The ships which navigated the Red Sea brought gold and silver from Ophir and Tarshish; they brought myrrh, frankincense, and ivory, from Saba, and various kinds of spices from the continent of Asia, across the Indian ocean. If we judge by the little notice taken of them in very ancient times, the treasures which lay nearer home, in their own seas, and upon their own shores, were very little sought after, or spoken of, in the days when the navigation of the Arabian gulf was at its height. We are not, however, to believe that the pearl fishery, even in those days, was totally neglected; but foreign trade was grown to such a magnitude, and its value so immense, that we are not to be surprised, that articles that were only a matter of ornament and luxury, or of domestic use, and did not enter into the medium of commerce, were little spoken of, however closely followed and well understood.

We gather from scripture, the only history of these early times to be depended upon, that precious stones were imported from the southern coast of Africa. This trade, however great it might be, is mentioned but slightly, and as it were accidentally, being absorbed in the very great articles of commerce then spoken of. In the same manner we read of the beauty and excellence of pearls cursorily introduced, often by allusions and comparisons throughout the sacred books, but always in a manner which sufficiently shews the great intrinsic estimation in which they were held.

Pearls are found in all the four quarters of the world, but in no degree of excellence, excepting in the east of Africa and in Asia. They are in every part of the Red Sea, they are in the Indian Ocean, in that low part of the coast of Arabia Felix called the Baherein, which joins to the Gulf of Persia. There are banks where they are found about Gombron to the eastward of that Gulf, or in the flat coast there; and in the seas which wash the island of Ceylon, many have been found of the greatest beauty and price; and for number, they are nowhere so plentiful as in the Baherein, between the coast of Arabia Felix and the island of Ormus, whence they are transported to Aleppo, then sent to Leghorn, and circulated through Europe, and this above all others is the market for seed pearls.

The oyster is currently reported to be the species of fish where this precious guest is lodged, and many a weary search and inquiry I have made after these oysters in the Red Sea, despairing always to see a pearl, till we had first found an oyster. The fact, however, turned out to be, that there are no such fish as oysters in the Arabian Gulf, and though our success in finding pearls was small, yet we got from the natives of the coast a sufficient number as well as information, to put it beyond doubt to what fish this beautiful and extraordinary production belonged.

Pearls are produced only in shells that are bivalves, that is, which have an upper and lower shell closing by a hinge in a manner little differing from the oyster. It is commonly said by the fishermen, that all bivalves in the Red Sea have pearls of some kind in them. This is a very rude and large view of the matter, for though it is true that some excrescences, or secretions, of the nature of pearls, may be found in the bisser, and the large bivalves with which this sea abounds, yet it is well known to all conversant in these matters, that many of the pearl shell itself (I shall not call it an oyster, for it is not one) are found without any pearl or likeness of pearl in them; being, I suppose, not yet arrived to that age when the extravasation of that juice which forms the pearl happens.

There are three shell fish in the Red Sea which regularly are sought after as containing pearls. The first is a mussel, and this is of the rarest kind, whether they are now failed in number, or whether they were at any former time frequent, is now unknown. They are chiefly found in the north end of the Gulf, and on the Egyptian side. The only part I have ever seen them was about Cosseir, and to the northward of it, where I must observe there was an ancient port, called Myos Hormos, which commentators have called the Port of the Mouse, when they should have translated it, the Harbour of the Mussel. This fish contains often pearls of great beauty for lustre and shape, but seldom of a white or clear water. Pliny relates this to be the case in the Italian seas, and also in the Thracian Bosphorus, where he observes they are more frequent.

The second sort of shell which generally contains the pearl is called Pinna. It is broad and semicircular at the top, and decreases till it turns sharp at the lower end, where is the hinge. It is rough and figured on the outside, of a beautiful red colour, exceedingly fragil, and sometimes three feet long. In the inside it is cloathed with a most beautiful lining called Nacre, or mother-of-pearl, white, tinged with an elegant blush of red. Of this most delicate complexion is the pearl found in this fish, so that it seems to confirm the sentiments of M. Reamur on the formation of pearls, that they are formed of that glutinous fluid which is the first origin of the shell, that it forms the pearl of the same colour and water that is communicated to it from that part of the shell with which it is more immediately in contact, and which is generally observed in the pinna to be higher in colour as it approaches the broadest, which is the reddest end.

