where
he did see some as great as an acorn, and Richard Browne, one of his
companions, found one of these great pearls in one of their canoes, or
Boates, wch Pearle gaue to Mouns Champaine, whoe toke them aboarde his
Shippe, and brought them to Newhaven in ffrunce." '
The
English were quick to note the presence of pearls in this country, and
it is interesting to find that, centuries before, Suetonius states that
Caesar undertook his British expedition for the sake of finding pearls,
and Pliny and Tacitus report his bringing home a buckler made of
British pearls, which he dedicated to Venus Genetrix' and hung up in
her temple. An account of the pearl fisheries in Ireland was
published, stating that oysters were found set up in the sands of the
river-beds, with the open side from the torrent. About one in one
hundred would contain a pearl, and one pearl in one hundred would be
tolerably clear. Between the years 1761 and 1764 the river Conway in
Scotland supplied the London market with pearls to the value of £
10,000 sterling, and fine Scotch pearls are still sold in London. The
rivers of Cumberland, the Conway in Wales and the Tay in Scotland, have
yielded pearls that were noted for their beauty in time past.
Father
Louis Hennepin assures us that the Indians along the Mississippi wore
bracelets and ear-rings of fine pearls, which they spoilt, having
nothing to bore them with but fire. He adds: " They gave us to
understand that they received them in exchange for their calumets from
nations inhabiting the coast of the great lake to the southward, which
I take to be the Gulph of Florida."'
A
member of the expedition of Sir Walter Raleigh collected from the
natives of Virginia 5,000 pearls, " of which number he chose so many
as made a fayre chaine, which for their likenesse and uniformity in
roundnesse, orientnesse and pidenesse of many excellent colors, with
equalitie in greatness, were very fayre and rare.'"
1 Documents connected with the History of South Carolina, edited by Plowden Charles Jennett Weston (London, 1856), p. 8.
* Transactions of the Philosophic Society for 1693.
3 New Discovery, etc. (London, 1698), p. 177.
4 A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (Frankfort on the Main, 1590), p. 11.
