, the pearl fisheries of Africa are of small extent. Some reefs exist on the lower coast of the German East African territory and also in Portuguese East Africa, but they have not been thoroughly exploited.
In most of the inshore waters of Australasia pearls may be secured; the fisheries are most extensive on the northern coast of Australia, in the Sulu Archipelago, and about the Dutch East Indies. Tuamotu Archipelago, Gambier, Fiji, and Penrhyn are prominent in the South Pacific Ocean.
In the seas of Europe few pearls have been found, but the rivers have yielded many; and although the resources have been greatly impaired, many beautiful gems are yet found there.
South America contributes the important reefs on the coast of Venezuela—the land of unrest and revolutions, whose fisheries were first exploited by Columbus. Other South American countries in which pearls are collected are Panama, Ecuador, Peru, etc. In North America, pearls are found in the pearl-oyster of the Gulf of California, the abalone of the Pacific coast, the queen conch of the Gulf of Mexico, and in the Unios of most of the rivers, especially those of the Mississippi Valley.
Since pearly concretions partake of the characteristics of the shell within which they are formed, it follows that practically all species of mollusks whose shells have a well-developed nacreous lining yield pearls to a greater or less extent. But the number of these species is relatively small. They belong chiefly to the Margaritiferæ, or pearl-oyster family of the sea, and to the Unionidæ, or family of fresh-water mussels. Pearls occur also in some univalves, but not so abundantly as in bivalves of the families mentioned. Broadly stated, we may hope to find pearls within any mollusk whose shell possesses a nacreous surface; and it is useless to search for them in shells whose interior is dull and opaque, such as the edible oyster for instance.
The great bulk of the pearls on the market, and likewise those of the highest quality, are from the Margaritiferæ, which are widely distributed about tropical waters. Although these mollusks are spoken of as pearl-oysters, they are not related in any way to the edible oysters (Ostrea) of America and Europe.[[79]] The flesh is fat and glutinous, and so rank in flavor as to be almost unfit for food, although eaten at times by the poorer fishermen in lieu of better fare. The origin of the name is doubtless due to the fact that in the somewhat circular form of the shell they resemble oysters rather than the elongated mussels of Europe, to which they are more nearly related in anatomy. Also in that—like their namesakes—they are monomyarian, having only one adductor muscle.
The two valves or sides of the pearl-oyster shell are nearly similar in shape and almost equal in size; whereas in the edible oysters one valve is thin and somewhat flat, while the other is thicker, larger, and highly convex. In the latter, also, the hinge, or umbo, is an angular beak; but in the pearl-oysters the umbo is prolonged by so-called ears or wings into a straight line the length of which is nearly equal to the breadth of the shell.
The byssus, or bunch of fibers, by which pearl-oysters attach themselves to the bottom indicates their relationship to the mussels. The possession of a small foot and somewhat extended migratory powers—at least in the first years of growth—also distinguish them from the sedentary edible oysters. But from an economic point of view, the principal difference is the possession of a thick, nacreous, interior lining in the shells of pearl-oysters, which is wholly lacking in the edible species. Like their namesakes, the pearl-oysters are exceedingly fertile, a single specimen numbering its annual increase by millions.
Commercially considered, the pearl-oysters are roughly divisible into two groups, (1) those fished exclusively for the pearls which they contain, and (2) those whose shells are so thick as to give them sufficient value to warrant their capture independently of the yield of pearls. The best examples of the first group are the pearl-oysters of Ceylon and of Venezuela, and to a less extent those of the Persian Gulf, the coast of Japan, and of Sharks Bay, on the Australian coast. Of the second group, the pearl-oysters of Torres Straits and of the Malay Archipelago are the most prominent members. Between these two groups are the many species and varieties whose shells and pearls are more evenly divided with respect to value, including those of Mexico, Panama, the Red Sea, the South Sea islands, etc.
Some conchologists recognize a large number of species of Margaritiferæ, while other authorities consider many of these as local variations of the same species. There is much difference in the size, color, and markings of the shells in different localities, owing to varying geographical and physical conditions. The distinction of species and the nomenclature herein adopted are those of Dr. H. L. Jameson, who has recently revised and rearranged the collection of shells belonging to this family in the British Museum of Natural History,[[80]] and to whom we are indebted for descriptive notes relative to several of the species.
The greatest pearl-producer in the family of pearl-oysters is the Margaritifera vulgaris of the Gulf of Manaar and the Persian Gulf, and to a much less extent of the Red Sea. It occurs in various other inshore waters of the Indian Ocean, and about the Malay Archipelago and the coast of Australia and New Guinea, although it is not the principal pearl-oyster of those waters. An interesting account of its immigration into the Mediterranean Sea through the Suez Canal was given by Vassel in 1896.[[81]]
This species is quite small, averaging two and a half inches in diameter in Ceylon waters, and somewhat more in the Persian Gulf, whence large quantities of the shell are exported under the name of “Lingah shell.” The Ceylon variety has the nacreous lining almost uniformly white over the entire surface, only the lip having a slightly pinkish ground color. The exterior is marked by seven or eight reddish brown radial bands on a pale yellow ground. In addition to its greater size, the Persian variety is darker, and the lip of the shell has a reddish tinge.
For centuries the Margaritifera vulgaris has sustained the great pearl fisheries of Ceylon, India, and Persia, and at present yields the bulk of pearls on the market, especially the seed-pearls and also those of medium size. It produces relatively few large ones, rarely exceeding twelve grains in weight. These pearls are commonly silvery white, and for their size command the highest prices, because of their beautiful form and superior luster. Excepting the Venezuelan species, this is the only pearl-oyster which at present supports extensive fisheries exclusively for pearls; in the fisheries for all other species the value of the shells furnishes considerable revenue, and in some localities this represents several times as much as the income from the pearls.
Ranking next to Margaritifera vulgaris in extent of pearl production is the Margaritifera margaritifera, which is widely distributed about the tropical inshore waters of the Pacific and Indian oceans. It is very much larger than the Lingah oyster, good specimens measuring seven or eight inches in diameter, and the nacreous interior is usually of a darker color. In addition to its yield of pearls, the shell of this species is of value in the mother-of-pearl trade, and contributes largely to the economic results of the fisheries. Indeed, in several regions the shell is of more value than the pearls, which represent only an incidental yield. As Jameson notes, the color and markings of the shell, though extremely variable, generally suffice to distinguish this species. The ground color of the exterior ranges through various shades from yellowish brown to very dark brown. Its characteristic markings consist of from ten to eighteen radial rows of white and yellow spots, running from the umbo, or hinge, to the margin.
Several varieties of Margaritifera margaritifera are recognized. The type species occurs along the north coast of Australia, from Brisbane on the east to Sharks Bay on the west; on the New Guinea coast; at Formosa; and about many of the islands of the Pacific. The well-known “black lip shell” of Australian waters is of this species; it shows a greenish black on the margin of the nacre. The yield of this is very small compared with that of the large pearl-oyster of Australia.
SHELL OF PEARL-OYSTER WITH ATTACHED PEARL
(Margaritifera margaritifera mazatlanica)
From Costa Rica
The Margaritifera margaritifera occurs on the eastern coast of Arabia in two varieties, which differ somewhat from the type species. These have been designated by Jameson as M. margaritifera persica and M. margaritifera erythræensis. These are much larger than the Lingah shell of the Persian Gulf, but are smaller than the Australian species. The percentage of pearls in them is less than in the Lingah species, but from a commercial point of view this is to some extent offset by the greater value of the shell. The M. m. persica is more numerous in the gulf than the M. m. erythræensis, and large quantities of the shell are marketed in Europe. Formerly the shipments were made principally by way of Bombay, hence the shell is known in the mother-of-pearl trade as “Bombay shell.” The exterior is of a light grayish or greenish brown color, with yellowish white radial bands. The nacre has a slightly roseate tint, and the margin is greenish yellow. The pearls found herein are more yellowish in color and attain a larger size than those from the Lingah oyster.
The M. m. erythræensis occurs also in the Red Sea and along the shores of the Arabian Sea. Among mother-of-pearl dealers it is known as “Egyptian shell” or “Alexandria shell,” owing to the fact that prior to the opening of the Suez Canal shipments were commonly made by way of Alexandria. The color of the nacre is darker than that of its related variety in the Persian Gulf. In the trade, three grades of this shell are recognized, classed according to the shade of color. The lightest comes from Massowah and near the southern end of the Red Sea, and the darkest from farther north, in the vicinity of Jiddah and Suakim.
