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246 GEMS AND PRECIOUS STONES IN THE
scattered
the pearls in all directions among the thickets and herbage. Then
putting up the bag in his wallet, as if it was more valuable than the
pearls, he marched on, leaving his comrades and other bystanders
astonished at his folly. The soldiers made a hasty search for the
scattered pearls and recovered thirty of them. When they beheld their
great size and beauty, none of them being bored or discolored, they
lamented that so many of them had been lost; for the whole would have
sold in Spain for more than 6,000 ducats. This egregious folly gave
rise to a common proverb in the army, ' There are no pearls for Juan
Terron.' The poor fellow himself became an object of constant jest and
ridicule, until at last, made sensible of his absurd conduct, he
implored them never to banter him further on the subject." '
Fontaneda
states that at the place where Lucas Vasquez went, seed-pearls were
found in certain conchs, and that between Havalachi and Olagale is a
river called by the Indians Guasaca-esqui, which means in the Spanish
language Rio de Canas (river of canes), which is an arm of the sea, and
along the adjacent coast, pearls are procured from certain oysters and
conchs. These are carried to all the provinces and villages of Florida,
but principally to Tocobaja, the nearest town. The Indians of the town
of Abalachi asserted that the Spaniards hanged their cacique because he
would not give them a string of large pearls which he wore around his
neck, the middle pearl of which was as big as the egg of a
turtle-dove. Ribault frequently alludes to the possession of pearls by
the natives of Florida, and on one occasion saw the goodliest man of a
company of Indians with a collar of gold and silver about his neck from
which depended a pearl " as large as an acorn at the least." *
David
Ingram, during the " Land Travels " of himself and others in the year
1568-1569, from the Rio di Minas in the Gulf of Mexico to Cape Breton
in Acadia, made the following observation : " There is in some of those
Countreys great abundance of Pearle, for in every cottage he founde
Pearle, in some howse a quarte, in some a pottell, in some a pecke,
more or lesse,
1 Conquest of Florida under Hernando De Soto, by Theodore Irving (London, 1835), Vol. 2, P- 7-
8 The Whole and True Discovery of Terra Florida, by Thomas Hackett (London, 1563).
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