CAP OF STATE, FROM LOOTING OF SUMMER PALACE, PEKIN, IN 1860
Now in South Kensington Museum
THE PEARL FISHERIES OF CHINA, JAPAN, SIBERIA, ETC.
Do churls
Know the worth of Orient pearls?
Give the gem which dims the moon
To the noblest or to none.
Emerson, Friendship.
It appears from ancient Chinese literature, noted in the first chapter of this book, that pearl fisheries have existed in the rivers of China for several thousand years. The Chinese also derived pearls from the sea, and especially from the coast of the province of Che-kiang. Little is known of the early fisheries, but the fragmentary literature contains so many allusions to pearls as to lead us to believe that they were of considerable extent and importance.
It is related that about 200 B.C., a pearl dealer at Shao-hing, an ancient city between Hang-chau and Ning-po, on the shore of Hang-chau Bay, furnished to the empress a pearl one inch in diameter, for which he received five hundred pieces of silver; and to an envious princess the same dealer sold a “four-inch pearl.” A hundred years later, the reigning emperor sent an agent to the coast to purchase “moon pearls,” the largest of which were two thirds of an inch in diameter.