Part 2

Now when the elements were at peace again, the King gave orders that certain fishermen of his people who were expert divers, should explore the bottom of the sea where the ships of the Rover were destroyed. One of these discovered the body of the princess and brought it to shore. And when they prepared it for burial, the women found fastened upon one of the hands a shell-fish, the two shells of which had closed upon a finger when it fell between them as they gaped. And when the shells were pried apart, there rolled from between them a round bone, white and shining, yet of a luster so soft and beautiful that no man had seen the like. And the Brahman when he saw it said, "Herein are the tears of Heaven which fell into the sea congealed and have become a gem which is beyond price." And he named it "Pearl," and carried it to the King. Then the King after he had heard the story of it, sent for the chief man of them that worked in gold and commanded him that he make for the pearl a setting most precious, and when it was done he gave it to the prince his son saying, "Above all things let this be first among the jewels of Travancore for-ever." And the prince when he looked upon it said, "The beauty of it is like the brightness of her eyes when they veiled themselves before my passion," and he prized it more than all the diamonds and rubies in his treasure-house.

From that day, when the fishermen dived for the chank, they sought also for shells like unto that in which the King's pearl was found, and after great rains many more pearls were brought from the depths of the sea, and fishermen following the coast, found them on the shoals between India and Kandy in great plenty. These were carried to the King, for no man dared to sell them, yet did the King reward the finders very liberally. So the store of them in the King's treasury grew, and for that there were no gems like them in all the earth, the fame of them spread, and travellers came from many and far-off lands to look upon the pearls of Travancore.

ANTIQUITY OF THE PEARL

How long the pearl has been used as a jewel is unknown. It is seen all through the pages of history, from the long ago days when records were inscribed on the leaves of plants, to the rapid-fire prints of to-day, which unceasingly scatter to myriads the knowledge of things as they occur.

Back of history, pearls loom everywhere in the mists of tradition like delicate but imperishable orbs of beauty set in the smoulder of burned out days and passions. And wherever their tranquil light attracts the eye of imagination, the ghosts of the great are seen, for pearls lie in the hair of royalty and clasp the fair necks of Queens. Upon them shine the eyes of turbanned princes who valued them above the blood and life of thousands of subjects. Shades of imperious fingers, long since fallen to the elements, toy with them: they deck the spectral gatherings of the mighty in all lands and ages, and there is no dream of song or story which does not hold them among the chief enchantments. As the fair moon hangs from the brow of night when she broods over lonely waters, so does the pearl shine in the shades of the ages.

