ADVENTURING DOWN THE WEST COAST OF MEXICO 



473 



the sands, Lower California has much to 

 offer. Pearls, for one thing. The hidden 

 port of La Paz is, perhaps, the third most 

 important pearling port in the world to- 

 day ; it is certainly no worse than fourth ; 

 and yet not one man in a thousand who 

 knows of the pearling operations in the 

 South Seas and in the waters of Borneo 

 has ever heard the name of La Paz. 



Two years ago La Paz had more dol- 

 lars per wagon-load of population, per- 

 haps, than any other town in the western 

 half of the world. The price of pearls 

 had been boosted sky-high by the demand 

 from the newly enriched of the World 

 War, and La Paz had pearls to sell. 



It had been a pearling center for cen- 

 turies. When the Spaniards, led by those 

 extraordinary noses that could smell 

 marketable commodities over leagues of 

 sand or tumbled mountains, first came to 

 Baja California, naked Indians were liv- 

 ing in brush shelters on the shores of the 

 gulf. 



They found nothing to tempt them. 

 They were about to sail away, according 

 to the legend, when they discovered that 

 these naked Indians — so miraculously 

 poor from the Spanish point of view that 

 even their souls seemed hardly worth 

 saving — were possessed of pearls worth 

 the ransoms of many kings. 



A PRICELESS BLACK PEARL WAS INDIAN 

 baby's PLAYTHING 



In the crown jewels of the emperor 

 of the dissolved Austria-Hungary there 

 was — and no doubt the pearl specialists 

 know where it is to-day — a great black 

 pearl. That gem was found in the care- 

 less hands of an Indian baby playing on 

 the beach at La Paz. 



In time the pearl-oyster beds were 

 partially exhausted in the vicinity of La 

 Paz, for the Mexican Government has 

 never compelled their proper conserva- 

 tion, and the pearlers were forced to go 

 farther afield. 



Nowadays the pearlers cruise, when 

 they cruise at all, on the Pacific coast as 

 far south as Manzanillo ; but La Paz re- 

 mains the center of the industry. 



The mother-ships fit out there, and it 

 is there that the pearls are brought to be 

 sold to the experts, who at the proper 

 season gather in the little mud-walled, 



palm-shaded, dusty village. Two years 

 ago the tiny hotels were so jammed with 

 pearl-buyers from the world capitals that 

 some of these millioned men slept on 

 blankets in the dirty corridors. 



Most of the jewels go to the Rue de la 

 Paix or to German or Dutch buyers. But 

 in the last season hardly a buyer was seen 

 at La Paz. The bottom had fallen out 

 of the market. 



HOW THE PEARL OYSTERS ARE GATHERED 

 AND DIVIDED 



The mother-ships are small schooners 

 which carry three or four canoes, each with 

 its crew of three or four men, who work 

 on shares. The canoe crew gets one-tenth 

 of its day's catch, paid over oyster by 

 oyster on the schooner's deck, and opened 

 as fast as counted. All expenses are paid 

 by the capitalist who outfits the mother- 

 ship. 



It is a prodigious gamble for all hands. 

 An almost naked Indian may work all 

 season for barely enough to pay his 

 frijole and tortilla overhead during the 

 winter. Or the first oyster he opens may 

 make him rich for life. 



The pearls of the Orient are mostly 

 white and pink, which are precisely those 

 which can best be imitated by the wily 

 pearl counterfeiter. 



But the waters south of La Paz pro- 

 duce many black pearls, and brown pearls, 

 and golden and gray pearls, and pearls of 

 many another enticing tint. They do not 

 run as true in form as those of Borneo, 

 but their colors cannot be surpassed. 



During the boom times La Paz's streets 

 ran with money. There is a story of a 

 black pearl for which an Indian canoe 

 crew — not one of whom, perhaps, had 

 ever possessed more than a suit of white 

 cotton and a wide hat — was paid $200,000. 



To-day it is doubtful if pearls com- 

 mand, at the source, one-fifth the price 

 they did at the height of the boom. But 

 one day the world trade will revive. It 

 always has. Then La Paz will come back 

 into its own, as the third — or, perhaps, 

 fourth — pearling port of the world. 



TRAVELERS CARRY THEIR FUNDS IN GOLD 



We began to be annoyed by the fiscal 

 system of Mexico. It had seemed ro- 

 mantic at Nogales — a long step back to- 



