THE PEARL FISHERY. 
101 
to carry a heavy load of plantains to the embarcadero, was 
the consummation of all his wishes. 
After a long discourse on the emptiness of human great- 
ness, he drew from a leathern pouch a few very small opaque 
pearls, which he forced us to accept, enjoining us at the 
same time to note on our tablets that a poor shoemaker 
of Araya, but a white man, and of noble Castilian race, had 
been enabled to give us something which, on the other side 
of the sea,*' was sought for as very precious. I here acquit 
myself of the promise I made to this worthy man, who dis- 
interestedly refused to accept of the slightest retribution. 
The Pearl Coast presents the same aspect of misery as the 
countries of gold and diamonds, Choco and Brazil ■ but 
misery is not there attended with that immoderate desire of 
gain which is excited by mineral wealth. 
The pearl-breeding oyster (Avicula margaritifera, Cuvier) 
abounds on the shoals which extend from Cape Paria to Cape 
laYela. The islands of Margareta, Cubagua, Coche, Punta 
Araya, and the mouth of the Bio la Haeha, were, in the 
sixteenth century, as celebrated as were the Persian Gulf 
and the island of Taprobana among the ancients. It is incor- 
rectly alleged by some historians that the natives of America 
were unacquainted with the luxury of pearls. The first 
Spaniards who landed in Terra Pinna found the savages 
decked with pearl 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 dis- 
sertation 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 cruel- 
ties which were exercised on the unhappy Indian slaves and 
negroes employed in the pearl fishery. At tho beginning 
of the conquest the island of Coche alone furnished pearls 
amounting in value to fifteen hundred marks per month. 
The quint which the king’s officers drew from the produce 
of pearis, amounted to fifteen thousand ducats ; which, ac- 
cording to the value of the precious metals in those times, 
* ‘For alia,’ or, ‘ del otro lado del charco,’ (properly ‘beyond,’ or 
‘on the other side of the great lake’), a figurative expression, by which the 
people in the Spanish colonies denote Europe. 
