52 ANCIENT PEARL-FISHERIES. 



concharum excrementis superbiunt, pulchrioresque se cre- 

 dunt : " and denouncing this perilous vanity, the wily priest 

 holds up to all praise and worthy imitation such pious ladies 

 as consecrate their pearls to adorn the images of the saints 

 and their altars ! " Q,uam vero sanius utuntur margaritis 

 praeclara? illas mulieres, a quibus in templis altaria, sacragque 

 imagines eisdem decorantur."* 



From the earliest times of which we have any record, the 

 orient pearl has been the object of commerce, and, from its 

 peculiar beauty and splendour, has held in all ages and with 

 all jjeople, civilized or barbarian, a place among the precious 

 gems only inferior to the diamond. The Phenicians brought 

 pearls from the east, which continues to this day to furnish 

 the most valuable and principal supply. The greatest plenty 

 of them, according to Pliny, were found on the coast of 

 Taprobane or Ceylon, and Stoidis, and about Perimula, a 

 promontory and city of India, "but the most perfect and 

 exquisite of all others be they that are gotten about Arabia, 

 within the Persian gulfe." This statement remains in gene- 

 ral applicable enough. In the Persian gulf, the isles of 

 Baharein, or Bahrein, retain their fame for their pearl- 

 fishery, the value of which, in the sixteenth century, was 

 estimated at a produce of 500,000 ducats. -f- The pearls are 

 said to be harder but less brilliant than those of Ceylon ; 

 while the fishery of Kharrek, in the same gulf, produces 

 them of a larger size, but deficient in whiteness and regu- 

 larity. We find beds of the pearl-oyster widely diffused in 

 the gulfs of the Indian ocean, and on the shores of its large 

 islands, at the Sooloo or Suluk islands, and on the shores of 

 Japan, Sumatra, China, Java, and Borneo ; and near Cape 

 Comorin, probably the Perimula of Pliny, there is a fishery, 

 now under the superintendance of the British, the net 

 revenue of which, in 1807, was 81,917 star -pagodas. All 

 these are, however, very inferior in value and extent to 

 the celebrated fishery on the western shores of Ceylon. 



* Rec. Mcnt. ct Ocul. 80. A matter-of-fact physician raves in the same 

 strain : — " Did our fair countrywomen consider at what an expense of 

 human life and human health those pearly decorations are procured with 

 which they encircle their necks and bosoms, they would cast them off, and 

 commit them to the ocean from whence they were dragged ! To encourage 

 that horrible fishery is to league themselves with sharks, and degrade human 

 nature beneath the level of the brute creation, for the animal only seeks his 

 prey to satisfy the cravings of his appetite ! " — J. Johnson's Medico-Chirurg. 

 Q. Journ. ii. No. 5. 



f " At Bahrein alone, the annual amount produced by the pearl-fishery 

 may be reckoned at from 200,000/. to 240,000/."— Dr. Baird in Chambers's 

 Miscellany, No. 167, p. 21. 



