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XIII
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VALUES AND COMMERCE OF PEARLS
A pearl, Whose price hath launch'd above a thousand ships, And turn'd crown'd kings to merchants."
Troilus and Cressida, Act II, sc. 2.
T
O trace the markets
of the pearl is to trace the routes of commerce from early times. The
first routes from the Far East seem to have been two: one by the
Persian Gulf and the Euphrates to Babylonia and Assyria, and thence by
caravan through Damascus to Tyre and Sidon; the other by the Red Sea
and Suez to Egypt. As regards the former route, Sir George Birdwood
furnishes positive evidence that the Phenicians visited India as early
as 2200 b.c. It seems
highly probable that pearls were introduced by this route at an early
period, although it is difficult to find material proof of the fact.
By
means of this commerce, the great ancient civilizations of Phenicia,
Mesapotamia and the Nile valley doubtless became familiar with the gem
treasures of eastern Asia. Then came the opening of the Mediterranean
with first "the great Sidon," and later Tyre, as the starting-points of
commerce, exploration, and colonial settlement among the islands and on
the shores of what, to the Asiatic peoples, was the great western sea.
However, as the Greek islands and their colonies developed, the
Phenicians were more strictly confined to the coasts of Africa and
Spain. Gades, Tartessus, and Carthage were their great colonies and
trading-ports, and their adventurous sailors passed on through the
Straits of Gibraltar and directed their course northward to the British
Isles, where they very probably obtained the pearls of the Scotch
rivers.
Meanwhile,
the campaigns of Alexander had carried Greek influence and authority
over all western Asia, reaching even to India itself, and had led to a
widely increased intercourse. Although he died at the age of
thirty-two, Alexander the Great did more than any single individual in
the world's history to bring the nations of the Eastern and the Western
worlds into contact with each other, and it is cer-
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319
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