The Pearl: Its Story, Its Charm and Its Value
9781465650856
201 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
The sea in all her moods has a strange fascination for the children of the dry land. The rumble and thunder of her never ending procession of rolling breakers, rising and falling, tumbling over the sands, to race hissing back to shelter under the curling crest of an eternal successor; the mad recurring dash which cannot be discouraged, of great waters upon unyielding rocks whose grim faces smile at the spume fountains falling back upon them; the wash and mutter of rocky shoals; the suck and bellow of her caverns and the monotone she chants, heedless of hearers to the ages; all these charm the hearts of men and bring them into the fellowship of spirits they feel, but cannot understand. For the moods of the sea and the ways of the wind are akin to the heart of a man. His eyes dance with the flicker of light in the path of the sun over watery wastes; his breast heaves in unison with the multitudinous swellings of the sea; he finds peace in the slumber of her calms and exults in her mad race before the drive of the tempest, but he seldom thinks below the surface and knows little of the things she hides in her deeps. Yet a world lives there, very strange and full of enchantments. Sheltered under the breasts of the sea and undisturbed by the furies of the upper world, myriads of living creatures, graceful, beautiful, wonderful, traverse the peaceful depths. In the vast and fathomless solitudes, things grow and take on form, meet for the eyes of the gods. In everlasting touch with soft currents, trees of coral grow from rocky beds and finny tribes of every shape and hue glide in and out among their fantastic branches. Water covering all, on hills, plateaus, shelving stretches, sandy bars and rocky shoals; in valleys, chasms and even in the dread abysses, are things as strange to man as Jupiter or Saturn holds; weird as the creatures of our dreams; uncanny as the pictures a riotous imagination paints and some as beautiful. Near the shore and a few miles out, where the bottom of the sea is but a few fathoms deep and where man can go and come and live, there are among other marvellous creations, shells of wonderful structure and beautiful to look upon. One by one these have been discovered during past ages by the adventurous and for their usefulness or beauty have awakened the desire of those who dwell upon the earth. The chank, the sacred shell of the Hindus, has been used by the priests of Buddha for centuries as a horn to call the faithful. Shankar the Destroyer, of Hindu mythology, and Vishnu, each hold a chank shell in one of their hands. The shell whorl usually runs from left to right, sometimes it is found with the whorl reversed and these were so highly regarded by Hindus, Cingalese and Chinese that in old times they were sold for their weight in gold. Even now they bring a good price in the eastern markets. They are kept in the pagodas of China to hold the sacred oil: the priests of Ceylon administer medicine by them. In Dacca the chank is cut into armlets and anklets for Hindu women upon whose persons they are left after death. The delicate pink cameos carved from the Queen Conch have delighted feminine eyes of almost every race. The Pearly Nautilus decks many a dainty lady's table and is wrought into a thousand quaint conceits. The silky byssus of the Pinna has been woven into fabrics of such fineness as to be thought worthy of acceptance by Popes and princes.
