Further west, on the Persian coast, the Arabian gulf and the Muscat shore, as well as in the Red sea, pearls are found.
In these latter countries the pearl fishing commences in July, for during this and the next month the sea is usually calm. When the boats have arrived over the bed, they anchor, the water being eight or nine fathoms deep. The divers carry their bag tied around their waists, and plug their nostrils with cotton, then closing their mouths, are sunk by a stone rapidly to the bottom. The pearls obtained from the fisheries on the Arabian coast reach a value of over a million and a half of dollars.
Pearl fishing is also carried on, on the coast of South America. Before the Spanish conquest of Mexico the fisheries were situated between Acapulco and the Gulf of Tehuantepec, but since that time other beds have been found near the islands of Cubagua, Margarita and Panama. The yield at first was so promising that flourishing cities grew up in the vicinity of these places, and during the reign of Charles V., pearls to the value of nearly a million of dollars were sent to Spain, but the present yield averages only about three hundred thousand dollars.
When the oysters are taken from the boats, they are piled up on grass mats on the shore, and left in the sun. The mollusks soon die, and begin to decompose. In about ten days they are sufficiently putrified to become soft. Then they are thrown into tanks of sea water, opened and washed. The pearls which adhere to the shells are taken off with pinchers; those that are in the body of the animal are secured by passing its substance through a sieve, after boiling the flesh to make it soft. The shells furnish the nacre, which is split off from the rough outside with a sharp instrument, or the outside is dissolved from the mother of pearl by an acid. Three kinds of mother of pearl are known in commerce, as silver face, bastard white and bastard black; the first is the most valuable. The pearls are the most important part of the product. Those which adhere to the shell are always more or less irregular in their shape, and are sold by weight. They are called baroques. Those found in the body of the animal are called virgin pearls, or paragons, and are round, oval or pyramid shaped. These are sold generally singly; the price varying according to size, lustre, clearness, etc. Months after the shells have been examined, poor natives are seen diligently turning over the putrifying mass which has been cast aside, eagerly searching for some pearl that has been overlooked; as in our cities the ashes, barrels and gutters are searched by the same wretched class for the refuse of luxury.
The pearls are polished by shaking them together in a bag with nacre powder. By this process they are smoothed and polished. Then they are assorted according to sizes by being passed through a series of copper sieves, placed over each other, and pierced with an increasing number of holes, growing smaller. Thus, sieve number twenty has twenty holes in it; fifty, fifty holes, and the last of the series of twelve, one thousand holes. The pearls retained between twenty and eighty are called mill, and are considered to be of the first order. Those between one hundred and eight hundred are vivadoe, and class second. Those which pass through all but the thousand are tool, or seed pearls, and are third. The seed pearls are sold by measure or weight. The larger ones are drilled, strung on a white or blue silk thread, and exposed for sale.
In the American fisheries the oysters are opened each separately with a knife, and the animal is pressed between the thumb and finger in the search for pearls. This process takes longer, and is not considered as certain to find them all as that followed in the East, but the nacre and the pearls thus taken from the live animal are fresher and more brilliant than from those oysters which have died and decayed. Other mollusks also furnish pearls, but not in a regular enough supply to justify their fishing. In fact pearls are often found in our common oysters.
SHARK FISHING.