trait of this prince, his own bust, and a small temple of Mars,
all made of pearls. Julius Caesar found them very abundant
in Great Britain, and the Romans, during their occupation,
gathered great quantities of them from the fresh-water mussel.
A breastplate made of these British pearls was dedicated by
the great conqueror to Venus Genetrix, at Rome.
These beautiful gems have served the purposes of metaphors and other rhetorical figures in literature. They were
employed by the sacred authors as emblems of whatever is
superexcellent and difficult to obtain. They entered into the
list of precious materials used in the construction of the celestial city, whose twelve gates were made of pearl. Other
writers, as Shakespeare, Milton, Moore, and Scott, have selected this gem for rhetorical effect. The Arabs compared
eloquence, which they classed with the most important accomplishments, to pearls. Babylonians, Persians, Egyptians,
Greeks, and Romans consecrated them to their divinities, an
indication that they valued them as the choicest productions of
earth. They have been esteemed for their supposed medicinal
and mystical virtues. Marco Polo informs us that the King
of Malabar wore a kind of reliquary of rubies, sapphires, and
emeralds, with a pendant of one hundred and four large pearls
and rubies, by which he counted his prayers to his idols,
morning and evening.
Pearls have been obtained from certain localities in both
hemispheres. The oriental fisheries include those of the
islands in the Persian Gulf, where they are sometimes taken
at the surprising depth of twenty fathoms ; the Red Sea, formerly the chief source of supply, but now nearly exhausted ;
the Indian Ocean, Ceylon, the East India Islands, and Japan.
There have been, sometimes, thirty thousand natives, yearly
engaged in the business of pearl-fishing in the Persian Gulf, at
