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THE PEARL
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and
ankles also. Nor was the fashion confined to women. When the Spaniards
first reached these shores, the caciques of Florida and the incas of
Peru, on occasions of State, wore ropes of pearls around their necks,
and so to this day do the rajahs and princes of India and the eastern
islands. The more civilized peoples used round pearls, and became more
critical about the quality and perfection of the gems as they grew in
wealth and refinement.
The
necklaces found in the Indian mounds are made principally of baroques,
some of them rounded, but many of them long, slender pieces, bored a
short distance from the thinner end, so that they hung in pendant
festoons. As with all primitive races, the magnificence of size
appealed to the Indians of this hemisphere, as it did also to the
Spanish adventurers who first landed on the coasts of America. A
chronicler of events during the time when De Soto was governor of the
province which now forms several of the Southern States, mentions that
a cacique brought as a present to the governor at the town of Ichiaha,
a string of pearls as large as filberts, five feet long.
76
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