of the central counties of Illinois—McLean, Tazewell and Woodford, in
the Mackinaw river and tributaries, but no discovery equalling that of
Wisconsin occurred until 1897 when the Arkansas beds were discovered. A
peculiarity of this district is that whereas the unio is usually most
abundant in swift clear water having a sandy or gravelly bottom, many
are found here in the mud.
They have been taken over a wide territory from the rivers and streams
of the eastern half of the state, including the Black, White, Cache,
St. Francis, Ouachita, Saline and Dorcheat rivers, and in the valley of
the Arkansas. Following this were finds in Indian Territory, Missouri,
Georgia and Tennessee, the latter being the most prolific. The finest
pearls in Tennessee are found in the fluter, or lake shell, which is
the same as the mussel known on the Wabash as the wash-board. A yellow
shell is found in the Clinch River similar to the mucket of Arkansas,
from which pearls are taken.
Unlike the pearl oyster, the unio seems to be more prolific of pearls
in the shallows and riffles near the edges of the rivers. Most of the
fine pearls are found between the pallial line and the lip in the free
portion of the mantle. Those found within the pallial line, where the
mantle is attached to the shell, are seldom as lustrous or perfect.
Pearls are found in many States besides those mentioned, but the
fishing is done quietly and in some cases the sources of supply are
known to only a few who in the marketing of their pearls carefully
avoid giving any information. This is particularly true of some of the
eastern states. Streams in the Northwestern section of New York State
are regularly fished, but without excitement. The large fisheries of
the Mississippi and West are fished principally for the mother-of-pearl
in the shells. As with some of the marine fisheries, the pearl is
regarded as an extra.
The mussels are taken in various ways. In Canada, boats drag brush and
the branches of trees over the river bottoms, gathering the mussels
into the boat as the twigs become clogged. In the large beds often
found in our Western Rivers, fishing is done wherever possible by
dredging. Metal scoops, hand, shoulder and scissor-rakes are used and
the mollusks, taken in immense quantities are cooked to open them,
then cleaned of the meat which is afterwards examined for pearls.
This method is used where the mussels lie in great masses or on sandy
bottoms. Where there are boulders or large stones, a great number of
hooks are dragged over the beds.
The mussels, partially buried, lie lip-end up and the shell slightly
parted. Should anything come within this gaping aperture, the mussel at
once closes upon it, nipping on with such tenacity that the hold is not
loosed until the fisher draws it into the boat and forcibly releases
the hook. It is said the mollusk's shell would remain thus tightly
closed for ten or twelve hours. After dragging the hooks over the bed,
the mussels are taken off and the process repeated.
[Illustration: PEARL-FISHING IN THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER]
Various rough devices are used, the principle in all being the same.
One, illustrative, consists of a piece of lead pipe or an iron bar
several feet long, from which depend a number of double or triple hooks
several inches apart. This is dropped overboard, the rope on which it
is hung is fastened to the stern of the boat, and the boatman rows over
the mussel bed dragging it after him. Men who dredge for the mollusks
are called clammers. Pearlers are those who at odd times fish for the
mussels with pearls as the main object. This class is composed of the
backwoods natives who live about the streams in which the mussels
are found. They are people who usually follow their inclinations
as nearly as they can, working only as it becomes requisite to
obtain the few coarse necessities of their lives. With them also are
small farmers who at seasons when farm work is not pressing, seek the
excitement and possible profit of the hunt for pearls.
For all such persons the occupation has a great fascination. The
difficulties of following the streams through almost impenetrable
surroundings, the coarse fare of bacon, meal and coffee; the long
tramps back and forth to their mountain huts, or the exposure to night
in the tangle of the woods, have no terrors for them; they are but
common experiences.
Few pearls of value are found, but the occasional pearl which each one
does get, makes expectation tingle, and hope recounts again and again
the great finds which others have made. There are curious happenings
which illustrate the uncertainties of the work.