Upon the maturest consideration, I can have no doubt that the pearl found in this shell is the penim or peninim rather, for it is always spoken of in the plural, to which allusion has been often made in scripture. And this derived from its redness is the true reason of its name. On the contrary, the word pinna has been idly imagined to be derived from penna, a feather, as being broad and round at the top, and ending at a point, or like a quill below. The English translation of the scripture, erroneous and innacurate in many things more material, translates this peninim by rubies95, without any foundation or authority, but because they are both red, as are bricks and tiles, and many other things of base and vile materials. The Greeks have translated it literally pina, or pinna, and the shell they call Pinnicus; and many places occur in Strabo, Elian, Ptolemy, and Theophrastus, which are mentioned famous for this species of pearl. I should imagine also, that by Solomon saying it is the most precious of all productions, he means, that this species of pearl was the most valued, or the best known in Judea. For though we learn from Pliny that the excellency of pearls was their whiteness, yet we know the pearls of a yellowish cast are those esteemed in India to this day, as the peninim, or reddish pearl was in Judea in the days of Solomon.

The third sort of pearl-bearing shell is what I suppose has been called the Oyster; for the two shells I have already spoken of surely bear no sort of likeness to that shell-fish, nor can this, though most approaching to it, be said any way to resemble it, as the reader will judge by a very accurate drawing given of it, now before him.

Bochart says these are called Darra, or Dora in Arabic, which seems to be the general word for all pearls in scripture, whereas the peninim is one in particular. In the Red Sea, where it holds the first rank among pearls, it is called Lule single, or96Lulu el Berber, i. e. the pearl of Berber, Barabra, or Beja, the country of the Shepherds, which we have already spoken of at large, extending from the northern tropic, southward, to the country of the Shangalla or Troglodytes. Androsthenes says, the ancient name of these pearls was Berberis, which he believes to be an Indian word, and so it is, understanding, as the ancients did, India to mean the country I have already mentioned between the tropics.

The character of this pearl is extreme whiteness, and even in this whiteness Pliny justly says there are shades or differences. To continue to use his words, the clearest of these are found in the Red Sea, but those in India have the colour of the flakes, or divisions of the lapis specularis. The most excellent are those like a solution of alum, limpid, milky like, and even with a certain almost imperceptible cast of a fiery colour. Theophrastus says, that these pearls are transparent, as indeed the foregoing description of Pliny would lead us to imagine; but it is not so, and if they were, it is apprehended they would lose all their beauty and value, and approach too much to glass.

It has been erronenously said, that pearl shells grow upon rocks, and again, that they are caught by nets. This is certainly a contradiction, as nobody would employ nets to gather fish from among rocks. On the contrary, all kinds of pearl are found in the deepest, stillest water, and softest bottom. The parts of most of them are too fine to bear the agitation of the sea among rocks. Their manners and oeconomy are little known, but, as far as I have observed, they are all stuck in the mud upright by an extremity, the mussel by one end, the pinna by the small sharp point, and the berberi, or lule, by the hinge or square part which projects from the round.

In shallow and clear streams I have seen small furrows or tracts, upon the sandy bottom, by which you could trace the mussel, from its last station, and these not straight, but deviating into traverses and triangles, like the course of a ship in a contrary wind laid down upon a map, the tract of the mussel probably in pursuit of food. The general belief is, that the mussel is constantly stationary in a state of repose, and cannot transfer itself from place to place. This is a vulgar prejudice, and one of those facts that are mistaken for want of sufficient pains, or opportunity, to make more critical observation. Others finding the first opinion a false one, and that they are endowed with power of changing place like other animals, have, upon the same foundation, gone into the contrary extreme, so far as to attribute swiftness to them, a property surely inconsistent with their being fixed to rocks. Pliny and Solinus say, that the mussel have leaders, and go in flocks, and that their leader is endowed with great cunning, to protect himself and his flock from the fishers, and when he is taken, the others fall an easy prey. This however I think we are to look upon as a fable. Some of the most accurate observers having discovered the motion of the mussel, which is indeed wonderful, and that they lie in beds, which is not at all so, have added the rest to make their history complete.

It is observed that pearls are always the most beautiful in those places of the sea where a quantity of fresh water falls. Thus in the Red Sea they were always most esteemed that were fished from Suakem southward, that is in those parts corresponding to the country anciently called Berberia, and Azamia, from reasons before given; on the Arabian coast, near the island Camaran, where there is abundance of fresh water; and the island of Foosht, laid down in my map, where there are springs; there I purchased one I had the pleasure to see taken out of the shell. It has been said that the fish of these shells are good, which is an error; they were the only shell-fish in the Red Sea I found not eatable. I never saw any pearl shells on either side southward of the parallel of Mocha in Arabia Felix. As it is a fish that delights in repose, I imagine it avoids this part of the gulf, as lying open to the Indian Ocean, and agitated by variable winds.

