404 A POPULAR TREATISE ON GEMS.
weight
of twenty-four grains is counted as thirty; so that an ounce has six
hundred grains, pearl weight, and four troy grains are equal to five
pearl grains. The price has, within the last forty years, much
diminished, for two reasons:
1st.
Diamonds, and particularly brilliants, have become more plentiful, and
have since been worn, not by the higher classes alone, but also by the
middling.
2d. Within the last twenty years, artificial pearls have been manufactured in high perfection, and are worn to a great extent.
It
is my opinion, however, that the price of pearls will take a fresh rise
among the nobility and richer classes, diamonds being now so generally
worn ; as persons, thinking to invest safely, without any future loss,
their surplus capital, purchase brilliants that formerly were possessed
exclusively by the rich.
Pearl
fisheries were first carried on in remote times in the Persian Gulf,
and the most celebrated, formerly, were near the island Bahreim. Five
hundred thousand ducats was then the yearly produce. About one million
dollars' worth, at the present time, are exported. The island Kharack
now produoes the most considerable quantity. The principal market is at
Muscat; from thence they are brought to Surat. The mode of procuring
them pursued in those countries, is in canoes, holding fifteen men, six
of whom are divers: the shells caught during the day are delivered to a
surveyor, when they are opened on a white cloth, and whoever finds a
pearl of some value, puts it in his mouth, to give it, as they say, a "
better water." The greatest harvests are generally after many rains,
and the largest pearls are mostly found in the deepest water. At Ceylon
the pearl fisheries are now considerable, particularly in the bay of
Condatchy. The shells are there left to