It is told on the Clinch river in East Tennessee that a pearler, having
patiently fished all day, examining the fish from time to time as
little heaps of them were gathered, without finding even a small pearl,
finally decided to quit. He was about to examine his last small heap
when a man standing by offered him fifty cents for the lot. The offer
was accepted. From the first shell opened, the buyer extracted a ball
pearl which was afterwards sold for one thousand dollars. Two of the
finest pearls taken one season from the same section were obtained from
a heel-splitter, carelessly dug out of the sand by a man wading in
the shallows of the river. The heel-splitter is a large thin-shelled
variety, so named by the natives because of the sharp, cutting quality
of the shell which protrudes from the sand of the river. They rarely
contain pearls, but when they do, the pearls are usually fine.
The largest proportion of fine pearls to the yield of any section since
discoveries have been recorded, came from Wisconsin, and many of the
best of these, especially of the fancy colored ones, were taken from
Sugar river. Many of these were exceptionally beautiful in both color
and luster and a good proportion of them were also round.
Much is written and told of the marvellous pearls found in our streams
worth large sums of money. Such pearls are found undoubtedly but not
in such quantities as one might think from the enthusiastic reports
current in daily papers. Finds are written up by reporters who know
nothing of pearls and prefer to write a readable story of wondrous gems
and great values to a statement of plain unvarnished facts. In this the
news-gatherer is assisted by some simple native with an eye single to a
good price and a capacity for exaggerated ideas of value impossible to
Maiden Lane.
It is no uncommon trick when buyers are present, to find again, a
pearl, which has been to New York and back and the ruse often succeeds.
Pearls are frequently sold at the fisheries for much more than they
would bring in the east. In fact it is difficult to buy ordinary pearls
at a reasonable price. The natives will sometimes sell a really fine
pearl for less than it is worth because they do not understand the
relative values of quality; but they usually over-estimate pieces of
poor quality.
A large majority of those found in our fresh-water mussels fail in some
essential quality. Many are chalky, or lustrous at one or two points
only. Others are faulty in shape, or if spherical, deeply pitted.
Really fine pieces are usually small or button, and when large, are
baroques. Some of the latter are magnificent. Weighing fifty to over
one hundred grains, with skins of extraordinary luster and iridescence;
white, or of a beautiful pink tint, these strawberry or rose pearls,
as they are called, frequently excel, by every standard of beauty, the
imperfect spheres which command a greater price in the market because
they are round.
The most common variety of unio in American rivers, especially in the
Mississippi river, is that known as the nigger-head (Quadrula ebena).
It is also the principal species used for button-making.
Similar is the warty-back (Quadrula pustulosa) so called because the
shell has a number of warts or excrescences on the outside of the
valves. The "bull-head" (Pleurobena Aesopus) is found in abundance with
the nigger-head. It has a blackish-brown exterior, presenting several
radiating ridges, and a white lining. The two latter are inferior as
material for buttons as the shells are brittle. The mucket (Lampsilis
ligamentinus) is a large shell, average size 4 inches, has a dark brown
exterior and cream-white lining. It is too thin and brittle to make
first class material for buttons though fine pearls are sometimes found
in them.
The sand-shells furnish good material for buttons. They are long,
sometimes six inches, and narrow. They are usually found on sandy
bottoms and are said to move from the channel toward the shores in
the morning and back in the evening. The most abundant is the yellow
sand-shell (Lampsilis anodontoides) so called from its bright yellowish
brown exterior. Another kind, the black sand-shell (Lampsilis rectus)
has a black epidermis. A smaller variety, less abundant now than
formerly, is the slough sand-shell (Lampsilis fallaciosus). These are
generally found in coves or the mouths of rivulets.
The deer-horn or buckhorn (Tritigonia verrucosa) is a large variety,
sometimes attaining a length of nine inches in the Iowa river, though
the average in the Mississippi is about five inches. The shell, as the
name indicates, has a rough, warty exterior. The supply is small and
uncertain.
Another rare species is the butterfly (Plagiola securis). It is a
small, flat, thick shell of fine color, and the valves are butterfly in
shape with a reddish-brown epidermis striped by darker radiating lines.
It is abundant only in the Illinois and Ohio rivers.
