58 AMERICAN PEARL-FISHERY. 



their fishing is not extraordinary. The poor people, in the 

 warm months before harvest is ripe, whilst the rivers are low 

 and clear, go into the water : some with their toes, some with 

 wooden tongs, and some by putting a sharpened stick into 

 the opening of the shell, take them up. And although by 

 common estimate not above one shell in a hundred may have 

 a pearl, and of those pearls not above one in a hundred be 

 tolerably clear, yet a vast number of fair merchantable pearls, 

 and too good for the apothecary, are offered to sale by these 

 people every summer assize." — " The shells that have the 

 best pearls are wrinkled, twisted, or bunched, and not smooth 

 and equal as those that have none." " And the crafty fel- 

 lows will guess so well by the shell, that though you watch 

 them never so carefully, they will open such shells under the 

 water, and put the pearls in their mouths, or otherwise con- 

 ceal them. That same person told me, that when they have 

 been taking up shells, I believed by such signs as I have men- 

 tioned, that they were sure of good purchase, and refused 

 good sums for their shares, that yet they found no pearl at 

 all in many of them. Upon discourse with an old man that 

 had been longest at this trade, he advised me to seek not only 

 when the waters were low, but in a dusky gloomy day also, 

 lest, said he, the fish see you, for then he will shed his pearl 

 in the sand : of which I believed no more than that some 

 mussels had voided their pearls, and such are often found 

 in the sands." * 



After the discovery of America, the traffic in pearls passed, 

 in a great measure, from the east to the shores of the western 

 world. The first Spaniards who landed in terra firma found 

 the savages decked with pearl necklaces and bracelets ; and 

 among the civilised people of Mexico and Peru they saw 

 pearls of a beautiful form as eagerly sought after as in 

 Europe. The hint was taken ; the stations of the oysters 

 were sought out ; and cities rose into splendour and affluence 

 in their vicinity, all supported by the profits on these sea- 

 born gems. The first city which owed its rise to this cause 

 was New Cadiz, in the little island of Cubagua ; and the 

 writers of that period discourse eloquently of the riches of 

 the first planters, and the luxury they displayed ; but now 



* Phil. Trans, an. 1693, xvii. 660—662. It is a singular fact that Hum- 

 boldt never heard of pearls being found in the fresh-water shells of South 

 America, though several species of the genus Unio abound in the rivers of 

 Peru. — Pers. Nar. ii. 282. They are to be found in those of North America. 

 Gould's Invert. Massach. 115. In the Lach. Lapponica of Linnaeus, ii. 

 104 — 107, the reader will find an account of a pearl-fishery in Lapland simi- 

 lar to our Scottish one. 



