Читать книгу The Book of the Pearl. The history, art, science, and industry of the queen of gems онлайн

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Tavernier was more familiar with the pearls themselves than with the methods of the fishery. The yellow color is not due to contact with the putrefactive flesh, and is independent of the manner of opening. In fact, if putrefaction caused the yellow color, this shade would be far more prevalent in the Manaar or Ceylon pearls than in those from Bahrein, for practically all of the Ceylon oysters are permitted to putrefy, whereas only a portion of those in the Persian Gulf are opened in this manner. Furthermore, notwithstanding that it is nearer the equator, the heat at Manaar during the pearling season is not to be compared with that at Bahrein when the season is at its height, for the Persian Gulf during July and August is notorious as one of the hottest places on the globe.

While the great bulk of the pearls are either white or yellowish, these fisheries yield a few pink, bluish, gray, and occasionally even black pearls. These unusual colors are not especially prized. A curious and remarkably detailed story has gone the rounds in which the qualities of Persian and Ceylon pearls are compared, to the disparagement of the latter, and during the last hundred years few accounts have been published of this fishery without recording it. We notice it first in Morier’s “Journey through Persia in 1808 and 1809,”^[121] but possibly it antedated that report. The statement is that the pearls of Ceylon peel off, while those of Persia are as “firm as the rock on which they grow”; and though they lose in color and luster one per cent. annually for fifty years, they still lose less than those of Ceylon, and at the expiration of the fifty years they cease to diminish in appearance.