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In Tehran is the most famous jeweled throne in the World. It is called the Peacock Throne. It is made of solid gold and the back is in the form of a peacock’s tail studded with rubies, emeralds, and sapphires—red, green, and blue precious stones.
All jewels, such as diamonds, rubies, and emeralds, come out of the ground—all except one. But one jewel does not come out of the ground. It comes out of the water, out of an oyster. This jewel is the pearl. The oyster makes a pearl around a grain of sand that has gotten into his shell and annoys him. So at the center of each pearl is a tiny grain of sand. It takes an oyster four or five years to make a pearl the size of a pea.In the Persian Gulf the finest pearls are found. The oysters are not good to eat, but are gathered for the pearls that are to be found in them. Men dive for the oysters, staying under the water long enough to go downto the bottom, gather a basket of oysters and come up to the top—as long as they can hold their breath. Youcan probably hold your breath only half a minute, but a pearl-diver can hold his for a minute or longer, andit is said that some have been able to do so for an hour—but that is a fairy-tale. A little boy wrote this composition telling how it is done: “They clamp clothes-pins on their noses and stuff wax in their earses to keep out the waterses. Then they fasten heavy stones to their feetses and jump overboard from small boatses.” Many pearl-divers lose their lives each year. They burst a blood vessel or are drowned or stung to death by a poisonous fish called the ray. But millions of dollars’ worth of pearls are gathered each year to ornament the necks and fingers of queens and ladies all over the World.