The islands of the southern Pacific, and of eastern Polynesia especially, yield another variety of M. margaritifera, to which the name M. m. cumingi has been given. The nacre is of a dark metallic green, and in the mother-of-pearl trade the shell is designated as “black-edged.” It attains a large size, only slightly smaller than the large Australian species; many individual specimens measure ten inches in diameter, and weigh six or seven pounds for the two valves. Belonging to this variety are those oysters whose shells are known in the markets of Europe and America as “Tahiti,” “Gambier,” and “Auckland” shells, the name designating the port of shipment.
Yet another subspecies, the M. m. mazatlanica, occurs on the coasts of Panama and Mexico, and especially in the Gulf of California. This is likewise green-edged, and the exterior color is yellow or light brown. This shell has been marketed in quantities since 1850, and is known in the mother-of-pearl trade as “Panama shell.” It is smaller than the Australian species, specimens rarely exceeding eight inches in diameter. It yields a large percentage of the black pearls that have been so fashionable in the last fifty years.
Since 1870, the largest pearls have been found mainly in a very large species of pearl-oyster, Margaritifera maxima, obtained off the north and west coasts of Australia, among the Sulu Islands, and elsewhere in the Malay Archipelago. In the fisheries for this species, the mother-of-pearl is the principal object sought, and the pearls are obtained incidentally. It is the largest of all the members of this family, reaching in exceptional cases twelve or thirteen inches in diameter, and weighing upward of twelve pounds; while the Ceylon oyster rarely exceeds four ounces in weight. So marked is this difference, that the Australian species is often designated the “mother-of-pearl oyster,” and the Ceylon species the “pearl-oyster.” Jameson notes that it differs from the Margaritifera margaritifera, its nearest competitor in size, in its much longer hinge, its shape, its lesser convexity, and in its color and markings. As described by him, the color ranges from pale yellowish brown to deep brown, with traces of radial markings of dark brown, green, or red in the umbonal area. In its marginal region, the shell is marked by a series of circumferential lines about one third of a millimeter apart.
Several geographical varieties of this species are recognized in the mother-of-pearl trade, differing principally in the coloring of the interior surface. The chief commercial varieties are “Sydney” or “Queensland,” “Port Darwin,” “West Australian,” “New Guinea,” “Manila,” “Macassar,” and “Mergui.” The nacre of those from the Australian coast is almost uniformly silvery white. That of the “Manila shell” is characterized by a broad golden border surrounding the silvery white nacre. The “Macassar shell” lacks the golden border of the “Manila shell,” and is similar in its uniform whiteness to the “Sydney shell,” but its iridescence is much greater.
The Margaritifera carcharium, from Sharks Bay, on the coast of Australia, yields yellow pearls and small quantities of mother-of-pearl. This species is small—three or four inches in diameter. The color is grayish or greenish yellow, with several somewhat indistinct radial bands of brownish green. The nacre has a yellowish green tint, with a margin of pale yellow, with brown markings.
In the West Indies and on the Atlantic coast of tropical America, especially the coast of Venezuela, occurs the Margaritifera radiata. This species is quite small, and seems to be closely allied to the Ceylon oyster. Like the latter, the nacreous interior is rich and brilliant, but owing to its small size, the shell is wholly valueless as mother-of-pearl. The principal and almost the only fishery for this species is on the Venezuelan coast, in the vicinity of Margarita Island, the islands of Cubagua, and Coche.
The coast of Japan yields the Margaritifera martensi, which occurs among the numerous islands in the southern part of the empire, but does not extend beyond 40° north latitude. This species is likewise small, and closely resembles the pearl-oyster of Ceylon, from which it differs principally in coloration. As noted by Jameson, brown and white predominate in the exterior coloring, and the interior of the lip is marbled with yellow ocher and chocolate brown, instead of pink, as in the Ceylon shell.
There are numerous other species of pearl-oysters, but they are of slight economic importance, and do not support fisheries of value.
As only a small percentage of the individual mollusks contain pearls, it follows that vast quantities are destroyed without any return whatever, and handling them merely adds to the expense of the industry, as well as reduces the resources of the reefs. This could be obviated if it were possible, without opening them, to determine the individual mollusks containing pearls.
Among the several methods proposed for this purpose, especially interesting is the use of X-rays, which was suggested by Raphael Dubois of Lyons, France, in 1901.[[82]] The shells of some pearl-oysters—those of Ceylon and of Venezuela for instance—are relatively thin, and it was thought that by the means of the rays the presence of pearls could be ascertained, and non-pearl-bearers could be saved from opening, and be returned to the reefs without injury. Although the calcareous shell partly interrupts the radiations, it is not difficult to recognize the presence of large pearls.
The theory has never been found practical in application, owing largely to the rough and irregular exterior of the shell and the small size of the pearls. The presence of the larger pearls may be ascertained by this method; but it is exceedingly probable that a very large percentage of the small ones, and especially the seed-pearls, would be overlooked. Furthermore, if in their sixth year oysters contain no pearls, the probability of appearance therein later is very small, and little benefit would result from their return to the water. As to saving the trouble of opening the non-pearl-bearing mollusks, labor in the pearling regions is usually inexpensive, and this cost is far more than offset by the reasonable certainty of securing practically all the small as well as the large pearls by the present method of operation. Owing to the greater thickness and the economic value of the large pearl-oysters—as those of Australia or of Mexico, for instance—the application of X-rays to them is obviously impractical. However, when pearl-oyster culture becomes a highly developed industry, with personal ownership in those mollusks returned to the water, some method such as this might be of great value.
Pearls are yielded by various species of Unionidæ or Naiades occurring in the rivers of America, Scotland, Saxony, Bavaria, Norway, Sweden, Russia, France, China, etc. These mollusks exist exclusively in the fresh-water streams, lakes, and ponds, and quickly die when submerged in salt water. The Unionidæ are of particular interest in America, as it is here that this group is most abundant, and nearly every stream east of the Rocky Mountains contains more or less of them. The Mississippi basin abounds in Unios, or “clams,” as they are known to the fishermen of that region, and furnishes about 400 of the 1000 recognized species of this important family.
The Unios are most abundant in clear, running water, where the bottom is gravelly or sandy. The interiors of the shells are iridescent, and vary greatly in tint, exhibiting many delicate shades of color from silvery white to straw color, pink, purple, brown, etc.
About five hundred species of American fresh-water mussels have been recognized by conchologists. Many of these differ from one another so very slightly that they are scarcely distinguishable from an examination of the shells themselves, or even from the descriptions, and a detailed index to the complete list is of little economic importance. The professional fishermen and the shell-buyers take the trouble to name only the species with which they deal, which includes only about twenty-five species, all of which are margaritiferous, though some to a greater extent than others. In the pearling regions a popular nomenclature exists, the names given by the fishermen having reference to the shape, color, etc.
The niggerhead (Quadrula ebena) is the most numerous in the Mississippi, and it is extensively used in button manufacture. The thick shell of this species is almost round, with a black outer surface and a pearly white interior. At maturity it averages about four inches in diameter and four ounces in weight. Owing to its uniform whiteness and the flatness of its surface, it is well adapted to button manufacture, and for this purpose more than twenty thousand tons are taken in the Mississippi Valley every year. When the fishery originated, the niggerhead was very abundant in some places, and especially between La Crosse and Burlington. From a single bed near New Boston, Illinois, measuring about 200 acres in area, 7500 tons, or about 70,000,000 individual shells, were removed in three years. In 1897, a bed of 320 acres near Muscatine furnished 500 tons, or about 4,750,000 shells. This species occasionally yields valuable pearls.
Two species of Unios, Quadrula undulata and Q. plicata, are known among the fishermen as “three-ridges.” The former is also known as the “blue-point” from the fact that the sharp edge is usually tinged faint blue on the inside. Although not the best for button manufacture, the shells yield the greatest number of pearls.
PINNA OR WING SHELL (Pinna seminuda)
One third natural size
PEARL-OYSTER OF CEYLON (Margaritifera vulgaris)
Natural size
A species somewhat similar to the niggerhead is the bullhead (Pleurobema æsopus). This shell is thick and opaque, the nacre is not so iridescent as that of the niggerhead, nor does it yield pearls of such good quality. These two species are not evenly distributed over the bottom of the streams, but occur in great patches or beds, sometimes several feet in thickness and covering many hundreds of acres. Some of the beds are several miles in length, and they may be separated by twenty or thirty miles in which the mollusks are so scarce that profitable fishing can not be made; but usually the reefs are smaller and more closely situated.
