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AMERICAN PEARLS
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255
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Juan
Terron, one of the stoutest soldiers of the army, toward noon, drew
from his saddle-bags about six pounds of pearls, and pressed a
cavalier, one of his friends, to take them. The cavalier thanked him
and told him that he ought to keep them, or rather, since the report
was current that the general would send to Havana, send them there to
buy horses and go no longer afoot. Offended at this answer, Terron
replied that "these pearls then shall not go any farther," and
thereupon scattered them here and there upon the grass and through the
bushes. They were surprised at this folly, for the pearls were as large
as hazel-nuts, and of very fine water, and because they were not
pierced they were worth more than six thousand ducats. They collected
about thirty of these pearls, which were so beautiful that it made them
regret the loss of the others, and say, in raillery, these words, which
passed into a proverb with them, "There are no pearls for Juan Terron."
1
At
the capital of Iciaha, De Soto received from the cacique or chief, a
string, five feet in length, of beautiful and well matched pearls as
large as filberts. Upon De Soto's expressing a desire to learn how the
gems were extracted from the shells, the chief immediately ordered four
boats to fish all night and return in the morning.
In
the meantime they burnt a great deal of wood upon the shore, in order
to make there a great bed of live coals, that at the return of the
boats they might put thereon the shells, which would open with the
heat. They found, at the opening of the first shells, ten or twelve
pearls of the size of a pea, which they took to the cacique, and to the
general who was present, and who found them very beautiful, except that
the fire had deprived them of a part of their lustre. When the general
had seen what he wished, he returned to dine ; and immediately after, a
soldier entered, who instantly said to him that, in eating oysters
which the Indians had caught, his teeth had encountered a very
beautiful pearl of a very lively color, and that he begged him to
receive it to send to the governess of Cuba. Soto politely refused this
pearl, and assured the soldier that he was as obliged to him as if he
had accepted it; and that some day he would try to acknowledge his
kindness, and the honor which he did his wife; and that he should
preserve it to purchase horses at Havana. The Spaniards valued it at
four hundred ducats ; and as they had not made use of fire to extract
it, it had not lost any of its lustre.2
Notwithstanding
the strong indorsement given to Garcilasso's narrative by Theodore
Irving and some other writers, his tendency to exaggerate depreciates
greatly the historical value of his account, and it seems wholly
unreliable as an authority relative to early resources in America. We
may reasonably doubt whether De Soto's expedition came in contact with
more pearls than those mentioned by Biedma and the Portuguese writer.
'Bernard Shipp, "The History of Her- * Ibid., p. 372.
nando de Soto and Florida from 1512 to 1568," Philadelphia, 1881, 8vo, p. 369.
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