In that part of my narrative where I speak of my return through the Desert of Nubia, and the shells found there, I have likewise mentioned the mussel found in the salt springs that appear in various parts of that desert. These likewise travel far from home, and are sometimes surprised by the ceasing of the rains, at a greater distance from their beds than they have strength and moisture to carry them. In many of these shells I have found those kind of excrescences which we may call Pearls, all of them ill-formed, foul, and of a bad colour, but of the same consistence, and lodged in the same part of the body as those in the sea. The mussel, too, is in every respect similar, I think larger, the outer skin or covering of it is of a vivid green. Upon removing this, which is the epidermis, what next appears is a beautiful pink, without gloss, and seemingly of a calcareous nature. Below this, the mother-of-pearl, which is undermost, is a white without lustre, partaking much of the blue, and very little of the red, and this is all the difference I observed between it and the pearl-bearing mussel in the Red Sea; but even this latter I always found in still water, soft bottom, and far from stony or rocky ground. None of these pearl mussels, either in the Red Sea or the desert, have any appearance of being spinners, as they are generally described to be.

I have said that the Baherein has been esteemed the place whence the greatest quantity of pearls are brought. I would be understood to mean, that this has been the reputed greatest regular market from antiquity to the present time. But Americus, in his second navigation, says, that he found an unknown people of that continent, who sold him above 54 pound weight for 40 ducats97. And Peter the Martyr says, that Tunacca, one of the kings of that country, seeing the great desire the Spaniards had for pearls, and the value they set upon them, sent some of his own people in search of them, who returning the fourth day, brought with them 12 pounds of pearls, each pound 8 ounces. If this is the case, America surely excells both Africa and Asia in the quantity of this article.

The value of pearls depends upon size, regularity of form, (for roundness is not always requisite) weight, smoothness, colour, and the different shades of that colour. Suetonius says, that CÆsar gave to Servilia, Marcus Brutus’s mother, a pearl worth about L. 50,000 of our money. And Cleopatra, after vaunting to her lover, Mark Antony, that she would give him a supper which should cost two hundred and fifty-thousand pounds, for this purpose dissolved one of the pearls which she carried in her ears, which amounted to that price, and drank it. The other, it is said, was carried afterwards to Rome by Augustus CÆsar, sawn in two, and put in the ears of Venus Genetrix.

The price of pearls has been always variable. Pliny seems to have over-rated them much, when he says they are the most valuable and excellent of all precious stones. He must probably have had those just mentioned in his view, for otherwise they cannot bear comparison with diamonds, amethysts, rubies, or sapphires.

It has been observed to me by the pearl fishers in the east, that when the shell is smooth and perfect, there they have no expectation of a pearl, but are sure to find them when the shell has begun to be distorted and deformed. From this it would seem, as the fish turned older, the vessels containing the juice for forming the shell, and keeping it in its vigour, grew weak and ruptured; and thence, from this juice accumulating in the fish, the pearl was formed, and the shell brought to decay, perfectly in the manner, as I have before said, supposed by M. Reamur.

In Scotland, especially to the northward, in all rivers running from lakes, there are found mussels that have pearls of more than ordinary merit, though seldom of large size. I have purchased many hundreds, till lately the wearing of real pearls coming into fashion, those of Scotland have increased in price greatly beyond their value, and superior often to the price of oriental ones when bought in the east. The reason of this is a demand from London, where they are actually employed in work, and sold as oriental. But the excellency of all glass or paste manufactory, it is likely, will keep the price of this article, and the demand for it within bounds, when every lady has it in her power to wear in her ears, for the price of sixpence, a pearl as beautiful in colour, more elegant in form, lighter and easier to carry, and as much bigger as she pleases, than those famous ones of Cleopatra and Servilia. I shall only further observe, that the same remark on the shell holds in Scotland as in the east. The smooth and perfect mussel shell rarely produces a pearl, the crooked and distorted shell seldom wants one.

I shall here mention a very elegant sort of manufactory, with which I cannot positively say the ancients were acquainted, which is fineering, or inlaying with the inside of the shell called mother-of-pearl, known to the dealers in trinkets all over Europe, and in particular brought to great perfection at Jerusalem. That of Peninim, though the most beautiful, is too fragil and thin to be employed in large pieces. It is the nacre, or mother-of-pearl taken from the Lulu el Berberi, or what is called Abyssinian oyster, principally used in those fine works. Great quantities of this shell are brought daily from the Red Sea to Jerusalem. Of these all the fine works, the crucifixes, the wafer-boxes, and the beads, are made, which are sent to the Spanish dominions in the new world, and produce a return incomparably greater than the staple of the greatest manufactory in the old.

THE END.

To
THE KING.
This Map, Containing a
CHART
of the
Arabian Gulf
With its Egyptian, Ethiopian and Arabian Coasts,
from Suez to
Bab el Mandeb,
A Journey through ABYSSINIA to GONDAR, its Capital,
From thence to the Source of the
Nile
The whole of that RIVER, from its Source to the
Mediterranean.
Now first laid down from Astronomical Observations
OF
All those points necessary to Ascertain the form of its Course,
The Return by Sennaar and the Great Desert of
Nubia and Beja
All laid down by Actual Survey with the largest
and most perfect Instruments now in use.
By His Majestys most
dutiful and faithful Subject & Servant
James Bruce