372 



HISTORY OF FISHES. 



carried on only in those countries where the 

 wretchedness of one part of mankind goes to 

 support the magnificence of the other. 



The chief fishery, as was said, is carried 

 on in the Persian Gulf, and the most valuable 

 pearls are brought from thence. The value 

 of these jewels increases not only in propor- 

 tion to their size, but also their figure and 

 colour ; for some pearls are white, others are 

 yellowish, others of a lead colour ; and some 

 affirm they have been found as black as jet. 

 What it is that gives these different tinctures 

 to pearls is not known : Tavernier ascribes it 

 to their lying two or three weeks upon the 

 shore after the oyster is taken : Reaumur 

 thinks it proceeds from the colour of that part 

 of the fish's body upon which the pearl lies. 

 It is most probable that this colour proceeds, 

 like the spots frequently found on the inter- 

 nal surface of the shell itself, from some acci- 

 dent while the pearl is growing. 



The best coloured pearls, and the roundest 

 are brought from the East : those of America 

 are neither so white nor so exactly oval. All 

 pearls, however, in time become yellow ; 

 they may be considered as an animal sub- 

 stance converted into a stony hardness, and, 

 like ivory, taking a tincture from the air. 

 They have been even found to decay when 

 in damp or vaulted places, and to moulder 

 into a substance scarcely harder than chalk. 

 When the daughters of Stilicon, who were 

 both betrothed, one after the other, to the 

 emperor Honorius, were buried, much of their 

 finery was also deposited with them in the 

 same tomb. In this manner they remained 

 buried for above eleven hundred years, till the 

 foundations of the church of St Peter were 



From the fishery of St Magueritta, one was sent to Philip 

 II. weighing 250 carats, and valued at 150,000 dollars. 

 From neglect and improper management, the Ameri- 

 can pearl fisheries now produce little or nothing, and all 

 that is procured is from the gulfs of Panama and Cali- 

 fornia. A fishery of no contemptible extent existed 

 about a century ago in the river Tay, but, either from 

 being exhausted, or from the market being better supplied 

 from other quarters, neither at this point nor on any 

 other part of the British shores does any establishment 

 of the kind now exist. 



Pearls are found on analysis to consist of calcareous 

 or chalky matter, disposed in thin coats or layers, an 

 arrangement which corroborates the opinion that they 

 are gradually deposited by the animal upon a small 

 nucleus of sand, or other foreign body, which, being 

 admitted along with the food, causes irritation, to pre- 

 vent which the animal covers them with a gelatinous 

 fluid, that grows hard by degrees. A grain of sand is 

 often found in the centre of the pearl, but many of the 

 largest want it altogether : and hence we are left in 

 doubt regarding the correctness of the theory. What- 

 ever be the cause of the formation of the pearl, there 

 seems little doubt that it is produced by an unnatural or 

 morbid action ; and it is not a little curious, upon the 

 whole, that a little functional derangement in an oyster 

 should generate a gem, which for ages has been an orna- 

 ment of crowns and courts. 



laying. Their tomb was then discovered, 

 and all their finery was found in tolerable 

 preservation except the pearls, which were 

 converted by time and damps into a chalky 

 powder. 



The wretched people that are destined to 

 fish for pearls, are either negroes or some of 

 the poorest of the natives of Persia. The 

 inhabitants of this country are divided into 

 tyrants and slaves. The divers are not only 

 subject to the dangers of the deep, to tem- 

 pests, to suffocation at the bottom, to being 

 devoured by sharks, but from their profession 

 universally labour under a spitting of blood, 

 occasioned by the pressure of air upon their 

 lungs in going down to the bottom. The 

 most robust and healthy young men are chosen 

 for this employment, but they seldom survive 

 it above five or six years. Their fibres be- 

 come rigid ; their eye-balls turn red ; and 

 they usually die consumptive. 



It is amazing how very long they are seen 

 to continue at the bottom. Some, as we are 

 assured, have been known to continue three 

 quarters of an hour under water without 

 breathing ; and to one unused to diving^ 

 ten minutes would suffocate the strongest. 1 

 Whether from some effort the blood bursts the 

 old passage which it had in the foetus, and 

 circulates without going through the lungs, 

 it is not easy to tell ; but certain it is that 

 some bodies have been dissected with this 

 canal of communication open, and these ex- 

 traordinary divers may be internally formed 

 in that manner. 



Be this as it may, no way of life seems so 

 laborious, so dangerous, or so painful. They 

 fish for pearls, or rather the oysters that con- 

 tain them, in boats twenty-eight feet long; 

 and of these there are sometimes three or four 

 hundred at a time, with each seven or eight 

 stones, which serve for anchors. There are 

 from five to eight divers belonging to each, 

 that dive one after another. They are quite 

 naked, except that they have a net hanging 

 down from the neck to put their oysters in, 

 and gloves on their hands to defend them 

 while they pick the oysters from the holes in 

 the rocks ; for in this manner alone can they 



1 From the previous Note, it will be seen, that the 

 period during which pearl-divers are said to remain 

 under water is here grossly exaggerated. Fifty seconds 

 is about the time that men in the bay of Naples, who 

 dive furfrutta dimare, or small shell-fish, and the Greek 

 islanders of the Archipelago, who dive for sponges, re- 

 main under water ; and these two classes are the most 

 famous divers in Europe, and likely, from their physical 

 construction, sober way of living, and constant practice, 

 to carry their art to its utmost natural limits. Ribeyro, 

 a Portuguese officer, who was nineteen years on the 

 island, says, that the Ceylon plunger could stay under 

 water for the space of time in which two credos might 

 be repeated, and the Catholic belief may be said over 

 twice in about fifty seconds. 



