272 



vier) abounds on the shoals, which extend from 

 Cape Paria to that of Vela*. The island of 

 Margaretta, Cubagua, Coche, Punta Araya, and 

 the mouth of the Rio la Hacha, were celebrated 

 in the sixteenth century, as the Persian Gulf, and 

 the island Taprobane were among the ancients-f-. 

 It is not just to say, as several historians have 

 asserted, that the natives of America were unac- 

 quainted with the luxury of pearls. The first 

 Spaniards who landed in Terra Firma found the 

 savages decked with necklaces and bracelets ; 

 and among the civilized people of Mexico and 

 Peru pearls of a beautiful form were extremely 

 sought after. I have published a dissertation 

 on the statue of a Mexican priestess in basalt 

 whose head-dress, resembling the calantica of 

 the heads of Isis, is ornamented with pearls. 

 Las Casas and Benzoni have described, but not 

 without some exaggeration, the cruelties which 



* Costa de las Pertas, Herera, Dec. 1, lib. vii, c. 9. Go- 

 mava, Hist e. 78. Petri Bembi Cardin. Hist. Venetae lib. 

 xii (1555), p. 83. Cancellieri, Diss, sopra Christ. Columbo 

 (1809), p. 101. 



t Strabo, lib. xv (pag. Oxon. 1017). Plin., lib. ix, c. 35. 

 lib. xii, c. 18. Solin. Polyhist. c. 66 (ed. 1518, p. 316 and 

 324), and above all Athen. Deipnosoph. lib. iii, c. 45 (ed. 

 Schweighaeuser, 1801, t. i, p. 360—367), and Animadvers. 

 in Athen. t. ii, p. 126. 



% Picturesque Atlas, pi. % and 2. [See vol. xiii of this 

 edition, p. 43.] 



