697
pounds' weight of pearls being imported from it into Seville alone, in
the year 1587. These ancient prizes were not forgotten in this country
in the bubble year 1825 when joint-stock companies for every possible
and impossible object were all the rage. One English company undertook
the prosecution on a grand scale of the fishery on the Columbian coast;
another that of the Pacific off Panama, on the opposite side. Both
enterprises met with about equal success, and came to an end in the
following year, having first sent home for the benefit of the
shareholders sundry very promising reports and a few remarkably
fine—shells.
Everybody
knows the story told by Pliny about Cleopatra who, in order to outdo
Antony's extravagance in that line, wagered that she would spend a sum
equivalent to one hundred thousand pounds of our money (centies H. S.)
upon a single dinner. When her lover ridiculed the banquet, upon its
appearance, as far from coming up to her boast, she replied that it was
merely an adjunct to the grand dish, and as she was wearing in her ears
the two finest Pearls in the world, "heir-looms of Eastern kings," she
threw one of them into a cup of the strongest vinegar standing before
her, and upon its dissolving immediately therein, she drank it off.
The fellow to it was about to share its fate, had not L. Plancus, the
appointed umpire in the matter, snatched it from the queen's hand, and
wasted no time in pronouncing that Antony had completely lost his
wager. That same Pearl, upon Augustus' conquest of Egypt, was sawn in
two to make a pair of pendants for the ears of the Venus of the
Pantheon ; the goddess, as Pliny aptly remarks, being very well
satisfied with one half of Cleopatra's dinner.
It is unfortunate for this good story that no acid the human stomach can endure is capable of dissolving a
(m)
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