chap, xxiii JAPANESE ESTEEM CORAL 107
beautiful
beads of coral, which serve to close their bags ; these bags are made,
as they were formerly, in France. It is for this purpose that they use
the largest beads of coral, to run on a silken cord which closes the
bag ; so that if you are able to offer them one of the size of an egg,
beautiful and clean, without any spot upon it, they will pay whatever
you ask. The Portuguese, who formerly did a large trade in Japan, have
often assured me that they could obtain for one as much as 20,000 ecus.1
It is much to be wondered that the Japanese give so much money for a
fine piece of coral, since they have a contempt for jewels, caring only
for things which are little thought of elsewhere. They attach great
value to the skin of a particular fish, which is rougher than shagreen
; this fish has on the back, as it were, six small bones, and sometimes
eight, which are elevated and form a circle, with another in the
middle, resembling a rose of diamonds.2 They make sword
scabbards of these fish-skins and the more symmetrically these small
bones form the rose and are arranged, the more money is given for
them—sometimes up to 10,000 ecus,3 as the Dutch have
assured me. To return to coral and to finish the discourse about it, it
should be added that the common people wear it and use it as an
ornament for the neck and arms throughout Asia, but principally towards
the north in the territories of the Great Mogul, and beyond them, in
the mountains, of the Kingdoms of Assam and Bhutan.4
1 £4,500.
*
This appears to have been the skin of some kind of shark or ray. Ball
had seen, but could not refer to, figures of it in some of the old
Dutch and Portuguese travels. A common kind of it is still to be seen
on the handles of the Japanese swords, of which such large numbers have
been recently imported. In his chapter on the Conduite dea Hollandais en Asie, published in the Recueil, ed.
1679, p. 17, Ta vernier gives a further account of it. He says a
perfect skin was worth up to 10,000 ecus, an ordinary one being
obtainable for 1 ecu. The fish, he adds, occurred in the Persian Gulf (Ency. Brit., xxiv. 769).
' The French editions of 1679 and 1713 have 1,000 ecus.
*
The reason for the preference shown for coral is probably to be
attributed to the way its tints adapt themselves to set off a dark
skin, and also look well with a white garment. It is much worn in the
Himalayas (Yule, Marco Poh, i. 162 ; Baden Powell, Economic Products oj the Punjab, 48).