The hatchet-back, hackle-back, or heel-splitter (Symphynota
complanata), is a large black mussel having a thin sharp-edged shell,
one valve-edge projecting. It yields few pearls though fine specimens
are occasionally found in this variety.
The blue-point (Quadrula undulata) has a large, thick shell, with
ridges on the exterior, curving round the umbones and extending to
the edge. Like the black-edge meleagrina, the nacre at the edge is
discolored. In this case by a bluish or purplish tint.
Some idea of the enormous quantities of mussels contained in some of
these beds in our western rivers may be gained from the reports of the
fisheries in the first years of their discovery. Ten thousand tons of
shells were taken in three years near New Boston, Ill., from one bed.
Reckoned by the usual average this would mean not less than 100,000,000
shells. In some beds, the mussels have been found several feet deep,
the bottom layers being dead.
Notwithstanding the enormous numbers, these beds are often completely
exhausted in a few seasons. When the beds are first discovered, men
will take as much as 1500 to 2000 pounds of shell each, in a day's
fishing. In one hundred pounds of shells as they are taken, the average
number of valves or half shells will be, nigger-heads, about one
thousand; sand-shells, nine hundred; muckets, eight hundred, which
would be an average of nine thousand mussels per ton.
The meat in a ton of nigger-heads weighs over three hundred pounds.
This is usually removed by the fishermen by boiling the mussels for ten
or fifteen minutes in crude sheet iron tanks when the shells open and
the fleshy part falls out or may be easily removed by hand. To show
how little the pearls they may contain enter into the calculations of
these fishermen, it may be stated here that the shell-buyers pay about
twenty-five per cent. less for the mussels as taken from the river than
they do for the shells when cleaned.
On the Californian coast when the divers worked independently, they
preferred to sell the oysters unopened. They received about $4.50
per thousand on an average for the shells and double for the oysters
complete.
The fishing season for pearlers is from August to December. The large
operations for shell, in the early days of the industry, were confined
to the same period, but of late, fishing is carried on throughout the
year, immense quantities being taken through the ice. The shells are
better in cold weather, being less brittle than when exposed in the
boats during warm weather. Fishing through the ice is very wasteful
however, as the undersized, which are dropped back from the scoops and
rakes in the summer, when thrown out on the ice are allowed to remain
there and die.
The price of shells varies considerably from season to season.
An average price for nigger-heads is about ten dollars per ton;
sand-shells bring about twice as much, muckets half that price, and
the other varieties together will average about twenty-five per cent.
more than nigger-heads, though among these the deer-horn is worth about
four times as much as the nigger-head.
In the first six months of 1898 nearly four thousand tons of mussel
shells were sold by mussel fishermen on the Mississippi. They brought
about thirty-nine thousand dollars, 94 per cent. of these were
nigger-heads.
The spawning time of the unio varies with different species. In the
central Mississippi basin it is normally February, March and April for
nigger-head, and summer and early fall for the mucket and sand-shell.
The unio is a slow growing animal. Under normal conditions it takes
ten years for a nigger-head to reach a size of three inches; fifteen
to eighteen years to attain a shell diameter of 4-1/2 inches. This
corresponds very closely with the life of the meleagrina, though the
shell of the latter ceases to grow in size at about eight or ten years.
After that it continues to lay on thickness up to eighteen or twenty
years.
Although the discoveries so far in Africa are unimportant, it is
possible, now that the unio is known to exist there, that the streams
of that wonderful land of precious things may add a companion gem to
the vast natural hoards there of the diamond. In two years succeeding
his first find, the discoverer secured one hundred and fifty pearls at
an average of one pearl to eight hundred shells.
Authorities tell us that the nucleus of a mussel-pearl is usually
the larva of a distoma. Nuclei of pearls vary according to the
circumstances surrounding the beds of the shell-fish and those
circumstances have much to do with the occurrence of the pearl.
PRICE
Value, except in things which are constant and constantly changing
hands, is a matter of opinion. Price is the expression of that opinion
in money terms. Except in a few staple sizes and qualities, pearls
are affected by so many details which determine their value that it
is difficult to formulate rules to correspond and establish a base by
which all may be judged.
