In this country abundant evidence exists that before the advent of the white man, or of the red-skins as we know them, the aborigines, from the cold rise of the Mississippi to the glades of Florida, used them for their adornment. In savage wilds, and on coasts that knew not the sight of ships or other shores, copper-skinned natives treasured the glistening things they found in the mollusks of the sea-shoals and inland streams. Quantities of pearls have been found in the Indian mounds, many of them loose, others strung for necklaces and wristlets, some mounted in quaint and primitive fashion, all showing that in the days of unbroken forests and swarming game and roving tribes of untrammeled savages, in the tepees of the braves, their queens wore pearls even as they are worn now by fairer successors in the palaces reared where once were forests and camping-grounds. In those days the savage lords of the undivided earth knew nothing of whirring lathes and drills; of hardened points of steel turning with lightning rapidity and unerring precision. Slowly they burned a way through the gem with hot copper wire, destroying thereby with ruthless ignorance the delicate beauty of jewels fit for royalty. To them the slender prongs of gold with which the modern jeweller holds the lustrous balls, uncovered and in safety, were unknown. Instead, the savage set them in holes bored in the teeth of animals, possibly to enhance the relics of a great fight with some fierce beast that succumbed finally to his prowess: possibly to add beauty to the grim reminders of her lord's valor when he hung them round the neck of a favored mate. The Indian of this continent was much more primitive in the art of the jeweller than in the manufacture of implements for war and the chase. Gaudy colors extracted from plants and minerals appealed more to his unthinking eye than a chaste form of beauty. With these he could stain his blankets, record on skins of slaughtered animals his deeds, or paint in hideous signs upon his face the malignancy of war. His time and thought and ingenuity were given to things which would contribute to his master passion and glorify its deeds. The scalps of his enemies, the skins of animals he slaughtered, the feathers of birds that fell to his unerring arrow, the teeth of bears and mountain lions slain in desperate encounters, these were his jewels. Nor was his sexual instinct sufficiently refined to enthrone his mate. She was his slave, and her reward for toil was pride in his deeds and glory. He knew little of the tender homage which brings gifts and lays them at the feet of woman. Instinctively he made a setting for his pearls of bears' teeth, that they might carry the scent of blood and tell the story of his conquest. Nevertheless, among these rude tribes of wolfish savages, sequestered from the touch of other people more refined, the modest pearl found favor, and in it they unconsciously paid tribute to one of the purest forms of beauty.