Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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"That The
Emperor Was Too Liberal Of What Was Not His Own, And That He Had No
Right To Dispose Of The Oysters Which Live At The Bottom Of The
Sea."
The pearl fishery diminished rapidly about the end of the sixteenth
century; and, according to Laet, it had long ceased in 1633.* (*
"Insularum Cubaguae et Coches quondam magna fuit dignitas, quum
Unionum captura floreret:
Nunc, illa deficiente, obscura admodum
fama." Laet Nova Orbis page 669. This accurate compiler, speaking
of Punta Araya, adds, this country is so forgotten, "ut vix ulla
Americae meridionalis pars hodie obscurior sit.") The industry of
the Venetians, who imitated fine pearls with great exactness, and
the frequent use of cut diamonds,* rendered the fisheries of
Cubagua less lucrative. (* The cutting of diamonds was invented by
Lewis de Berquen, in 1456, but the art became common only in the
following century.) At the same time, the oysters which yielded the
pearls became scarcer, not, because, according to a popular
tradition, they were frightened by the sound of the oars, and
removed elsewhere; but because their propagation had been impeded
by the imprudent destruction of the shells by thousands. The
pearl-bearing oyster is of a more delicate nature than most of the
other acephalous mollusca. At the island of Ceylon, where, in the
bay of Condeatchy, the fishery employs six hundred divers, and
where the annual produce is more than half a million of piastres,
it has vainly been attempted to transplant the oysters to other
parts of the coast.
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