coral
button on their cap. When I visited modern Japan I was surprised to see
that nearly every woman wore one or more coral ornaments, either in her
hair or as a brooch, and well the dark red of the coral became the dark
glossy hair of the little ladies of Japan.
Kings
and queens have worn coral too. Napoleon I's sister, the Princess
Pauline Borghese, owned a set of corals mounted with diamonds, and was
said to have paid 31,000 francs for it, a big price for those days when
the franc was worth something.
To-day
religion helps to keep the coral industry alive. Coral beads, carved or
plain, make desirable rosaries. Who would you think the better customer
for coral rosaries, devout Catholic or faithful Muslim? It is the child
of the Koran, whose string contains one hundred and eight beads to the
Catholic's fifty-four.
Beautifully
tinted as some kinds of coral undoubtedly are, particularly the
delicate pink, none can compare with the living coral which I have seen
with my own enchanted eyes as it lay beneath the waters of the
sea between Borneo and Sulu, in crystal-clear depths varying from five
to eight feet. If so much was visible from the surface, what visions of
beauty did my divers see, who in the course of their descents after
pearl-shell frequently came across whole coral forests? They were
sometimes quite obviously awed by their trips into fairyland, but they
were too inarticulate to describe in detail what they had seen. I was
no connoisseur of beauty to look for it below the waves at risk of my
life, and so the world of
