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VI

PEARLS FROM ASIA

THE PERSIAN GULF, FISHERIES OF INDIA, CEYLON PEARL FISHERIES, RED SEA AND ARABIAN SEA, CHINA, JAPAN, SIBERIA, ETC.

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Dear as the wet diver to the eyes

Of his pale wife, who waits and weeps on shore,

By sands of Bahrein in the Persian Gulf;

Plunging all day in the blue waves; at night,

Having made up his toll of precious pearls,

Rejoins her in their hut upon the shore.

Sir Edwin Arnold.

The pearl fisheries of the Persian Gulf are the most famous and valuable in the world, and have been prosecuted for more than two thousand years. A translation by that eminent Assyriologist, Jules Oppert, of a cuneiform inscription on a broken obelisk, erected presumably by a king of Nineveh, seems to indicate a very early origin for these fisheries.^[89] Professor Oppert’s translation is:

In the sea of the changeable winds (i.e., the Persian Gulf),

his merchants fished for pearls;

In the sea where the North Star culminates,

they fished for yellow amber.