We gather from scripture, the only history of these early times to be depended upon, that precious stones were imported from the southern coast of Africa. This trade, however great it might be, is mentioned but slightly, and as it were accidentally, being absorbed in the very great articles of commerce then spoken of. In the same manner we read of the beauty and excellence of pearls cursorily introduced, often by allusions and comparisons throughout the sacred books, but always in a manner which sufficiently shews the great intrinsic estimation in which they were held.
Pearls are found in all the four quarters of the world, but in no degree of excellence, excepting in the east of Africa and in Asia. They are in every part of the Red Sea, they are in the Indian Ocean, in that low part of the coast of Arabia Felix called the Baherein, which joins to the Gulf of Persia. There are banks where they are found about Gombron to the eastward of that Gulf, or in the flat coast there; and in the seas which wash the island of Ceylon, many have been found of the greatest beauty and price; and for number, they are nowhere so plentiful as in the Baherein, between the coast of Arabia Felix and the island of Ormus, whence they are transported to Aleppo, then sent to Leghorn, and circulated through Europe, and this above all others is the market for seed pearls.
The oyster is currently reported to be the species of fish where this precious guest is lodged, and many a weary search and inquiry I have made after these oysters in the Red Sea, despairing always to see a pearl, till we had first found an oyster. The fact, however, turned out to be, that there are no such fish as oysters in the Arabian Gulf, and though our success in finding pearls was small, yet we got from the natives of the coast a sufficient number as well as information, to put it beyond doubt to what fish this beautiful and extraordinary production belonged.
Pearls are produced only in shells that are bivalves, that is, which have an upper and lower shell closing by a hinge in a manner little differing from the oyster. It is commonly said by the fishermen, that all bivalves in the Red Sea have pearls of some kind in them. This is a very rude and large view of the matter, for though it is true that some excrescences, or secretions, of the nature of pearls, may be found in the bisser, and the large bivalves with which this sea abounds, yet it is well known to all conversant in these matters, that many of the pearl shell itself (I shall not call it an oyster, for it is not one) are found without any pearl or likeness of pearl in them; being, I suppose, not yet arrived to that age when the extravasation of that juice which forms the pearl happens.
There are three shell fish in the Red Sea which regularly are sought after as containing pearls. The first is a mussel, and this is of the rarest kind, whether they are now failed in number, or whether they were at any former time frequent, is now unknown. They are chiefly found in the north end of the Gulf, and on the Egyptian side. The only part I have ever seen them was about Cosseir, and to the northward of it, where I must observe there was an ancient port, called Myos Hormos, which commentators have called the Port of the Mouse, when they should have translated it, the Harbour of the Mussel. This fish contains often pearls of great beauty for lustre and shape, but seldom of a white or clear water. Pliny relates this to be the case in the Italian seas, and also in the Thracian Bosphorus, where he observes they are more frequent.
The second sort of shell which generally contains the pearl is called Pinna. It is broad and semicircular at the top, and decreases till it turns sharp at the lower end, where is the hinge. It is rough and figured on the outside, of a beautiful red colour, exceedingly fragil, and sometimes three feet long. In the inside it is cloathed with a most beautiful lining called Nacre, or mother-of-pearl, white, tinged with an elegant blush of red. Of this most delicate complexion is the pearl found in this fish, so that it seems to confirm the sentiments of M. Reamur on the formation of pearls, that they are formed of that glutinous fluid which is the first origin of the shell, that it forms the pearl of the same colour and water that is communicated to it from that part of the shell with which it is more immediately in contact, and which is generally observed in the pinna to be higher in colour as it approaches the broadest, which is the reddest end.
Upon the maturest consideration, I can have no doubt that the pearl found in this shell is the penim or peninim rather, for it is always spoken of in the plural, to which allusion has been often made in scripture. And this derived from its redness is the true reason of its name. On the contrary, the word pinna has been idly imagined to be derived from penna, a feather, as being broad and round at the top, and ending at a point, or like a quill below. The English translation of the scripture, erroneous and innacurate in many things more material, translates this peninim by rubies[95], without any foundation or authority, but because they are both red, as are bricks and tiles, and many other things of base and vile materials. The Greeks have translated it literally pina, or pinna, and the shell they call Pinnicus; and many places occur in Strabo, Elian, Ptolemy, and Theophrastus, which are mentioned famous for this species of pearl. I should imagine also, that by Solomon saying it is the most precious of all productions, he means, that this species of pearl was the most valued, or the best known in Judea. For though we learn from Pliny that the excellency of pearls was their whiteness, yet we know the pearls of a yellowish cast are those esteemed in India to this day, as the peninim, or reddish pearl was in Judea in the days of Solomon.
The third sort of pearl-bearing shell is what I suppose has been called the Oyster; for the two shells I have already spoken of surely bear no sort of likeness to that shell-fish, nor can this, though most approaching to it, be said any way to resemble it, as the reader will judge by a very accurate drawing given of it, now before him.
Bochart says these are called Darra, or Dora in Arabic, which seems to be the general word for all pearls in scripture, whereas the peninim is one in particular. In the Red Sea, where it holds the first rank among pearls, it is called Lule single, or[96]Lulu el Berber, i. e. the pearl of Berber, Barabra, or Beja, the country of the Shepherds, which we have already spoken of at large, extending from the northern tropic, southward, to the country of the Shangalla or Troglodytes. Androsthenes says, the ancient name of these pearls was Berberis, which he believes to be an Indian word, and so it is, understanding, as the ancients did, India to mean the country I have already mentioned between the tropics.
The character of this pearl is extreme whiteness, and even in this whiteness Pliny justly says there are shades or differences. To continue to use his words, the clearest of these are found in the Red Sea, but those in India have the colour of the flakes, or divisions of the lapis specularis. The most excellent are those like a solution of alum, limpid, milky like, and even with a certain almost imperceptible cast of a fiery colour. Theophrastus says, that these pearls are transparent, as indeed the foregoing description of Pliny would lead us to imagine; but it is not so, and if they were, it is apprehended they would lose all their beauty and value, and approach too much to glass.