The sand shells (Lampsilis)—of which there are several species—do not occur in large beds, but are scattered over the sandy beaches and sloping mud-banks. In shape they are narrow and long, adults measuring five or six inches in length. Owing to the small waste in cutting, due to uniformity in thickness, these shells are sold to button manufacturers for more than the niggerhead, which in turn is more valuable than the bullhead.
The buckhorn (Tritigonia verrucosa) is very long and narrow; on the dark brown exterior it is rough, as is the horn from which it takes its name, while the interior shows a beautiful display of colors. This is not found in beds, but lies scattered among other species. It sells at a relatively high price—usually in excess of $20 per ton—for button manufacture.
Another species is the butterfly (Plagiola securis), which is very prettily marked on the outside with faintly colored dotted stripes of varying length. Over a background of dark yellow run black stripes to the outer edge of the shell, with dark dots between the stripes. The shell is small and thick, and like the sand shell and the buckhorn, is found in small quantities. Owing to the beauty and permanency of its luster, this shell is in demand for button manufacture, and its pearls are often very beautiful.
Other well-known species are the pancake (Lampsilis alatus), the maple-leaf (Quadrula wardi), and hackle-back (Symphynota complanata). On the Atlantic seaboard, the principal species in which pearls have been found are Unio complanata; the Alasmodon arcuata, which has hinge teeth, and a species of Anodon. Pearls from the Unio complanata are usually smaller but more lustrous than those from either of the other species.
Among the many fresh-water mussels are found some remarkable conditions of animal life. Probably the most curious is the parasitic stage of certain species. When hatched from the egg, each one of these is provided with hooks or spines, by means of which it attaches itself to the gills or fins of a swimming fish and becomes embedded therein. After confinement in this cyst for a period of two months or more, the small mollusk works its way out and falls to the bottom of the river or pond, where its development continues along lines more conventional to molluscan life.
In most of the species of Unios the sexes are separate; but it has been determined that in some the individuals are provided with both sets of sexual organs. It is claimed by some naturalists that certain species may change from one sex to another; yet this does not seem to have been positively established.
Not the least interesting of the habits of the Unios is the manner in which they “walk,” bushels of them changing their habitation in a few hours. The shell opens slightly and the muscular tongue-like “foot” is thrust out, and by pressure of this on the bottom, the mollusk is propelled in a jerky, jumpy movement with more speed than one would suppose possible for the apparently inert creature.
The number of eggs produced by an individual in one season ranges from a few hundred in some species to many millions in others, as in the Quadrula heros, for instance. Most of the fresh-water mollusks are of slow growth, reaching maturity in six or eight years, and it is believed that if undisturbed they live to be from fifteen to fifty years old; indeed, some writers credit them with attaining an age of one hundred years.
While outwardly there is no positive indication of the existence of pearls, they are relatively scarce in young mollusks, and likewise in those having a normal, healthy appearance, with smooth exterior free from blemishes, and they are found generally in the older, irregular, and deformed shells, which bear excrescences and the marks of having parasites. However, some of the choicest pearls have come from shells relatively young and apparently in perfect condition.
It has been pointed out that with the fresh-water Unios there are three indications on which the fishermen to some extent rely for determining the presence of pearls from the outward aspects of the shell. There are, first, the thread or elevated ridge extending from the vertex to the edge; second, the kidney-shape of the shell, and third, the contortion of both valves toward the middle plane of the mollusk.
A single mollusk may contain several small pearls,—more than one hundred have been found,—but in such cases usually none has commercial value. Ordinarily only one is found in the examination of very many shells. Of these objects it may be truthfully said that “many are found, but few are chosen,” few that are of first quality or are worthy of a fine necklace. In many instances, several pounds of cheap pearls would be gladly exchanged for a choice gem weighing an equal number of grains.
On the Atlantic seaboard of America, the Anodontas, or “mussels,” as they are known locally, are more numerous than the Unios. They prefer the still waters of the ponds and lakes, rather than the swift currents of the streams. The shell is much thinner than that of the Unios, and it is usually not so brilliant in color and iridescence; consequently the pearly concretions obtained from them are less lustrous.
The rivers of Europe, and of Asia also, contain numbers of pearl-bearing mussels. In many localities the yield of pearls has at times attracted attention and produced much profit, though probably never equaling the present extent of the Mississippi River finds. The principal pearl-bearer of Europe is the Unio margaritifera, the shell of which has been of some local importance in the manufacture of pearl buttons. In Great Britain it is known as the pearl-mussel; in France as the moule or huître perlière; in Germany as perlenmuschel; in Belgium as paarl mossel de rivieren; in Denmark as perle-skiael; in Sweden as perlmussla; in Russia as schemtschuschuaja rakavina, and in Finland as simpsuckan cuosi. The Unio margaritifera likewise exists in Siberia, and possibly elsewhere in Asia. Other species of Unio exist there and in Mongolia, Manchuria, etc., as, for instance, U. mongolicus, U. dahuricus, etc. A leading species in eastern China, the Dipsas plicatus, has long been extensively employed in the artificial production of pearly objects or culture pearls.[[83]] Unio pearls show less uniformity of tints than those derived from the pearl-oysters. They present an extended series of shades, corresponding to those on the interior of the shells, from almost perfect white through various tints of cream, pink, yellow, bright red, blue, green, russet, and brown. The metallic shades are numerous, especially the steels and the coppers.
Most of the members of the Mytilidæ family, which includes the marine mussels, are of slight luster; and the pearly concretions found in them are of the grade known as “druggists’ pearls,” so-called because, formerly, they were used in a powdered form in astringent and other medicines. However, some of these mussels on the European coast yield pearls that are fairly lustrous. The white and the pink are most numerous, but purple, red, bronze, and yellow are by no means uncommon.
A few pearls are also obtained from the sea-wings or wing-shells (Pinna), the silkworms of the sea, found in the Red Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, the Indian Ocean, the southern coast of America, and elsewhere. These shells are narrow at the umbo, or hinge, long, and fan-shaped; they are generally brittle, and present a horn-like appearance. The interior is commonly of a silvery reddish or orange-colored hue, and this tint is imparted to the pearls. The most characteristic feature of the Pinna is the thick rope of silky fibers, from four to ten, and sometimes twenty or more inches in length, constituting the byssus, a remarkable provision by means of which it anchors itself to the bottom and thus outrides the storm. Formerly the byssus was gathered in Sicily, washed in soap and water, dried, corded, and fabricated into gloves and similar articles of a fine texture. The finished garments were of a beautiful golden brown color, resembling the burnished gold on the backs of some splendid flies or beetles.
The yield of Pinna pearls is very small. A few are obtained from the Mediterranean, especially on the Adriatic coast. These are usually rose-tinted or reddish in color, but of diminished orient, and inferior in size. Pinna pearls are also reported from the Isle of Pines and from New Caledonia, where they are commonly very dark, almost black in color.
The window-glass shell (Placuna placenta), the vitre chinoise of some writers, yields a few small, irregularly shaped pearls of a dull leaden color. It occurs in the inshore waters of the Indian and the southwestern Pacific oceans; fisheries are prosecuted in Tablegram Lake, near Trincomali, on the northeast coast of Ceylon; on the coast of Borneo, especially at Pados Bay, and to a less extent in some other localities. This mollusk is quite distinct from the true pearl-oyster, and in adult life is devoid of the byssus, living on the muddy bottom of the shallow waters. The shell is almost circular, the right valve is quite flat, and the left only slightly convex. It is remarkable for its transparency, especially in the first year of growth, when the beating of the heart of the mollusk is visible through it. Reaching maturity in about two years, the shell becomes white and translucent, resembling pressed isinglass somewhat in its texture. It then measures about six or seven inches in length, and nearly the same in width. The outside is rough; the interior is glazed over and has a subdued pearly luster. It is so thin and transparent that with a strong light very coarse print can be read through it. It is commonly used in the East Indies as a substitute for glass in windows, admitting a soft mellow light into the room. For this purpose it is usually cut into small rectangular or diamond-shaped pieces, about five or six square inches in area, and these are inserted into sash frames. It forms a good economical substitute for glass, not only in windows of native residences, but also in lanterns and the like.
