Frank wished to know the different sizes of pearls and their values.
SIZES OF PEARLS.
"As to that," said the captain, "your question is not an easy one to answer. Some pearls are so small as to be hardly visible to the eye; and of course they are of no value when you cannot see them. They are only useful when large enough to be strung on a necklace, or otherwise set as jewellery. The largest pearls are apocryphal; by this I mean that no person of modern times has seen some that are famous in history, and there are doubts that they ever existed. It is said that the pearl which Cleopatra drank to the health of Mark Antony was worth $375,000 of our money; and, if so, it must have been of great size. Pearls have been reported to exist that were nearly two inches long by one and a quarter in diameter, and weighed fifty-five carats, or two hundred and twenty grains.
"The largest that we know of at the present time do not exceed thirty carats, or one hundred and twenty grains. There is one among the crown-jewels of Portugal weighing twenty-five carats; and there is said to be one of twenty-seven carats in the hands of a Russian merchant in Moscow. It is safe to say that there are not two dozen pearls known to exist now that weigh over twenty carats, or eighty grains.
"The value of a pearl is generally estimated like that of a diamond—by the multiplication of the square of its weight. A pearl of one carat is held to be worth about $16; and to get the value of a pearl of two carats we multiply two by two, and the product by $16, and we get $64. In the same way the value of a pearl of three carats would be $144, and so on for any weight we happen to have.
PEARL-FISHERY AT BAHREIN.