Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from An Account of the Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Californian Peninsula: As Given by Jacob Baegert, a German Jesuit Missionary, Who Lived There Seventeen Years During the Second Half of the Last Century
Itn the last chapter of the first part the author gives an account of the pearl fisheries and silver mines carried 011 in Lower California while he was there. Both kinds of enterprise are represented as insignificant and by no means very profitable. Every summer, he says, eight, ten or twelve poor Spaniards from Sonora, Cinaloa or other parts opposite the peninsula, cross the Gulf in little boats, and encamp on the California shore for the purpose of obtaining pearls. They carry with them a supply of Indian corn and some hundred weight of dried beef, and are accompanied by a number of Mexican Indians, who serve as pearl fishers, for the Californians themselves have hitherto shown no inclination to risk their lives for a few yards of cloth. The pearl fishers are let down into the sea by ropes, being provided with a bag for receiving the pearl oysters which they rake from the rocks and the bottom, and when they can no longer hold their breath, they are pulled up again with their treasure. The oysters, without being opened, are counted, and every fifth one is put aside for the king. Most of them are empty; some contain black, others white pearls, the latter being usually small and ill-shaped. If a Spaniard, after six or eight weeks of hard labor, and after deducting all expenses, has gained a hun dred American pesos (that is 500 French livres, or a little more than 200 Rheu ish ?orims - a very small sum in America!) he thinks he has made a little for tune which he cannot realize every season. God knows whether the fifth part of the pearls fished in the Californian sea yields, on an average, to the Cathe lic king 150 or 200 pesos in a year, even if no frauds are committed in the transaction. I heard of only two individuals, with whom I was also personally acquainted, who had accumulated some wealth, after spending twenty and more years in that line of business. The others remained poor wretches, with all their pearl fishing.
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