PEARLS AND PEARL FISHERIES. 395 
A fine round, pink pearl of 30 grains was found in a Unio near St. John, New 
Brunswick, and now belongs to George Keynolts, of Toronto, Canada. 
A few years later the interest extended to the Northwestern States. During the 
summer of 1889 a quantity of magnificently colored pearls were found in the creeks 
and rivers of Wisconsin, in Beloit, Bock County; Brodhead and Albany, Green 
County; Gratiot and Darlington, Lafayette County; Boscobel and Potosi, Grant 
County; Prairie du Chien and Lynxville, Crawford County. Of these pearls more 
than $10,000 worth were sent to New York within three months, including one worth 
more than $500, and some among them were equal to any ever found for beauty and 
coloring. The colors were principally purplish-red, copper-red, and dark pink. 
These discoveries led to immense activity in pearl-hunting through all the streams 
of the region, and in three or four seasons the shells were almost exterminated. In 
1890 it extended through other portions of Wisconsin, especially Calumet and Mani- 
towoc counties, and appeared also in Illinois, along the Mackinaw Biver and its 
tributary creeks, in McLean, Tazewell, and Woodford counties. The pearl fisheries 
of this State have produced at least $250,000 worth of pearls since 1889. 
At the Columbian Exposition at Chicago in 1893 large and beautiful exhibits of 
pearls, with a great variety of tints, were a notable feature in the Wisconsin State 
building and elsewhere, as previously noted. 
The Northwestern pearl excitement subsided in a few seasons, as the others had 
done in turn before, by the exhaustion of the mussel beds and the consequent cessation 
of product. About every ten years or so a new wave of interest rises in connection 
with fresh discoveries at some point where the shells have lain long undisturbed; it 
again absorbs the attention and excites the imagination of the community around, and 
spreads to other parts of the country; a fresh campaign of ignorant extermination is 
carried on for several summers, then the yield is exhausted, and there is nothing 
more but to leave nature to recuperate, if possible, and slowly to restore, in limited 
amount, the abundant life that has been destroyed. 
The year 1897 witnessed a very widespread outbreak of the pearl mania, which 
extended through large areas previously unaffected by it, reproducing in the most 
marked form all the manifestations before seen elsewhere — the excitement seizing upon 
the whole population; the abandonment of the ordinary forms of steady labor; the 
flocking of thousands to the rivers and streams to gather Unios; the wholesale 
destruction of the mussels until the locality was “cleaned out”; the extravagant 
ideas of the value of the choice pearls obtained, and the disappointment of multitudes, 
who imagined that every irregular nacreous concretion that they had found was a 
valuable treasure. 
The chief center of this excitement was Arkansas, which had never known it 
before. Thence it has extended west into the Indian Territory, and north into Mis- 
souri, while Georgia and portions of Tennessee have been largely affected. The press 
notices of all these, often highly sensational, led to more or less activity in other parts 
of the country. As the season was well advanced before the subject attracted much 
attention, it seems probable that the year 1898 will witness an unexampled furore of 
pearl-hunting and that the shells will be practically exterminated for years to come 
throughout much of the Mississippi Yalley. 
The portions of the State where the excitement has been most marked are the 
following: (1) A region of small “lakes,” i. e., expansions of streams, situated chiefly 
in the southeastern part of White County, between White Biver, Cypress Bayou, and 
