reach
the age of seven or eight years, and in the fourth year they have small
pearls, sometimes a hundred and fifty. They fish yearly, in the month
of May, during four weeks. In the year 1804, eight hundred canoes, each
with two divers, were engaged. Before the year 1800, the pearl banks
were leased, to an Indian merchant, for three hundred thousand pagods;
and before the arrival of the Europeans in India, the same bank was
used every twenty or twenty-four years; when under the
Portuguese,.every ten, and under the Dutch, every six years. In 1800,
the produce was from one hundred to one hundred and fifty thousand
pounds sterling.
Japan
has some pearl banks, which are, however, not much sought; the same may
be said of the Nipthoa lake, in Chinese Tartary. America sent, in the
sixteenth century, pearls to the amount of eight hundred thousand
dollars to Europe. The shells were mostly collected from Cape Paria to
Cape Velo; round the islands Margarita, Cubagua, Coche Punta, Aragy,
and at the mouth of Rio la Hacha,' from which latter locality, and the
Bay of Panama, Europe is now mostly supplied. The former localities
have long since been relinquished, on account of their small produce;
too many shells having been removed at one time, thereby retarding the
growth of pearls. Panama has sent, within a few years past,
about one hundred thousand dollars' worth of fine pearls to Europe, the
trade being carried on by Messrs. Plise, of Panama. The coast of
Florida is said to have been vefy lucrative to the Indians, as a pearl
fishery, which, however, does not prove so now, since the settlement of
civilized people.
England
used to be supplied from the river Conway, in Wales; and Scotland
supplied the London market, between the years 1761 and 1764, to the
amount often thousand pounds sterling; but the supply has failed.
Pearls are
