AMERICAN PEARL-FISHERY. 59 



not a vestige of the city remains, and downs of shifting sand 

 cover the desolate island. The same fate soon overtook the 

 other cities ; for, from various causes, and particularly from 

 the never ceasing and indiscriminate destruction of the 

 Meleagrinse, the banks became exhausted, and towards the 

 end of the sixteenth century this traffic in pearls had dwin- 

 dled into insignificance. Of its value, when first established, 

 the following extract will give you some notion : " The 

 quint, which the king's officers drew from the produce of 

 pearls, amounted to 15,000 ducats; which, according to the 

 value of the metals in those times, and the extensiveness of 

 the contraband trade, might be considered as a very consider- 

 able sum. It appears that till 1530 the value of the pearls 

 sent to Europe amounted yearly, on an average, to more than 

 800,000 piastres. In order to judge of the importance of 

 this branch of commerce to Seville, Toledo, Antwerp, and 

 Genoa, we should recollect that at the same period the whole 

 of the mines of America did not furnish two millions of pias- 

 tres, and that the fleet of Ovando seemed to be of immense 

 wealth, because it contained nearly 2,600 marks of silver. 

 Pearls were so much the more sought after, as the luxury of 

 Asia had been introduced into Europe by two ways diametri- 

 cally opposite ; that of Constantinople, where the Paleologi 

 wore garments covered with strings of pearls ; and that of Gre- 

 nada, the residence of the Moorish kings, who displayed at 

 their court all the luxury of the east. The pearls of the East 

 Indies were preferred to those of the West ; but the number 

 of the latter which circulated in commerce was no less con- 

 siderable in the times which immediately followed the disco- 

 very of America. In Italy, as well as in Spain, the islet of 

 Cubagua, in the mouth of the Rio de la Hacha, became the 

 object of numberless mercantile speculations."* 



In the east the divers are hired labourers, bred up to their 

 business, which, though a hard one, is voluntary, and ap- 

 pears to be less prejudicial to health than is sometimes 

 asserted. It was far otherwise in the west, where, according 

 to an historian, who has been accused of rather palliating 

 than otherwise the cruelties of the Spanish adventurers, 

 the Indians, unused to the practice, were compelled to dive 

 for the oysters; and," he adds, "this dangerous and un- 

 healthy employment was an additional calamity, which con- 

 tributed not a little to the extinction of that devoted race."f 

 It is when the memory of these forced labours and cruelties 



* Humboldt's Pers. Narrative, ii. 279. 



t Robertson's America, i. 190. 4to. See also Forbes in the Naturalist, 

 iv. 313, &c. 



