CHAPTER XII. 



The Persian Gulf and Red Sea Fisheries. 



" Heaps of Pearl, 

 Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels, 

 All scattered in the bottom of the sea." 



—Richard III. Act I., Scene IV. 



EARLS have been found from time 

 immemorial in the waters that wash 

 the shores of " Araby the blest." The 

 Persian Gulf, which separates Arabia from Persia, 

 has been the scene of Pearling operations certainly 

 for more than two thousand years, and probably 

 for a much longer period. Isidorus of Charax, a 

 Greek historian, who is said to have lived three 

 centuries before the Christian era, tells us in his 

 description of Parthia, that "in the Persian sea is 

 a certain island where abundance of the Pearl-oyster 

 is to be found. ' Wherefore rafts of reeds are stationed 

 all around the island, from off 'which the divers, 



