8 PEARLS [CH. 



Romans and no maiden or married woman was 

 allowed to wear the gem ; later they were restricted 

 to one pearl chaplet. There were many laws and 

 regulations as to their use by knights, the most 

 stringent being in Venice. 



It was not only by the inhabitants of the Old 

 AVorld that pearls were discovered, for Columbus 

 found that pearl fishing was carried on in the Gulf 

 of Mexico, and quantities of pearls have been found 

 in the Indian mounds, either loose or strung for neck- 

 laces and wristlets. Some were mounted in quaint 

 and primitive fashion, all showing that in the days 

 of SAvarming game and roving tribes of untrannnelled 

 savages, their queens wore pearls even as they are 

 now worn by their fair successors. The old Spanish 

 traders obtained pearls, by fair means and foul, from 

 the ancient treasures of the Aztec kings. America 

 was even known in Cadiz as the "Land of Pearls," 

 and the gem is still fished in the Caribbean Sea, 

 along the West Coast of Central America, and on 

 the Pearl Islands in the Bay of Panama. 



It is surprising how little was known in the very 

 ancient days about the pearl-producing shellfish, when 

 the pearl itself was known so well. The gems were 

 thought by the Incas to be the " eggs " of the animal. 

 In the time of Alexander, a writer of Mytilene in the 

 island of Lesbos, says "In the Indian sea, ofi" the 

 coasts of Armenia, Persia, Susiana and Babylonia, 



