1515
the unfortunate natives obtained an earnest and influential advocate
in Bartolomé de las Casas, who, in 1516, prevailed upon the youthful
Charles V to decree that the fishery should be prosecuted only in
summer, that the divers should not be required to work more than four
hours a day where the depth exceeded six fathoms, that they should
receive good nourishment and half a quart of wine daily, should have
hammocks or beds in which to sleep, and should be provided with
clothes to put on as soon as they left the water.1 And by later ordinances it was stipulated that death should be inflicted on any one forcing a free Indian to dive for pearls.
In
1528 the resources of Coche Island were exploited with so much success
that within six months "1500 marcs ( 12,000 ounces) of pearls" were
secured. Pearl banks were successively found at Porlamar, Maracapana,
Curiano, and at various places on the coast from the Gulf of Paria to
the Gulf of Coro, a distance of over five hundred miles, which became
designated the "Pearl Coast." For a number of years previous to 1530,
the output exceeded in value 800,000 piastres annually, approximating
one half the produce of the American mines at that time.2 It
was largely these pearls that enriched the cargoes of many of those
famous caravels that crossed the Atlantic to Spain. Indeed, for
several decades, America was best known in continental Europe as-the
land whence the pearls came.
An
interesting account of an early effort to use dredges in the Cubagua
pearl fishery was given by Girolamo Benzoni, who had lived in America
from 1542 to 1555, and was familiar with the conditions. He states :
At
the time the pearl fishery flourished on this island there came here
one Louis de Lampugnan with an imperial license authorizing him to fish
such quantities of pearls as he pleased within all the limits and
bounds of Ctjbagua. This man set out from Spain with four caravels
loaded with all the necessary provisions and munitions for such an
enterprise, which some Spanish merchants furnished him. He had made a
kind of rake, the fashion of which was such that in whatever part of
the sea it was used, not an oyster would escape. At the same time he
would have raked and drawn out all that bore pearls if he had not been
disappointed. But the Spaniards in Cubagua all banded against him in
the execution of his privilege. They said the emperor was too liberal
with other people's goods, and if he wished to give he might give his
own as he wished. As for "themselves they had conquered and kept that
country with great labor and at the peril of their lives, and there
were far better reasons why they should enjoy it than a stranger. Poor
Lampugnan, seeing that his patents did not avail him the value of a
straw, and at the same time not daring to return to Spain, partly
through fear of being ridiculed and
1 Herrera, "Descripcion de las Indias Occi- * Humboldt's "Personal Narrative," Vol.
dentales," Dec. iv, Book VI, ch. 12. II, p. 273.