SHELL AND PEARLS OF THE COMMON CONCH
(Strombus gigas)
Of Florida and the West Indies
The giant clam (Tridacna gigas) of tropical waters yields a few large opal-white symmetrical pearls, with faint luster and of little value. The transversely oval shell of the Tridacna, with its great squamous ribs, is probably the largest and heaviest in existence, single pairs weighing upward of 500 pounds. It is found in tropical seas, and especially in the Indian Ocean. It is much used for ornament, particularly for fountain-basins, and for bénitiers, or holy-water fonts. A beautiful pair used as bénitiers in the Church of St. Sulpice in Paris is said to have been a gift of the Republic of Venice to Francis I. There seems to be no established fishery for this mollusk, and the pearls very rarely come on the market. About four years ago in New York City an effort was made to market one weighing about 200 grains. The owner represented that it was a “cocoanut pearl,” and offered to sell it for $2000; whereas its actual value was probably not over $10 or $20, and that only for a museum collection.
Pearls of slight luster also occur in the quahog, or hard clam (Venus mercenaria), of the Atlantic coast of the United States. Although these are rare, they are generally of good form, and some weigh upward of eighty grains each. They are commonly of dark color, purplish, ordinarily, but they may be white, pale lilac, brown, and even purplish black, or black. The white ones—which so nearly resemble ivory buttons as readily to pass for them at a casual glance—are of little value; but fine dark ones have retailed at from $10 to $100 each. There is little demand for them, for unless the color is very good, they possess slight beauty, lacking the orient peculiar to choice pearls. Pearls have also been reported from the edible clam of the Pacific coast of America.
Shelly concretions are found in the edible oyster of America (Ostrea virginica), as well as in that of Europe (O. edulis); but these are commonly objects of personal interest or of local curiosity, rather than of artistic or commercial value, as they are lacking in luster and iridescence. Most of them are dull or opal-white, some are purple, and a few are white on one side and purple on the other. As many as fifty of these formations have been found in a single oyster. Sometimes they are of odd appearance, suggesting the human eye or face, and recently one was found which bore a striking resemblance to a human skull. Notwithstanding many news items to the contrary, it is doubtful whether the choicest pearl from an edible oyster would sell for as high as $20 on its own merits; professional shuckers have opened thousands of bushels of oysters without finding one which would sell for ten cents.
Among univalves, the most prominent pearl-producer is probably the common conch or great conch (Strombus gigas) of the West Indies and the Florida coast, which secretes beautiful pink pearls of considerable value. This is one of the largest of the univalve shells, some individuals measuring twelve inches in length, and weighing five or six pounds. The graceful curves and the delicate tints of lovely pink color make it exceedingly attractive. The conch abounds in the waters of the West Indies, especially in the Bahamas, where many thousands are annually taken for the shell, which forms quite an article of commerce. The flesh is esteemed as food and is also used for bait; and it is particularly in preparing for these purposes that the pearls are found, as no established fisheries exist for the pearls alone.
The ear-shells or abalones (Haliotidæ) found on the coasts of California, Japan, New Zealand, and other localities in the Pacific, secrete pearly concretions, sometimes with fine luster, but usually of small value. These shells resemble in general outline the form of the human ear. Distinguishing characteristics are the flatly-spiral bowl-like shape, and the regular series of holes in the back near the distal margin, for the admission of water to the respiratory organs. The holes are on the left side and parallel with the columellar lip, and those nearest the apex close up as the shell increases in size. The shells are rough externally, but beautifully nacreous within. In variety and intensity of coloring, the nacre is superior to that of the pearl-oysters, but it is not so harmonious, and it does not form so thick and flat a layer.
Abalone pearls are especially interesting on account of their brilliant and unusual colors. Green predominates, but blue and yellow also occur. Although commonly very small, some of the well formed ones exceed seventy-five grains in weight, and those of irregular shape may be very much larger. The ear-shells also produce many irregular pearly masses. Although these are without an established commercial value, their beautiful greenish or bluish tints adapt them for artistic jeweled objects, such as the body of a fly or of a beetle.
Similar concretions are found in species of turbos and turbinella, especially the Indian chank (Turbinella rapa), which yields pink and pale red pearls. The pearly nautilus (Nautilus pompilius) yields a few yellowish pearls, especially those taken in Australian waters; but from the paper nautilus—“the sea-born sailor of his shell canoe”—no pearls are obtained, owing to the non-lustrous nature of the shell.
In bygone days, especially in Asia, and also to some extent in Europe, pearls were credited as coming from many non-molluscan sources. The Rabbis had the idea that they came also from fish, as noted in the story of a tailor who was rewarded by finding a pearl in one which he bought (Gen. R. xi. 5). The Raganighantu of Narahari, a Kashmir physician of about 1240 A.D., reported them as coming from bamboos, cocoanuts, heads of elephants, bears, serpents, whales, fish, etc.;[[84]] although it conceded that these were deficient in luster, which is recognized as the characteristic feature of pearls. We understand, therefore, that this use of the word signifies only hard concretions of a spherical form. In the apology for his book, prison-bound Bunyan wrote:
A pearl may in a toad’s head dwell,
And may be found in an oyster shell.
The crystal gems—the diamonds, rubies, etc.—are practically unlimited in their longevity, existing thousands of years unchanged in condition. Except those which have been discovered by man, the earth contains about as many as it ever did, and it is not unreasonable to suppose that in course of time a considerable percentage of the total will be discovered. But in the seas as well as in the rivers, the longevity of pearls is greatly restricted, and
Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark, unfathomed caves of ocean bear[[85]]
to run their course of existence and decay unseen and unknown. Perishable while in the seas, almost as cereals and fruits on land, the harvest must be gathered with promptness or it is wasted. And it seems probable that only a small percentage of the beautiful gems produced in the waters have gladdened the sight of man.
With considerable hesitancy we have attempted to estimate the number of persons employed in the pearl fisheries of the world, and the aggregate local value of their catch. For two or three regions, this is not a matter of great difficulty. For instance, the divers employed in the Ceylon fishery are numbered each season, and the auction sales of their catch furnish a reasonably satisfactory basis for determining the value of the output. Likewise in Australia, Venezuela, and some minor localities, the fishermen are numbered; but the reports are less satisfactory as to the value of the pearls. In the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, the Gulf of California, and the islands of the Pacific, where pearl-diving is a profession and a regular source of livelihood, the number of employees is fairly constant. But in the rivers and ponds of America, as well as of Europe and of Asia, where neither experience nor costly equipment is required for the industry, and pearls to the value of very many thousands of dollars are obtained by men, women, and even children, on pleasure bent, as well as in the widely fluctuating professional fisheries, the problem is far more difficult.
Contending with these many difficulties, we venture to present the following estimate of the number of persons employed in the pearl fisheries of the world, and the value of the output in 1906.
| Localities. | Fishermen No. | Pearls Local Values. | Shells Local Values. | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Asia: | ||||
| Persian Gulf | 35,000 | $4,000,000 | $110,000 | |
| Ceylon[[86]] | 18,500 | 1,200,000 | 40,000 | |
| India | 1,250 | 100,000 | 95,000 | |
| Red Sea, Gulf of Aden, etc.[[87]] | 3,000 | 200,000 | 150,000 | |
| China, Japan, Siberia, etc. | 20,000 | 400,000 | 50,000 | |
| Total | 77,750 | $5,900,000 | $445,000 | |
| Europe: | ||||
| British Isles | 200 | 15,000 | ||
| Continent of Europe | 1,000 | 100,000 | 3,000 | |
| Total | 1,200 | $115,000 | $3,000 | |
| Islands of the Pacific: | ||||
| South Sea islands | 4,500 | 125,000 | 500,000 | |
| Australian coast[[88]] | 6,250 | 450,000 | 1,200,000 | |
| Malay Archipelago | 5,000 | 300,000 | 800,000 | |
| Total | 15,750 | $875,000 | $2,500,000 | |
| America: | ||||
| United States rivers | 8,500 | 650,000 | 350,000 | |
| Venezuela | 1,900 | 275,000 | 10,000 | |
| Mexico | 1,250 | 210,000 | 200,000 | |
| Panama | 400 | 40,000 | 75,000 | |
| Miscellaneous | 1,000 | 75,000 | 25,000 | |
| Total | 13,050 | $1,250,000 | $660,000 | |
| Grand total | 107,750 | $8,140,000 | $3,608,000 | |
Our returns do not represent the annual output of pearls in the values best known to gem buyers. The difference in price between pearls in the fisherman’s hands in the Persian Gulf or at the Pacific islands, and that for which they are exchanged over the counters in New York or Paris, is nearly as great as the difference in value of wool on the sheep’s back and of the same material woven into fashionable fabrics. For each dollar received by the fisherman, the retail buyer probably pays three; and it is not unreasonable to suppose that the pearls herein represented probably sold ultimately for an aggregate of $24,420,000.