In this country abundant evidence exists that before the advent of the white man, or of the red-skins as we know them, the aborigines, from the cold rise of the Mississippi to the glades of Florida, used them for their adornment. In savage wilds, and on coasts that knew not the sight of ships or other shores, copper-skinned natives treasured the glistening things they found in the mollusks of the sea-shoals and inland streams. Quantities of pearls have been found in the Indian mounds, many of them loose, others strung for necklaces and wristlets, some mounted in quaint and primitive fashion, all showing that in the days of unbroken forests and swarming game and roving tribes of untrammeled savages, in the tepees of the braves, their queens wore pearls even as they are worn now by fairer successors in the palaces reared where once were forests and camping-grounds. In those days the savage lords of the undivided earth knew nothing of whirring lathes and drills; of hardened points of steel turning with lightning rapidity and unerring precision. Slowly they burned a way through the gem with hot copper wire, destroying thereby with ruthless ignorance the delicate beauty of jewels fit for royalty. To them the slender prongs of gold with which the modern jeweller holds the lustrous balls, uncovered and in safety, were unknown. Instead, the savage set them in holes bored in the teeth of animals, possibly to enhance the relics of a great fight with some fierce beast that succumbed finally to his prowess: possibly to add beauty to the grim reminders of her lord's valor when he hung them round the neck of a favored mate. The Indian of this continent was much more primitive in the art of the jeweller than in the manufacture of implements for war and the chase. Gaudy colors extracted from plants and minerals appealed more to his unthinking eye than a chaste form of beauty. With these he could stain his blankets, record on skins of slaughtered animals his deeds, or paint in hideous signs upon his face the malignancy of war. His time and thought and ingenuity were given to things which would contribute to his master passion and glorify its deeds. The scalps of his enemies, the skins of animals he slaughtered, the feathers of birds that fell to his unerring arrow, the teeth of bears and mountain lions slain in desperate encounters, these were his jewels. Nor was his sexual instinct sufficiently refined to enthrone his mate. She was his slave, and her reward for toil was pride in his deeds and glory. He knew little of the tender homage which brings gifts and lays them at the feet of woman. Instinctively he made a setting for his pearls of bears' teeth, that they might carry the scent of blood and tell the story of his conquest. Nevertheless, among these rude tribes of wolfish savages, sequestered from the touch of other people more refined, the modest pearl found favor, and in it they unconsciously paid tribute to one of the purest forms of beauty. But even this recognition must have been the growth of years, possibly of ages, for not until the understanding of worth has become general among a people is value established, and only things valuable are stored. As desire for a thing for its inherent qualities spreads, there is added a larger number of those who seek to possess it for the profit they can make in supplying that desire. Not many years ago, fishermen along the streams of remote parts of Kentucky had no eye for the beauty of a pearl, and no knowledge that men and women lived who prized them. If while fishing, the fisherman's hook fell between the gaping valves of a mollusk it was immediately seized. The disgusted angler thereupon angrily pulled the nuisance out, and if upon disengaging the hook from the bivalve, he found within the shells a pearl, it was immediately tossed back into the stream for luck; for the beginning of a day's sport with a catch of that kind was ill-luck and the fates could only be appeased by the finding of a pearl, or a "mussel egg" as he would call it, in the mollusk, and its return to the water. There lives yet on the banks of the Clinch River, an old pearler, the distress of many a speculator for his knowledge of pearls and their value, who sometimes sorrowfully relates how he thus in bygone years angrily threw away many good pearls, one of them the finest "ball" pearl he has ever seen. If these gems were so regarded by the ignorant white settlers of the west until the advent of men who had learned to appreciate them either for their beauty or the price they would bring from the outside world, it may be surmised that the awakening of the ancient Indian to their beauty, must have been a much slower process, unassisted as it was by men from beyond their limits who had long regarded them as precious. At first, probably, pearls were thrown to the children as playthings, as diamonds were in the Cape: then the young squaws gradually opened their eyes to the fact that the white shining things enhanced the charms of their smooth copper skins by contrast: the brave sought them to please the maid he would bring to his tepee: perhaps rovers brought news that in the far south, in lands of houses and teocalli and much magnificence, or farther off among the Incas, these baubles were prized by the chiefs. So gradually it dawned upon some that the "eggs" of the mollusk were beautiful, and upon others that they could be bartered for skins, blankets, or arrows, possibly for a pony, and so they came to be gathered and stored and displayed as things which enriched the owner.

How far back in the ages the use of pearls on this continent extends cannot be estimated. The discovery of them in the mounds east of the Mississippi, which are credited to an ancient race that finally succumbed to the similar but more war-like red men found here when the country was discovered by Europeans, suggests many centuries. And the use of pearls to the extent manifest by the discoveries, favors the theory that the mound-builders had reached a degree of refinement never attained by the North American Indians of record. When white men invaded the North American continent, they found tribes of red men as rugged as the coasts of New England. Inured to hardships, despising pain, contemptuous of death, they lived by hunting and found their chief pleasure in the slaughter of their enemies. Camping at will, their lodges were here to-day and there to-morrow, and brutal if heroic, they roamed over fields once inhabited by a race which had passed, but left evidence that they were sufficiently civilized to appreciate the pearl.

In Florida and South America, the conditions, when the country was discovered by the Spaniards, were different. The ancient races, corresponding with the mound-builders of the north, undisturbed by the incursions of stronger tribes, had continued to progress and had reached a high degree of barbarous luxury.

In Mexico, when Montezuma gave audience to Cortez, he was ablaze with gold and silver and precious stones. His cloak and sandals were adorned with pearls. Pearls were used to decorate temples, canoes and even the paddles. Indian women had great strings of them coiled around their necks and arms, and the chiefs used them freely on all occasions of state. It was the same on the Colombian coasts.

At the island of Cubagua and on the main coast, Columbus found great quantities of pearls, as did De Soto and his followers when they landed at Tampa Bay, known by the Spaniards as "Spiritu Santo," in Florida in 1539. The Incas of Peru also owned many fine pearls. Though the natives of all these countries ignorantly injured the gems by cooking the oyster to extract them, or by their crude methods of boring, and reckoned them of little value as compared with the European idea, they nevertheless esteemed them as jewels and must have done so for ages, for the invaders found them in the sepulchres of the dead, so altered by the processes of time that they retained nothing of their original beauty.

From these premises therefore it can be said of the antiquity of the pearl in this hemisphere, that it had been used as a jewel for some centuries before the early part of the sixteenth century.