Shape, size, color, luster, and perfection, afford a multiplicity of
combinations sufficient to puzzle the judgment of the most expert,
and when to this is added the fact that there is no other one like
the piece to be valued so as to gauge opinion, there remains but one
finality, the agreement between buyer and seller on a price.
Disregarding the fluctuations of price occasioned by temporary
influences and the variations arising from local causes, this chapter
is intended to give information of the price of pearls in the United
States to retail dealers, and an idea of the relative value of
different qualities and shapes.
First it should be remembered that the price of pearls is reckoned
by the square of the weight, with the pearl-grain, 1/4 carat, as the
unit. Given the price at $3.00 per grain base or multiple, a half grain
pearl would be half of $3.00 or $1.50 per grain flat, or seventy-five
cents for the pearl. At the same price a one grain pearl would be at
$3.00 per grain multiple, $3.00 per grain flat and $3.00 for the pearl.
Upon the same basis a two grain pearl would be twice three are six,
$6.00 per grain flat and twice six are twelve, $12.00 for the pearl.
Or it may be stated thus: multiply the grain number by itself and the
product by the base price, as a 6 gr. pearl at $3.00 base, 6 × 6 = 36
× 3 = 108 dollars, the price of the pearl. This rule applies to all
but rejections or those too poor for classification, and extraordinary
pieces which by their extreme rarity pass beyond the governance of
rules. The sign used in quoting a multiple price is a square. This
placed after a price quoted means that it is the multiple price per
grain, not the flat grain price.
The price of pearls has increased even more than that of diamonds in
the last fifteen years. In common with many other things it has risen
with the rapid increase of wealth and the tremendous additions to the
world's stock of the standard or measure of values,—gold. Beyond this,
the demand for pearls, owing to the adoption of them as a fashion in
the United States where a large proportion of the world's wealth is
being created, has been stimulated to such a degree that the price of
them has advanced in a greater ratio to the depreciation of gold and
other forms of wealth than most commodities.
Twenty years ago good round Indian pearls up to five grains could be
bought for $1.50 base; to-day such pearls would cost $4.50 base and
whereas in those days pieces of extraordinary luster were allowed to
remain in the parcels and were sold at the same rate with the others,
they are now culled from the lots and held for extraordinary prices.
Size also now counts beyond the multiple of the square. The quality
held at $4.50 base up to five grains costs $6.00 above that size, and
at ten grains will bring $8.00 and over.
The yield of fine white pearls in sizes over ten grains is not large
and as there has been and is a steady demand for large pearls for the
centres of necklaces, sizes from ten to fifteen grains bring from eight
to eleven dollars multiple when matched. Egg and pear-shaped pearls of
the same grade, from five grains down, are worth twenty-five to thirty
per cent. less than round pearls; between five and ten grains ten to
fifteen per cent. less, and as they near fifteen grains and over the
pear-shape become of equal value with the round.
Imperfections which can be hidden by the setting decrease the price
twenty to thirty per cent., and there is about the same difference
between button and round pearls, according to the size of the plane.
The difference is still greater in the larger sizes. A yellow color
reduces the value in the market from fifteen to fifty per cent.
according to the depth and quality of the tint. The so-called blue
pearls, which are of a dark leaden white, are worth about half as much
as ordinary white, and about one-third the price of fine white Indians.
These blue pearls must not be confounded with the deep gray, slate, or
black pearls, included in the general term black pearls, as the latter
frequently command fancy prices.
Salt-water pearls taken from the smaller varieties of the avicula of
some seas, though of the same grade in the qualities of color, luster
and shape, are nevertheless worth less than Indian pearls, because they
lack a certain quality of texture which the latter, together with those
of some other waters, possess to an eminent degree.
American fresh-water pearls have been and are lower in price than
Orientals. They have however commanded much better prices of late than
formerly and are increasing in value. At present they bring about
one-third less than corresponding qualities from the seas. There is a
greater difference in the price of baroques. Fine Venezuelan baroques
from a half to seven or eight grains are worth now thirty-five to fifty
cents base.