This summary falls far short in giving a correct idea of the importance of the pearl fisheries in furnishing a livelihood to humanity; for it takes no consideration of that great body of men who contribute incidentally to the prosecution of the fisheries, such as shell-openers, pearl-washers, watchmen, cooks, laborers, etc. In the Ceylon pearl fishery of 1906, for instance, our estimate shows 18,500 fishermen; but there were 40,000 persons engaged at the pearl camp alone, and many others were given employment in boat-building, supplying provisions, selling the pearls, etc., and this does not include the wives and children depending on the industry for sustenance. Indeed, it seems not unreasonable to estimate that instead of only the 18,500 fishermen, 85,000 persons were in a large measure dependent for their livelihood on the Ceylon fishery in 1906.
Estimated on the same basis, we have a total of 500,000 persons depending largely on the pearl fisheries of the world for their support. Thus we see that pearl buyers and pearl wearers not only gratify a commendable admiration for the beautiful, but contribute largely to the economic balance whereby one class of humanity either sustains or is dependent upon another, even though these classes be so widely separated as the crown of Russia from the half-starved diver of the tropical seas. How strange is the providence of God, who, by granting the pearl to the poor Arab, the Tamil of India, the South Sea Islander, and the forgotten Selang of Mergui, makes the greatest and wealthiest in the world contribute to their support.
VI
PEARLS FROM ASIA
THE PERSIAN GULF, FISHERIES OF INDIA, CEYLON PEARL FISHERIES, RED SEA AND ARABIAN SEA, CHINA, JAPAN, SIBERIA, ETC.
VI
THE PEARL FISHERIES OF THE PERSIAN GULF
Dear as the wet diver to the eyes
Of his pale wife, who waits and weeps on shore,
By sands of Bahrein in the Persian Gulf;
Plunging all day in the blue waves; at night,
Having made up his toll of precious pearls,
Rejoins her in their hut upon the shore.
Sir Edwin Arnold.
The pearl fisheries of the Persian Gulf are the most famous and valuable in the world, and have been prosecuted for more than two thousand years. A translation by that eminent Assyriologist, Jules Oppert, of a cuneiform inscription on a broken obelisk, erected presumably by a king of Nineveh, seems to indicate a very early origin for these fisheries.[[89]] Professor Oppert’s translation is:
In the sea of the changeable winds (i.e., the Persian Gulf),
his merchants fished for pearls;
In the sea where the North Star culminates,
they fished for yellow amber.
The earliest writing of Europeans on the East refer to these fisheries. An account of them was given by the Greek writer Megasthenes, who accompanied Seleucus Nicator, the Macedonian general, in his Asiatic conquests, about 307 B.C. Shortly afterward they were noted by the Greek historian, Isidorus of Charace, in his account of the Parthian Empire. Extracts from Nearchus preserved by Arrian also mention them. Ptolemy speaks of the pearl fisheries which existed from time immemorial at Tylos, the Roman name for the present Island of Bahrein. These resources were well known in the days of Pliny. In his “Historia Naturalis,” Book IX, ch. 35, he says: “But the most perfect and exquisite [pearls] of all others be they that are gotten about Arabia, within the Persian Gulf.”[[90]] Pliny states also (Book VI, ch. 25) that Catifa (El Katiff), on the Arabian coast opposite Bahrein, was the center of an important fishery.
In the ninth century these fisheries were noted by Massoudi, one of the earliest Arabian geographers.[[91]] In the latter part of the twelfth century they were visited and described by the Spanish-Hebrew traveler, Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela.[[92]] The Arabian traveler, Ibn Batuta, wrote of them about 1336.[[93]] In 1508 they were noted in the account of Lodovico Barthema’s expedition to the Island of Ormus. According to him:
At three days’ journey from this island they fished the largest pearls which are found in the world; and whoever wishes to know about it, behold! There are certain fishermen who go there in small boats and cast into the water two large stones attached to ropes, one at the bow, the other at the stern of each boat to stay it in place. Then one of the fishermen hangs a sack from his neck, attaches a large stone to his feet, and descends to the bottom—about fifteen paces under water, where he remains as long as he can, searching for oysters which bear pearls, and puts as many as he finds into his sack. When he can remain no longer, he casts off the stone attached to his feet, and ascends by one of the ropes fastened to the boat. There are so many connected with the business that you will often see 300 of these little boats which come from many countries.[[94]]
Shortly following the visit of Barthema, the Portuguese under Albuquerque took possession of the principal ports of the Persian Gulf, and they imposed heavy taxes on the pearl fishery throughout the century of their retention. While under their jurisdiction, the fisheries were visited and described by J. H. van Linschoten in 1596, who wrote:
The principall and the best that are found in all the Orientall Countries, and the right Orientall pearles, are between Ormus and Bassora in the straights, or Sinus Persicus, in the places called Bareyn, Catiffa, Julfar, Camaron, and other places in the said Sinus Persicus, from whence they are brought into Ormus. The king of Portingale hath also his factor in Bareyn, that stayeth there onlie for the fishing of pearles. There is great trafficke used with them, as well in Ormus as in Goa.[[95]]
Cargo boat in pearl fishery of the Persian Gulf
Huts of mats and palm leaves, the homes of the pearl fishermen at Menamah, Bahrein Islands, Persian Gulf
This was the Ormus where the treasures of the Orient were gathered in abundance, the half-way house between the East and the West, making it one of the greatest emporia of the world. So renowned was its wealth and commerce that it was a saying among the Portuguese, were the whole world a golden ring, Ormus would be the jeweled signet. It was built on an island, supported a population of 40,000 persons, and was particularly well situated as a distributing point for the pearls, which enriched the argosies of Portugal, and contributed so largely to
the wealth of Ormus and of Ind,
Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand
Show’rs on her kings barbaric pearl and gold,
which Milton celebrates in “Paradise Lost.” This wonderful Ormus, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries one of the wealthiest places in the world, is now only a fishing village of less than a hundred huts.
It was at Ormus, nearly a century later, in 1670, that the shrewd old jewel merchant, Tavernier, whose acquaintance with gems doubtless equaled that of any man of his time, saw what he called “the most beautiful pearl in the world”; not so much for its size, for it weighed only 48¼ grains, nor for its regularity in form, but because of its most wonderful luster.[[96]]
In describing the fisheries, which had been retaken by the Persians in 1622, Tavernier wrote in 1670, according to Ball’s translation:
There is a pearl fishery round the island of Bahren, in the Persian Gulf. It belongs to the King of Persia, and there is a good fortress there, where a garrison of 300 men is kept.... When the Portuguese held Hormuz [Ormus] and Muscat, each boat which went to fish was obliged to take out a license from them, which cost fifteen abassis [$5.45], and many brigantines were maintained there, to sink those who were unwilling to take out licenses. But since the Arabs have retaken Muscat, and the Portuguese are no longer supreme in the Gulf, every man who fishes pays to the King of Persia only five abassis, whether his fishing is successful or not. The merchant also pays the king something small for every 1,000 oysters. The second pearl fishery is opposite Bahren, on the coast of Arabia Felix, close to the town of El Katif, which, with all the neighboring country, belongs to an Arab prince.[[97]]
During the century following Tavernier’s time, the fisheries were vigorously prosecuted, owing to the impoverished condition of the reefs in India and America, and to the large demand for pearls, not only by the Oriental courts, but by the wealth and fashion of Europe. Except for the last four years, when the Ceylon fishery was very productive, throughout the eighteenth century the Persian Gulf was almost the only important source of supply for pearls. For several years following the reopening of the Ceylon fishery in 1796, that region diverted some of the attention which the Persian waters had been receiving, but it was not long before these regained their ascendancy.
