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
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