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THE BOOK OF THE PEARL
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The "Southern Cross." The
"Southern Cross" is an unusual pearl or rather cluster of pearls which
attracted much attention twenty years ago. It consists of nine attached
pearls forming a Roman cross about one and one half inches in length,
seven pearls constituting the shaft or standard, while the arms are
formed by one pearl on each side of the second one from the upper end.
The luster is good, but the individual pearls are not perfect spheres,
being mutually compressed at the point of juncture and considerably
flattened at the back. If separated, the aggregate value of the
individual pearls would be small, and the celebrity of the ornament is
due almost exclusively to its form. This striking formation was
exhibited at the Colonial and Indian Exhibition at London in 1886, and
later at the Paris Exhibition in 1889, where it was the center of
interest, and obtained a gold medal for the exhibitors. It is reported
that an effort was made to bring about its sale at £ 10,000, the owners
suggesting that it was especially appropriate for presentation to Leo
XIII, on the occasion of his jubilee in 1896. The writers have been
unable to obtain information as to its present location.
Much
information relative to the "Southern Cross" was volunteered by Henry
Taunton in the very interesting account of his wanderings in
Australia. He presents apparently reliable statements showing that it
was found on March 26, 1883, off Baldwin Creek in Lat. 17° S.
and Long. 122° E., by a boy named Clark, in the employ of James W. S.
Kelly, a master pearler. When delivered to Kelly, it was in three
distinct pieces, but the boy reported that it was in one piece when he
found it a few hours before. Kelly sold it in the three pieces in which
he received it for £10 to a fellow pearler named Roy; Roy sold it for
£40 to a man named Craig, and he sold it to an Australian syndicate.
However,
according to Taunton's positive statement, there were only eight pearls
in the cluster when it was sold by Kelly in 1883, and to make it
resemble a well-proportioned cross—the right arm being absent—another
pearl of suitable size and shape was subsequently secured at Cossack
and attached in the proper place to the others, which, in the meantime,
had been refastened together by diamond cement, thus making three
artificial joints in the present cluster. "As if to assist in the
deception, nature had fashioned a hollow in the side of the central
pearl just where the added pearl would have to be fitted ; and—the
whole pearling fleet with their pearls and shells coming into Cossack
about this time—it was no difficult matter to select a pearl of the
right size and with the convexity required. The holder paid some ten or
twelve pounds for the option of selecting a pearl within given limits ;
and then once more, with the aid of diamond cement and that
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