Benefits. 251 



or even long after, in the time of the caliphs, these were 

 islands whose merchants were princes : but their bustle and 

 glory have long since departed, and they are now thinly inha- 

 bited by a race of miserable fishermen. Nor are the rivers of 

 Britain now fished, nor were they at any time of much value 

 in this respect. Good pearls have indeed been occasionally 

 found in our river muscle (IPnio margaritifera), but too 

 seldom to be worth the search. A notion prevails that Sir 

 Richard Wynn of Gwydir, chamberlain to Catherine, Queen 

 of Charles II., presented Her Majesty with one taken in the 

 Conway, which is to this day honoured with a place in the regal 

 crown. In the last century several of great size were gotten 

 in the rivers of the county of Tyrone and Donegal, in Ire- 

 land. One that weighed 36 carats was valued at 40/., but 

 being foul lost much of its worth. Other single pearls were 

 sold for 4/. 105., and even for lOZ. The last was sold a second 

 time to Lady Glenlealy, who put it into a necklace, and 

 refused 80Z. for it from the Duchess of Ormond. In his tour 

 in Scotland, in 1769, Mr. Pennant, from whom I have bor- 

 rowed the above particulars, also mentions a considerable 

 pearl fishery in the vicinity of Perth, from which 10,000/. 

 worth was sent to London, from 1 76 1 to 1 799 ; but, by the in- 

 discriminate destruction of the muscles, the fishery was soon 

 exhausted. 



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 Cubagna ; and the writers of that 

 period discourse eloquently of the riches of the first planters, 

 and the luxury they displayed : but now 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 Meleagrinae, the banks 

 became exhausted, and towards the end of the sixteenth cen- 

 tury this traffic in pearls had dwindled 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 ; 



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