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ANTIQUITY OF THE PEARL
through
all their years of beauty lay neglected: the soft luster of succeeding
charms appealed in vain for eyes which never came, and when the slow
processes of time had brought decay they passed unseen to the catacombs
of Nature.
So
it was in many a tropic sea, on unknown shores and about islands
holding strange creatures and stranger men. In the still, clear waters
of far-away lagoons, treasures of pearls, released by the death of
their creators, have rolled to a resting-place on coral reefs, to lie
there until the sea, atom by atom, devoured them. Could all the pearls
hoarded by every nation on earth be gathered together, the mighty sum
would be small compared with the number of those which lie buried
beneath the ocean.
But,
one by one, slant-eyed Celestials, Maoris, Malays, Papuans, Polynesians
and others, discovering, learned to prize and hoard the pearl. Then
came men from far-off wonderlands, whose great ships spread their sails
to the winds of the deep waters and who could endure for many days the
solitudes of the great seas. These in the early days made war to
plunder, 5
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