The Venezuelan pearl fishery now gives employment to about 350 boats, manned by five or six men each, sailing from the ports of Juan Griego, Cumana, and Carupano. These are sail craft, measuring from two to fifteen tons each, and are licensed by the Venezuelan authorities at a charge of 15 bolivars ($2.92) each. Most of the boats use dredges, but some of them resort to nude diving, after the manner of the sixteenth century. Attempts have been made to use the scaphander, or diving armor, but without success, owing largely to the difficulty in obtaining experienced workmen, and also to local prejudice against this form of fishery. It is claimed that in using the scaphander, all oysters are removed from the reefs, whereas the _arrastra_ or dredge spreads the oysters and thereby enlarges the reefs. This is the principal and, except those at Sharks Bay and the Sulu Islands, the only important pearl fishery in which the oysters are secured by means of dredges. These are made of iron and are similar to those implements used in the scallop fisheries of New York and Rhode Island. They are dragged over the beds, and when filled are lifted and their contents emptied into the boat, the fishermen culling out the desirable oysters from the mass and throwing the refuse material overboard. The pearl-oyster (_Margaritifera radiata_) secured on the coast of Venezuela is closely related to the Ceylon species. It averages slightly larger in size, and there is a much greater range in coloration. The pearls are of good quality. In color they range from white to bronze, and occasionally a so-called black one is found. The total output is valued locally at about 1,750,000 francs ($350,000) per year. Most of them are sold in Paris. Owing to their small size and lack of thickness, the shells of the Venezuela pearl-oyster are of little or no value in the mother-of-pearl trade. Thousands of tons of them, the accumulations of scores of fisheries, lie in heaps and ridges along the coast, as though in years long past vast armies of oysters, engaged in deadly combat, had left their innumerable myriads of slain comrades to bleach on the shores. THE PANAMA PEARL FISHERIES The bordring Ilands, seated here in ken, Whose Shores are sprinkled with rich Orient Pearle, More bright of hew than were the Margarets That Caesar found in wealthy Albion. ROBERT GREENE, _Orlando Furioso_ (1594). From the point of view of the Spaniards of his day, the greatest result of Balboa’s immortal journey in 1513 across the Isthmus of Panama to the broad waters of the Pacific, was the discovery of the pearl resources of the Gulf of St. Michael, now known as the Gulf of Panama. Probably the best description of this is given by Lopez de Gomara in his “Historia general de las Indias,” published in 1554, from which we translate the following account.