2 5 2 THE CORAL LANDS OF THE PACIFIC. 



contains, and are irrevocably lost. As is well-known, these 

 are much more valuable than those pearls lodged in the usual 

 way in the muscle. 



In some of the lagoon islands, the natives used to hoard 

 pearls for superstitious purposes, and in many of their villages 

 there was a house built and set apart for the keeping of their 

 gods, or for what answered the purpose of such. In this house 

 it was customary to make offerings of the largest of everything 

 they found, as well as whatsoever was new and strange to 

 them. Thus the largest cocoa-nut, crab-fish of any kind, shell 

 or pearl, were made sacred, and hung up in this building. 

 Small articles, such as little pearls, teeth of dead men, teeth 

 und claws of animals, were enclosed in bags and carefully put 

 away. These houses were in fact a sort of museum, where 

 everything rare and curious had been preserved from genera- 

 tion to generation ; but when the beachcombers came to settle 

 among them, and offered gin and gunpowder for pearls, their 

 faith in these interesting collections began to slacken, and they 

 sold many of their finest pearls for a mere song. This is how 

 it is that large-sized pearls are not so common in the Pacific as 

 they used to be some twenty or thirty years back. 



Many of the pearl robbers, for such they were, lost their 

 lives in this trade, others became almost as notorious as ' Bully 

 Hayes.' One man, a certain Captain Rugg, made a practice of 

 cruising around the Tuamotus, and wheresoever he found a 

 quantity of shell ready for shipment, he used to seize it by 

 armed force. 



This pirate met his just reward ; having had the assurance 

 to fire into the Dolphin, an American vessel of war, to which 

 he had declined to render an account of himself, he was chased 

 by the Porpoise, one of the same squadron, into the North 

 Pacific, and there sunk with all his crew. 