In 1838, Lieutenant J. R. Wellsted, an officer in the British India service, reported that the fisheries of the gulf employed 4300 boats, manned by somewhat more than 30,000 men.[[98]] Of these boats, 3500 were from the Island of Bahrein, 100 from the Persian coast, and the remaining 700 from the Pirate Coast situated between Bahrein and the entrance to the Gulf of Oman. Lieutenant Wellsted estimated the value of the pearls secured annually as approximately £400,000, which is somewhat less than the average value of the output in recent years.
Twenty-seven years later, according to Sir Lewis Pelly,[[99]] who was in the Indian service from 1851 to 1877, there were 1500 boats at Bahrein, and the annual return from the whole fishery was £400,000, the same as previously reported by Wellsted. In 1879, the value of the output was estimated at £600,000 by the British Resident, Colonel Ross, and at £800,000 by Captain L. E. Durand, of the British Protectorate of the Persian Gulf. Owing to the increased market value, the average output in the last five years has amounted to approximately four million dollars annually. This refers to the local value only, which is greatly increased by the time the pearls leave the markets in Bombay and Bagdad.
The Persian Gulf is nearly 600 miles long, with an average width of somewhat more than 100 miles. The Strait of Ormus—thirty to sixty miles wide—connects it with the Gulf of Oman, which opens directly into the Arabian Sea. The depth of water rarely exceeds thirty fathoms. Oyster reefs are well distributed throughout the gulf, and are in greatest abundance on the Arab side between the 24th and 27th degrees of north latitude and the 50th and 54th degrees of east longitude, at a distance of from a few hundred yards to sixty miles from the shore, and especially in the vicinity of the Bahrein Islands. The oysters are scattered over level areas of coral rock and sand, with depths ranging from two to eighteen fathoms.[[100]] The divers rarely descend in deeper water than twelve fathoms, notwithstanding that valuable pearls are apparently obtainable at greater depths.
Although the British Protectorate extends over the Persian Gulf, insuring the peaceful prosecution of the fisheries and the settlement of intertribal contentions by the government resident, the fisheries are under the regulations of the maritime Arab sheiks. The restrictions imposed by these, however, are principally with a view to collecting a revenue from each boat employed. The total amount realized thereby is unknown, but there is good reason for supposing that it is considerable.
AGHA MOHAMMED (1666–1725)
Founder of the present Persian dynasty
From a Persian manuscript in the library of Robert Hoe, Esq.
SHAH SULAIMAN (1647–1694)
From a Persian manuscript in the library of Robert Hoe, Esq.
The fisheries are carried on during the greater part of every year, presenting a strong contrast to the Ceylon fishery, which is prosecuted usually less than forty days, and in only about one year in three on an average. This is especially remarkable when it is considered that no particular care is taken of the Persian reefs and, except for certain tribal restrictions, the fishermen may work whenever and wherever they choose. Owing to the extended area over which the fishing is prosecuted and the existence of undisturbed breeding-oysters in the deeper waters, the reefs are not readily exhausted, notwithstanding the tens of millions of mollusks annually removed therefrom.
The fisheries are at their height from June to September, when nearly every person on the coast is interested in some capacity, if not in fishing, at least in furnishing supplies, cleaning shells, buying pearls, etc. In April and May the water on the deep banks is so cold that the fishermen confine their efforts to the more shallow areas. During the winter months, the cold weather and the northwesterly gales interfere with the work, except such as is prosecuted in the smaller bays and inlets.
The pearling operations are financed mostly by Indian bunnias, or traders, principally from Bombay, who furnish capital for equipment, supplies of food, etc., and who purchase the pearls in gross lots. These men bear very hard on the fishermen, furnishing the supplies and buying the pearls almost at their own prices; and the poor divers who explore the depths and secure the pearls derive from their exertions little more than the crudest necessaries of life, and are usually in debt to the traders.
The actual fishing operations are carried on mainly by the maritime tribes of Hasa and Oman, including those on the Pirate Coast. The inhabitants of the Bahrein Islands and the adjacent shores have been devoted to pearling from time immemorial; but the Wahabis of the Pirate Coast—the Ichthyophagi of Ptolemy’s time—have more recently, under the persuasive influence of British gunboats and magazine-rifles, substituted pearling for their two-century inherited life of fanatical piracy. Referring to these people in his quaint sketches of Persia eighty years ago, Sir John Malcolm wrote: “Their occupation is piracy, and their delight murder, and to make it worse they give you the most pious reasons for every villainy they commit. They abide by the letter of the sacred volume, rejecting all commentaries and traditions. If you are their captive and offer all to save your life, they say, “No! It is written in the Koran that it is not lawful to plunder the living; but we are not prohibited from stripping the dead. So saying they knock you on the head.”[[101]] Most of the Wahabi pearlers congregate in the mat-hut settlements of Dobai, Abu Thubi, and Ras-el-Kheima, located at the mouths of creeks which form fairly good harbors for the small boats. The Batina coast also furnishes some pearl fishermen, these coming principally from Fujaira, Shenas, Sohar, Suaik, and Sib.
The headquarters for the pearling fleet are at Bahrein Island, the largest of the insular group bearing the same name, the islets of Moharrek, Sitrah, and Nissan completing the group. This is the early home of Chaldean civilization, and one of the traditional sources of the Phenicians, and whence came that fish-god who—according to the Babylonian myth—bore the ark over the deluge. This island, the center of the greatest pearl fishery in the world, is half way down on the southern side of the Persian Gulf, and twenty miles from the mainland of “Araby the blest.” It is about twenty-eight miles in length, and ten in width at the widest part. The population approximates 60,000, all Moslems, except about 100 Banyan traders from Sindh, India. The northern half of the island is described as of great beauty, being a garden of pomegranate, lemon, citron, and quince-trees, and especially the magnificent date-palms, with numerous springs furnishing an abundance of excellent fresh water. The principal settlement, Manama, with about 10,000 inhabitants, is poorly built, the houses consisting mostly of huts of mats and palm leaves; yet it presents a better appearance than any other settlement along this coast.
The one great industry, and the center of all interest throughout this region, is the pearl fishery. The present conditions are precisely as Palgrave wrote in 1863: “It is from the sea, not from the land, that the natives subsist; and it is also mainly on the sea that they dwell, passing amid its waters the one half of the year in search of pearls, the other half in fishery or trade. Hence their real homes are the countless boats which stud the placid pool, or stand drawn up in long black lines on the shore, while little care is taken to ornament their land houses, the abodes of their wives and children at most, and the unsightly strong boxes of their treasures. ‘We are all, from the highest to the lowest, slaves of one master—Pearl,’ said Mohammed bin Thanee to me one evening; nor was the expression out of place. All thought, all conversation, all employment, turns on that one subject; everything else is merely by-game, and below even secondary consideration.”[[102]]
ARAB PEARL-DIVERS AT WORK IN THE PERSIAN GULF
According to recent returns, the Persian Gulf fisheries employ about 3500 boats,[[103]] large and small, of which 1200 of the best are owned at Bahrein, 700 on the coast of El Hassa from El Katar to Kuweit, and the remaining 1600 are from various parts of the gulf, and especially from the Pirate Coast east of El Katar. They measure from one to fifty tons. The smaller ones, with three to fifteen men each, work near the shores; the larger, carrying fifteen to thirty men, fish over the whole gulf, remaining out for weeks at a time. These craft are very picturesque with their artistic rigs and spoon-shaped sails, and when the fishery is at its height the scene is one of rare interest. The boats from Bahrein are of excellent construction made by native workmen using local materials, with home-woven sailcloth and rigging of twisted date-fiber. Each of the larger ones usually evidences a lingering trace of Semitic influence in its kubait, or figurehead, covered with skin of the sheep or goat sacrificed in the launching ceremonies.[[104]] The boats from El Hassa and the Pirate Coast are usually smaller and less substantial than those from Bahrein, the fishermen from the latter place far surpassing those of the mainland in civilization and industrial wealth.
The fleet is manned by approximately 35,000 fishermen. In addition to the nakhoda, or captain, who is often the owner of the boat, the crew consists of ghoas or divers, who are mainly Arabs and Sedees, and sebs, or rope-tenders, who are usually Bedouins or Persians and attend the divers and perform other duties. Many Hindus from India, and flat-nosed, sable-hued Negroes from the east coast of Africa find employment here. On each of the larger boats is a general utility man, known as el musully, literally the “prayer-man,” who, in addition to various other duties, relieves those sebs who stop to pray.