The European regard for the pearl at this time may be estimated by the eagerness with which pearls were sought on the American continent by the adventurers of Spain, and by the pains they took on the arrival here of a new expedition, to convey assurances to the King of Spain that pearls were to be had in the new conquest. In the commission appointing De Soto to the governorship of Cuba, and as adelantado of Florida, Charles V. stipulated that of the gold, silver, stones and pearls, obtained by barter or in battle or otherwise, a certain portion should be reserved for the Crown.

In all the courts of Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the pearl was, if not the chief, one of the most prominent jewels. Mary, Queen of Scots, possessed a rosary of pearls which excited the envy of Catherine de Médicis and Elizabeth of England, both of whom sought diligently to acquire them when the Scotch Queen became mired by misfortune.

The virgin queen of England when she went in state to chapel, wore pendent pearls in her ears after the fashion of Rome, and borders of large pearls fastened on her dress. When in her time Sir Thomas Gresham of London, a wealthy subject, wished to show the Spanish Ambassador, who had boasted of the magnificence of his Sovereign's court, how prodigal her liege subjects could be in her honor, nothing occurred to him more striking than to grind to powder a large pearl and mix it with the wine he drank to her health. This act of the English merchant shows that the pearl was then regarded by the great as the acme of costliness and beauty.

From the reign of Francis I. of France to that of Louis XIII. the pearl was prominent in all jewels of note, and from that time to the death of Maria Theresa of Austria toward the close of the eighteenth century, it was worn in preference to all other gems. It was during the reign of Louis XIII. that Tavernier, the celebrated French Jeweller and traveller, assisted by that monarch, made his journeys into Asia. The account of his travels, published later, are highly esteemed for their truthfulness, and are regarded as exact, if prosaic statements of fact.

The desire for the gem in Europe at this time was so great that Tavernier purchased over half a million dollars' worth from the Arabian Sea. Probably the immense quantities of pearls sent to Spain from the Indies by her rovers in the early part of the sixteenth century, caused the vogue of that gem during the three centuries following, for not much mention is made of them in western Europe prior to that time. Nevertheless pearls were esteemed in the British Isles as early as the eleventh century, for it is recorded that Gilbert, Bishop of Limerick, sent a present of Irish pearls from the fishery at Omagh, to Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, about 1094, and Scotch pearls were not only in demand in Britain but on the continent also as early as the twelfth century. In 1355, the Parisian goldsmiths forbade by statute, workers in gold and silver to set Scotch pearls with the Oriental.

The Oriental pearl probably came into Europe first from Egypt through the incursions of the Macedonians into that country. Later, when Alexander overran Persia his followers doubtless became yet more familiar with the gem, for they spread through Arabia and the Persian Gulf where ancient fisheries also existed.

Pearls were not well known west and north of Asia and Africa at this time, for a writer of Mytilene in the island of Lesbos, about 350 B.C., which was but a few years before Alexander's conquest of Persia, says: "In the Indian Sea, off the coasts of Armenia, Persia, Susiana and Babylonia, a fish like an oyster is caught, from the flesh of which men pick out white bones called by them 'pearls'." This would indicate that knowledge of them was being carried at that time by returning soldiers, camp-followers and travellers, and these men probably brought home also many of the "white bones" obtained by trade or looting. Whatever the method by which they were introduced, pearls came into favor, and the favor increased as they were brought with other jewels from the looted treasuries of eastern potentates. The Macedonians established fisheries in the Red Sea, where the Egyptians obtained their chief supply, and the Romans later brought them also from the Arabian Sea.

Three centuries B.C., the power of the Macedonians commenced to wane; Rome began to rise and overrun the countries which had been subject to the Macedonians; and pearls were thereby carried further west. The Romans adopted the pearl as a jewel of the first importance if not the chief of all, probably because they had found them so regarded by the older royalties they plundered. As the riches of surrounding and far-off countries which she raided, poured into the coffers of Rome, and the city grew to be the centre of power and wealth, the excesses of the rich became ludicrous to the verge of insanity. In their wild extravagances the pearl was prominent.

Affected doubtless by the splendor of Asiatic courts, the rude soldiers of Rome learned to regard the pearl as a royal luxury, and therefore adopted it as a sign of great wealth and power. Enormous sums were paid for pearls of rare size and beauty. Great leaders of men vied with each other in the effort to add to their collections. It is said that Julius Cæsar's chief incentive for pushing his conquests into the west so far, was his desire to obtain the pearls to be found in the streams of the British Isles. The Emperor Caligula decked his favorite horse with a necklace of pearls. Pliny says of Lollia Paulina, Caligula's wife, that he had seen her so bedecked with pearls and precious stones that "she glittered and shone like the sun as she went." Clodius, the glutton, claiming for them a very delicate flavor, placed one by the plate of each guest at a great banquet to be mixed with the wine. This same profligate, either setting the example or emulating Cleopatra, swallowed in a cup of wine one worth eight thousand pounds that he might have the pleasure of consuming so much value at once.