Some of these when mounted appear like round or pear-shape pearls and
are in good demand. Larger pieces can rarely be made to appear other
than baroque and do not therefore command as good figures. They seldom
bring more than five dollars per grain flat, in sizes from ten to
twenty grains. Fresh-water pearls likewise fetch better prices reckoned
by the multiple in the smaller sizes, though they are usually quoted
by the grain flat at five to twenty-five cents under ten grains, and
twenty-five cents to three dollars per grain in larger sizes.
Iridescent, finely tinted, very lustrous, strawberry, and rose baroques
of large size, are worth five dollars per grain and very exceptional
pieces bring even more. Slugs, or ordinary baroques, are sold all the
way from six dollars an ounce to ten cents per grain. Good wing-pearls
can be bought at one to five cents per grain; small wings and
rejections are sold by the ounce.
Perfectly round fresh-water pearls of good quality and even skin are
rare and prices are advancing steadily. Good buttons have advanced
fully twenty-five per cent. in the last year. Fine fancies such
as were found at one time in the Sugar River, Wisconsin, since the
fisheries there have been exhausted, are scarce and high.
The low prices paid by button manufacturers for mussel shells for the
mother-of-pearl in them during the past year, has been one of the chief
factors in reducing the quantity of pearls found and the consequent
increase of price. It seldom pays the fisher to gather mussels for
pearls only; it is the steady returns from the sale of the shells which
ensures an adequate reward for his labors. Shells that once brought
twenty dollars per ton fell during the early part of 1905 to a third of
that amount and later went as low as two dollars and a half. They are
now going up again.
Many pearls are seriously injured by the practice of fishers who rely
upon the sale of the shells for their returns, of throwing the mussels
into vats of hot water to open them. The pearls released from the
shells fall to the bottom and getting too near the hot iron are killed,
which means that the luster is partially or wholly destroyed.
Dredging is now quite common and is doing much to deplete the
mussel-beds of the west. When one bed is completely divested of shells,
the clammer moves on to another and repeats the process, so that the
supply of fresh-water pearls is coming to depend on the constant
discovery of new mussel-beds. Unless legislation regulates the industry
the American supply will soon cease.
The cheapest fresh-water pearls in the market to-day are the finest.
The pearlers along the streams of the west and south will no longer
part with the pearls they find to the speculators at the old time
prices. In fact they generally want much more than they are worth and
often get more than the speculator can afford to pay to ensure a profit
when he comes to sell them in the business centres.
But these fishers know little of the merits and value of the finer
qualities. They do not yet realize the great difference in value
which accrues as the pearl exceeds the average of luster, color, or
perfection, consequently the speculator can often buy a very fine pearl
for little more than he would have to pay for an ordinary pearl and
though he knows that the piece is worth much more than he has paid, and
tries to get as nearly what it is worth as he can, both his judgment
and disposition to sell are affected by the low price he has paid and
the chances are that he too in turn will sell it at much less than its
relative value as compared with the ordinary market price of poor or
medium quality goods.
[Illustration: THE MARCHIONESS OF LONDONDERRY]
This condition will gradually change. As in the past the fisher learned
more and more of the market value of ordinary pearls, so also he will
learn to know the price of exceptional pieces and to know them when he
has them. Even now, speculators hold fine large pearls at high prices
because of the ready sale for them in Europe.
It is difficult to compare the price of pearls in ancient times
with that of to-day. We make much finer and closer assortments and
gradations of quality and the business now is on a more distinctly
commercial basis. People generally are better informed and more
critical; they are not influenced by wonder, sentiment, superstition
and the "Arabian Nights" atmosphere, as much as formerly.
The Orient is not as strange and far away as it was. In the old times,
jewellers could and undoubtedly did take advantage of the awe with
which things from the mysterious East were regarded, and of the general
ignorance, to obtain large sums for very ordinary if not inferior
gems. Even in these days, many are influenced more by the source from
whence they come than by a critical knowledge of the gems they buy.
Some, who would not buy the most beautiful fresh-water pearl, will
pay an exorbitant price for one poorer and less valuable because it
is oriental. La Pellegrina in the hands of an obscure dealer would be
passed unnoticed by many who would be enraptured by a more ordinary gem
from a jeweller or person of renown.