Among the fishermen are all types and classes to be met with in this part of the world, with the usual contingent of the lame, the halt, and the blind. There are a number of fishermen who have been maimed and mutilated by shark bites. A surprisingly large number of men who have become totally blind engage in diving, and they usually do fairly well where the oysters are abundant on the reefs. And one or two unfortunate divers are reported who continue the work even though handicapped by the loss both of a leg and of eyesight, this interfering less with their diving than with their movements on land.
The fishery in this region owes absolutely nothing to modern civilization in the method of securing the pearls from the depth of the sea; it is carried on to-day practically as it was six hundred years ago, and probably has been without important variation for two thousand years. Aside from a loin-cloth, the diver is devoid of clothing except that rarely, early in the season when polypi abound, he is enveloped in a cotton overall as a protection. Over each finger and thumb he wears a shield or stall (khubaat, or finger-hat), about two inches long, made of flexible leather, to protect the fingers from the sharp shells and coral-growths. As each fisherman usually wears out at least two sets of these shields each season, it will be seen that a very large quantity of them is required to supply the entire fleet.
The divers use stones on which they descend feet foremost. Although this is less spectacular than the method of diving practised by the natives of the South Sea islands, it enables the fisherman to reach the bottom more speedily and with far less effort. The diving-stones range in weight from thirty to fifty pounds each, depending largely on the depth of water and the weight of the fisherman. They are somewhat oval in shape, and have one end perforated to admit a rope. Immediately above the attachment is formed a loop, resembling a stirrup, to receive the diver’s foot. When prepared for the day’s work, each stone is suspended by a stout rope over outriggers projecting from the side of the boat, and by a slip-knot is temporarily held four and a half or five feet below the surface of the water. A very stout diver may have a stone affixed to his waist to overcome his greater buoyancy. Usually two divers use one stone together and descend alternately. Each one has an attendant in the boat who assists him in ascending, and looks after the ropes, baskets of shells, etc.
In preparing for descent, the fisherman takes hold of the rope from which the diving stone is suspended, puts one foot in the loop just above the stone and places the other foot in the rim of a net basket, eighteen inches wide, made of coir rope. When ready, he signals his attendant, inhales several good breaths, closes his nostrils with a fitaam or nostril-clasp of flexible horn attached to a cord around his neck, raises his body somewhat above the surface to give force to the descent, releases the slip-knot retaining the stone, and sinks rapidly to the bottom. Immediately disengaging his foot from the stone, he throws himself in a stooping position on the ground and collects as many oysters as possible during the fifty seconds or more in which he is able to remain under water. When near his limit of endurance, he hastily gives a signal jerk to the rope attached to the basket, and the watchful attendant hauls him up as speedily as possible, the diver frequently quickening the ascent by hand over hand movement up the rope. When near the surface, he lets go of the rope and with his arms close to his body pops above the surface puffing and blowing. The contents of the net bag are emptied into a large basket by the attendant, and the dead shells and other refuse are separated from the live oysters and thrown back into the sea, the diver having worked too rapidly at the bottom to discriminate closely as to what he gathered.
In the meantime, the stone has been drawn up and suspended by the slip-knot in its customary position and the diving partner is resting at the surface preparatory to descending. Thus, diving alternately at intervals of five or six minutes, each fisherman descends thirty or forty times in an ordinary day’s work. The number of oysters gathered at each descent depends on such conditions as their abundance, the depth and clearness of the water, etc. It ranges from none to fifty or more, but ordinarily ten or twelve is a good average. As the men commonly work on shares, the shells brought up by each diver or by each pair of divers are kept separate.
The best type of Arab divers are very careful of themselves, drying the body thoroughly with towels on coming out of the water, taking intervals of rest during the day’s work; and even while in the water between dives they may enjoy the luxury of a cheroot or pipe, or possibly a cigarette may pass from mouth to mouth of several men.
When pursuing their work, the divers are abstemious. After devotions at sunrise and a light breakfast of perhaps dates or rice and coffee, they begin fishing. About noon they knock off for coffee, prayers, and an hour’s siesta, and then resume work for several hours. When the day’s work is over and they have faced Meccaward with the customary prayers, they rest and eat a substantial meal, commonly of dates and fish roasted over a charcoal fire.
In equal depths the Arab fishermen remain under water longer than those of India who resort to the Ceylon fishery, but this is partly counterbalanced by the latter descending somewhat more frequently. When preparing for a lengthy dive, the fisherman imbibes large quantities of air, opening his mouth and inhaling large volumes.
The length of time a diver remains submerged in the average depth of seven or eight fathoms rarely exceeds sixty seconds, although some may remain seventy, eighty, and even ninety seconds on special occasion. A fully substantiated instance is reported from Manaar of an Arab diver having remained 109 seconds in seven fathoms of water. This occurred April 13, 1887, and was witnessed and reported[[105]] by Captain James Donnan, the inspector of the fishery. Wellsted reports[[106]] a diving contest in the Persian Gulf in which only one man, of the hundreds who competed, remained down 110 seconds; the depth, however, is not noted.
There are numerous reports of much longer stays than these; indeed, a study of the published evidence bearing upon the subject furnishes surprising results. Ribeiro wrote, in 1685, that a diver could remain below while two credos were repeated: “Il s’y tient l’espace de deux credo.”[[107]] In his interesting account of the Ceylon fishery, Percival stated that the usual length of time for divers to remain under water “does not much exceed two minutes, yet there are instances known of divers who could remain four or even five minutes, which was the case with a Caffre boy the last year I visited the fishery. The longest instance ever known was of a diver who came from Anjango in 1797, and who absolutely remained under water full six minutes.”[[108]] Le Beck says, that in 1797, he saw a diver from Karikal remain down for the space of seven minutes.[[109]] The merchant traveler, Jean Chardin, reported in 1711 that the divers remain up to seven and a half minutes under water: “Les plongeurs qui pêchent les perles sont quelquefois jusqu’à demi-quart-d’heure sous l’eau.”[[110]]
In 1667, the Royal Society of London addressed an inquiry on this subject to Sir Philiberto Vernatti, the British Resident at Batavia in the East Indies. Vernatti’s reply gave certain details regarding the Ceylon fishery, but did not touch upon the length of diving because, as he stated, he could not “meet with any one that can satisfy me, and being unsatisfied myself, I cannot nor will obtrude anything upon you which may hereafter prove fabulous; but shall still serve you with truth.”[[111]] Two years later, and presumably after investigation, Vernatti reported: “The greatest length of time that pearl-divers in these parts can continue under water is about a quarter of an hour; and that by no other means than custom; for pearl-diving lasts not above six weeks, and the divers stay a great while longer at the end of the season than at the beginning.”[[112]]
Photograph, Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.
HIS IMPERIAL MAJESTY, MOHAMMED ALI, SHAH OF PERSIA
Wearing the Kajar crown
The anatomist Diemerbroeck relates[[113]] the case of a pearl diver who, under his own observation, remained half an hour at a time under water while pursuing his work; and this was seriously adopted without comment by John Mason Goode in his “Study of Medicine.”[[114]] Ibn Batuta, “the Doctor of Tangier,” wrote about 1336 that “some remain down an hour, others two hours, others less.”[[115]] A still earlier writer, Jouchanan ibn Masouiah,[[116]] in his book on stones, states that “the diver, when he dives, places upon his nose a masfâsa lest water should enter into him, and breathes through the fissure, and remains under water for half an hour.” According to Sebaldus Rau[[117]] this masfâsa was an article resembling a hood or cap, which the diver placed over his nose. It was made of some impervious material and had a projection so long that it reached to the surface of the water. The same writer believes that this object was alluded to by Aristotle (“De part. animal.,” Lib. II, c. 16), where he likens the trunk of the elephant to the instrument used by certain divers for aiding their respiration, so that they could remain longer in the water and draw in air from above the surface.[[118]] And here we cease pursuit of further records, lest our faith in recorded testimony be too severely tested.[[119]]
A superficial inspection of the above evidence, from the one or two hours noted by Ibn Batuta about the year 1336, to the half an hour of Diemerbroeck in 1672, the quarter of an hour of Vernatti in 1669, the seven and one half minutes of Chardin in 1711, the six minutes of Percival in 1803, to the 110 seconds of the present time, seems to indicate very clearly a gradual but somewhat remarkable decrease in the ability of the Asiatic divers, and that the pearl fishermen of the present day are very different creatures from their ancestors. And especially is this so when it is considered that the above records are not isolated reports selected for the particular purpose of showing a decrease in the length of diving; on the contrary they are authoritative and representative publications of their respective periods. We do not recall having seen in any report issued previous to 1675, an intimation that the limit of time was less than ten minutes.