If in the intrigues so common then, a woman's influence was required, pearls were given her. To convey an indirect bribe to a man of high station a pearl of great price was presented to a member of his family. Women wore them while they slept that they might possess them in their dreams; they hung them in loose clusters suspended from the ears, that the tinkling might remind them of the beauty they could not see, and to attract the admiration and envy of others. These were called "crotalia," meaning "rattles." Young men of fortune in Athens and Rome followed the Persian fashion of wearing one in the right ear, hung as a clapper in a small bell of metal. So strong and general did the desire to own them become that Cæsar forbade unmarried women, and women under a certain rank, to wear them.

Perhaps never in the history of jewels has the vogue of one so nearly approached a frenzy as that of the pearl in Rome during her days of extreme power and grandeur. The high esteem in which it was held there is reflected in the Scriptures. The Saviour used it in His parables as a symbol. The gates of the Holy City, as the prophet John saw it in his vision, were pearls. From that time until now, writers have used pearls to symbolize purity, innocence and the highest type of feminine beauty. To say that a woman's teeth were like pearls has been the poets' favorite adulation, and the discovery and sale of great pearls has been deemed of sufficient importance by travellers and historians to record them.

Much of the literature of pearls is founded on the statements of Pliny regarding them: many, if not most, of the absurd beliefs as to their origin and superstitions concerning them, may be traced to the same source; and though these ancient errors have been repeatedly exposed by later scientists and naturalists the poetic absurdities of the industrious Roman compiler, gathered from contemporaneous writers and tradition are current to-day, for they appeal more to the child-like human love of the indefinite wonderful than the exact statements of research, though the latter are really more marvellous.

Though jewels are regarded by many as baubles and of little account among the great commercial interests of the world, they have been an important factor in shaping the destiny of nations, changing the borders of great countries and thereby aiding the progress of civilization. As pearls helped materially to bring Rome to the British Isles and the colonists of Spain to South America, so it is quite probable that the pearls of Egypt had their influence in drawing the Macedonians to that country, to be followed by the Romans when the latter sought to overturn the Macedonian empire. Beyond this, their influence among those who held the reins in the government of empires, or those having power with them that did, cannot be estimated.

Passing beyond the days of Greece and Rome to more remote times and countries, we come to the realms of conjecture. We know that pearls were known and used as jewels in Egypt under the Ptolemies. Chares of Mytilene mentioned that they were worn by women of the East about the neck and arms and even upon the feet. It is said there is a word for them in a Chinese dictionary four thousand years old.

There is evidence that they had been used in India and the far East long before the West had knowledge of those countries, but we have nothing recorded which penetrates the past beyond three to four hundred years B.C., for there is not as much mention made of them in ancient writings familiar to the West as of other precious stones. Nevertheless the pearl is among the most ancient in the nomenclature of jewels because when it did come to be written of only the one thing could be meant. Nature produces nothing similar with which it could be confounded, whereas it is not certain that the diamond, ruby, and other stones as we know them, were intended when the names by which we designate them were used. Such indiscriminate use of names has been made by translators that it is difficult to determine what the stones really were about which ancient authors wrote. The names of those in the Jewish High Priest's breastplate, given in our English version of the Old Testament, undoubtedly misrepresent the stones actually used, and the only thing authorities agree upon regarding the names is that they are incorrect.

As there was no definite knowledge of the crystallography and chemistry of stones in the old days, writers referred to them often in general terms rather than by specific names, and these were translated into the names of later times according to the understanding of the translator, who had neither expert knowledge of his own nor reliable literature from which to gather information or guidance. An illustration of this general confusion occurs in the book of Job XXVIII. 18. It is written there, "No mention shall be made of coral, or of pearls; for the price of wisdom is above rubies." Scholars tell us that the words translated here "coral" and "pearls," signify "found in high places," and are thought to be precious stones though the variety is unknown. The Targum renders the first "Sandalchin," probably our sardonyx. Junius and Tremellius translated it "Sandaztros" in their Latin version of the Old Testament, whereas Pliny described it as a sort of carbuncle having shining golden drops in the body of it.

After the same manner the last sentence, "For the price of wisdom is above rubies" is rendered by the great oriental scholar Bochart, "The extraction of wisdom is greater than the extraction of pearls," and other authorities agree with him.