278 INTRODUCTION TO CONCHOLOGY. 



Tliey were preferred to those of South America, and were 

 generally monopolized bj the great, but still a vast demand 

 existed for the latter, while the exportation of the former 

 scarcely experienced the sHghtest diminution; and hence in 

 Italy, as well as at Grenada, the island of Cubaqua became 

 the object of numerous commercial speculations: — that 

 especially of Lampagnano, an unfortunate Castilian, who, 

 having obtained permission from Charles Y. to fish for 

 pearls along the coast of Cumana, was proceeding to exert 

 his prerogative, when the colonists sent him back with this 

 bold answer : — " The Emperor, too liberal of what is not 

 his own, has no right to dispose of the oysters which live at 

 the bottom of the sea/'' The ill-fated adventurer, finding 

 himself unable to repay the merchants of Seville who had 

 advanced money for his voyage, remained five years at 

 Cubaqua, where he at length died insane. 



The pearl-fishery of Cubaqua diminished rapidly towards 

 the end of the sixteenth, and, according to the testimony of 

 Laet, it ceased entirely about the end of the seventeenth 

 century. Two powerfully operating causes combined in 

 producing this effect. A Venetian discovered the art of 

 imitating pearls, so as to deceive the most accurate ob- 

 servers ; and the use of cut diamonds, introduced by Lewis 



