The shell whorl usually runs from left to right, sometimes it is found with the whorl reversed and these were so highly regarded by Hindus, Cingalese and Chinese that in old times they were sold for their weight in gold. Even now they bring a good price in the eastern markets. They are kept in the pagodas of China to hold the sacred oil: the priests of Ceylon administer medicine by them. In Dacca the chank is cut into armlets and anklets for Hindu women upon whose persons they are left after death. The delicate pink cameos carved from the Queen Conch have delighted feminine eyes of almost every race. The Pearly Nautilus decks many a dainty lady's table and is wrought into a thousand quaint conceits. The silky byssus of the Pinna has been woven into fabrics of such fineness as to be thought worthy of acceptance by Popes and princes.
Before Europe knew of their existence, the people of China and Japan, the Maoris of New Zealand, the Indians of our Pacific coast and the brown skinned natives of far-off islands of the Southern Seas, were delighting themselves with the magnificent coloring and iridescence of the Haliotis even as ancient Greece and Rome made ornaments from the "Venus Ear-shell," as they called it, brought from the ruder coasts and islands further west. In these later days the costly outer garments of proud dames are ornamented with buttons cut from the same resplendent shell. But of all the beautiful things old ocean pays as tribute to the adventurous spirit of man, the pearl-oyster and the gem found sometimes in it are most precious.
From unknown times when man discovered them until now, mother-of-pearl shells and their pearly treasures have held desire constant and the eyes of modern queens brighten when the opening of the gift casket reveals a string of these spheres of beauty just as eyes did in the far-off Indies thousands of years ago. When Europe was a land of barbarians and America an unknown country of savages, dusky fingers that held the life and destiny of millions, toyed lovingly with pearls, even as now the favored few who enter the sanctum sanctorum of fortune, pride themselves in the possession of them and find pleasure for cloyed desire, in every addition to their store.
In all ages, pearls have been the social insignia of rank among the highly civilized. No other gem was so abundantly used for adornment by the princes of the east. Above great diamonds from the mines of India or glowing rubies from Burmah, the ocean gem became peerless among the ancient nations of Asia and as their power began to wane and the tide of empire swept westward, there went with it the love of pearls. The rulers of Rome when she was Empress of the world sought pearls, so also have the rich and powerful of every nation as it rose to affluence, and now in this new western star of Empire the men who hold the vast wealth of these United States in their hands, when they place their consorts on the last plane of social eminence, buy pearls.
Before the machine-like system of modern industry had combined ownership and seized the vast natural reservoirs which hold the diamonds of Africa, and brought the output to a known average yield of so many carats to so many loads, and established the cost of mining, washing, shipping and marketing, separately or together, to the fraction of a penny, there was a fascination in the hunt for diamonds there, the charm of which drew thousands to the fields.
From the discovery of them as baubles in the hands of children and the Hottentots, or plastered in the mud walls of Boer farm-houses through the search for them along the Vaal River, to the time where findings led men to the kopjes, which capped the great chimneys of diamond bearing clay, where they staked and worked their individual claims, the ever present hope of finding a royal gem among the small stones which formed the every-day yield, gave edge to appetite and the spur to toil, and the stories of fortunes diverted from one man to another by the lapse of a few minutes at the beginning or expiration of a lease, or by the line separating the mining rights of one from another, read like fairy tales.
More exciting yet is the search for them when, as in Brazil, they lie scattered over the river beds where one man hunts in vain and another by chance stumbles upon a pocket full, or as in India, where one must dig for them blindly into detrital matter ten or twelve feet under a later covering of earth. Who has not felt the stir of it while reading of miners in Brazil using diamonds worth a king's ransom as counters in their games of chance, or of a naked Hindu, emaciated and diseased carrying about his person, wrapped in a bit of soiled cloth, a gem found by chance which the richest prince of India would covet. So also do the tales of rubies brought from Death's Valley of Burmah renew within us the glow which fired the heart of youth when we read of Aladdin and his lamp.
But none of these are so redolent of romance as the story of the pearl. Beneath the rolling of the sea, where the waves pace softly and restlessly like caged lions, or lift themselves roaring to answer the voice of the storm; where at times the water lies green and placid under burning skies; at times, lashed by tornado and monsoon, becoming a seething caldron of black perdition; where spice-laden vessels sail, and where in the old days, privateers and pirates lay in wait for prey, there, at the bottom of the sea, unruffled by storm or pirate, unmindful of sun and calm, myriads of delicate creatures toil ceaselessly to strew old ocean's bed with gems. The chaste spheres with which you toy, while counting up the cost of hanging them round some fair neck, at one time lay fathoms deep, the ocean rolling over them. Dusky fishermen, at risk of life, brought them up and turbanned merchants gave great sums of money to own them; ships carried them, and dealers in precious things handled, sorted, examined and matched them, ere they came to rest in festooned rows within the velvet covers your jeweller opens to you.