However, a careful consideration of the subject leads to the belief that there has been no serious decrease in the length of time that the Arab and Indian divers remain under water, and that either the writers were misinformed or that the individual cases reported were extremely exceptional. Ibn Batuta’s instance of one to two hours could easily be caused by a mistake in copying Arabic manuscript, or in the translation. The case related by Diemerbroeck in which a pearl diver remained submerged half an hour, is more perplexing, especially as the physician reports that this was done under his own observation. The numerous reports of five or six minutes may have been based on a very exceptional case.
These statements are viewed as highly incredible by men who have spent scores of years at the fisheries. A man may remain submerged for several minutes, but the conditions are vastly different from the activities of pearl-gathering at a depth of ten fathoms, where the pressure of the water is nearly thirty pounds to the square inch, and the slightest exercise is fatiguing. Unless the time is taken by a watch, it is easy to overestimate the stay; the seconds pass very slowly when one is waiting momentarily for the appearance of the diver’s head above the water, and certainly to the nearly exhausted fisherman with straining chest and palpitating heart, the last few seconds must seem extremely long indeed. An instance is noted in which an Arab diver remained submerged seventy-one seconds, and on his reappearance, naïvely inquired if he had not been down ten minutes. It seems doubtful whether the 110 seconds herein noted has been greatly exceeded, in recent years at least, by Arab or Indian divers, who do not appear to equal the semi-amphibious natives of the South Sea islands in their exploits.
One of the most curious features of the pearling industry is the manner in which the fishermen secure supplies of drinking water. In the vicinity of Bahrein, numerous fresh-water springs exist at the bottom of the gulf in depths of two or three fathoms, and the fishermen dive into the depth of the salt water down to where the fresh water is springing forth and there fill a skin or other suitable receptacle which they bring to the surface. By running a pipe down near the bottom in the vicinity of one of these springs, an abundance of fresh water may be pumped into the boat.
Three species—or at least three varieties—of pearl-bearing oysters are obtained in the Persian Gulf. These are known locally as mahar, sudaifee, and zinni. Of these, the mahar or Lingah oyster, which corresponds to the Ceylon pearl-oyster, yields the greatest quantity of pearls, and those of the finest quality. It measures three or three and a half inches in diameter, and is found in deeper water than the others. The sudaifee and the zinni, which are larger, yield pearls in much smaller quantities than the mahar.
On large boats, which remain out for two or three weeks at a time, the oysters are left on deck overnight, and the following morning they are opened by means of a curved knife (miflaket), four or five inches in length. The smaller boats working near shore convey the catch to the land for the opening and searching for pearls.
The Persian Gulf pearls are commonly not so white as those from Ceylon, but they are found of larger size, and it is believed in Asia that they retain their luster for a greater length of time. Many of the Persian Gulf pearls, especially those from sudaifee and zinni shells, have a distinctly yellow color. Tavernier made a curious explanation of this. He stated:
As for the pearls tending to yellow, the color is due to the fact that the fishermen sell the oysters in heaps, and the merchants awaiting sometimes up to 14 or 15 days till the shells open of themselves, in order to extract the pearls, some of these oysters lose their water during this time, decay, and become putrid, and the pearls become yellow by contact. This is so true that in all oysters which have retained their water, the pearls are always white. They are allowed to open of themselves, because if they are opened by force, as we open our oysters in the shell, the pearls may be damaged and broken. The oysters of the Manar Strait open of themselves, 5 or 6 days sooner than those of the Gulf of Persia, because the heat is much greater at Manar, which is at the tenth degree of North latitude, while the island of Bahrein is at about the twenty-seventh. And consequently among the pearls which come from Manar there are few yellow ones found.[[120]]
Tavernier was more familiar with the pearls themselves than with the methods of the fishery. The yellow color is not due to contact with the putrefactive flesh, and is independent of the manner of opening. In fact, if putrefaction caused the yellow color, this shade would be far more prevalent in the Manaar or Ceylon pearls than in those from Bahrein, for practically all of the Ceylon oysters are permitted to putrefy, whereas only a portion of those in the Persian Gulf are opened in this manner. Furthermore, notwithstanding that it is nearer the equator, the heat at Manaar during the pearling season is not to be compared with that at Bahrein when the season is at its height, for the Persian Gulf during July and August is notorious as one of the hottest places on the globe.
While the great bulk of the pearls are either white or yellowish, these fisheries yield a few pink, bluish, gray, and occasionally even black pearls. These unusual colors are not especially prized. A curious and remarkably detailed story has gone the rounds in which the qualities of Persian and Ceylon pearls are compared, to the disparagement of the latter, and during the last hundred years few accounts have been published of this fishery without recording it. We notice it first in Morier’s “Journey through Persia in 1808 and 1809,”[[121]] but possibly it antedated that report. The statement is that the pearls of Ceylon peel off, while those of Persia are as “firm as the rock on which they grow”; and though they lose in color and luster one per cent. annually for fifty years, they still lose less than those of Ceylon, and at the expiration of the fifty years they cease to diminish in appearance.
The pearl output in the Persian Gulf at the present time appears from the official returns to exceed four million dollars annually at local valuation. The exports in 1903 were reported at £827,447, and in 1904, £1,077,241. It is generally understood that all of the pearls are not entered in the official figures, and the valuations in the markets of Asia and Europe are greatly in excess of these amounts. The profits of the fishery are divided among a great number of persons. A large percentage goes to the shrewd bunnias from India, who finance the fishery operations, and who, by all sorts of tricks connected with advances of supplies, valuation of the catch, etc., manage to make a very good thing out of the business. It is nothing unusual for the valuation of a lot of pearls to double and even treble after leaving the hands of the fishermen.
While many of the gulf pearls—and especially of the small seed-pearls—go to Bagdad, the great bulk of them are sold to representatives of Hindu and Arab merchants of Bombay for shipment to that city, which to the Bahrein fisherman is the heart of the outside world. Few of the pearls go directly into Arabia or Persia, as the certain sale in the larger Bombay market is preferable to a sometimes higher but less regular price in other markets. Indeed, pearls may usually be purchased at a less cost in India than a stranger would be obliged to pay at Bahrein. The Bombay merchants “sow the earth with Orient pearl,” dealing direct with London, Paris and Berlin, and with the oriental jewelers. Most of the yellow pearls find oriental purchasers, with whose dark complexions they harmonize better than the silvery white ones. They are also more popular because of a belief existing throughout the East that they are less likely to lose their luster with the lapse of years.
The shell of the pearl-oysters is not used locally, but large quantities are exported to Europe for manufacture. Although it is the smallest and cheapest produced in the gulf, yet, owing to the enormous quantity taken for their pearls, the shell of the mahar (Margaritifera vulgaris) constitutes the bulk of the exports. Formerly most of the shipments were made from the harbor of Lingah, hence it is known in the markets of Europe as “Lingah shell.” But in the last three or four years, much of it has been transported to Europe via Bander Abbas and Bushire. A German firm at Bahrein is extensively employed in exporting this shell, and several Indian merchants are also engaged in the trade. The total exports in 1906 amounted to 3262 tons, valued at $26,408 according to the port returns, but worth about $135,000 in Europe. Very large quantities are received in London, and over 2500 tons have been offered at auction in a single year. This shell is very small, averaging about three inches in diameter and about one and a half ounces in weight. It is the cheapest of all mother-of-pearl. The best quality sells in London for ten to twenty shillings per hundredweight, but the ordinary grade is worth usually less than nine shillings, and sometimes as low as three shillings per hundredweight. America formerly imported it, but few lots have been received since the exploitation of the Mississippi shell about fifteen years ago.
The shell of the larger species of pearl-oysters in the Persian Gulf is worth considerably more than the “Lingah shell,” selling in Europe for £12 to £60 per ton, yet manufacturers consider it as furnishing only poor qualities of mother-of-pearl. Several hundred tons are exported annually. It measures six or seven inches in diameter and is used principally in making cheap grades of buttons.