98 CONCHOLOGIST’S COMPANION. 
The city of Nepehoa, situated on a lake of the 
same name in Chinese Tartary, produces Pearls in 
abundance, though of inferior quality. This fishery 
occasioned a dreadful war, between the Chinese and 
Muscovites, which was at length amicably concluded 
towards the end of the seventeenth century, by the 
intervention of two individuals, who benevolently 
suggested a division of the Lake between the con- 
tending parties, each of whom had laid claim to the 
whole. 
The Pearl fisheries of the Bornian islands were 
formerly much frequented, but are now of little con- 
sequence; such is also the case with those of the 
South Seas. 
Some historians have maintained that the abori- 
gines of South America were unacquainted with these 
valuable gems, but this opinion is incorrect. The 
Spaniards who first landed in Terra Firma, Mexico, 
and Peru, assert that the natives were adorned with 
necklaces and bracelets of the finest Pearls ; and this 
assertion, supported by the narratives of modern, 
as well as the details of early writers, receives addi- 
tional confirmation from the discovery at Basalt, of 
the statue of a Mexican priestess, whose head-dress 
resembling the Calantica on the head of Iris, is pro- 
fusely ornamented with brilliant gems of this kind. 
To which we may add the corroborating testimonies of 
