Byron says—­“Even an oyster may be crossed in love.”  Science, more precise and frank than the frankest of poets, tells us that oysters are afflicted with tapeworms, and to kill the germ of these indecent pests, enclose them in untimely tombs, which from the human standpoint are among the most lovely and precious of gems.  The assertions of the scientific are often the reverse of poetical.  We are constrained to believe them, but like our poetical delusions better, and for the origin of the pearl prefer the quaint fable of the Persians to the unpleasant fact of the zoologist.  A drop of water of ineffable purity falls from heaven to the sea, an oyster gapes and swallows it, the drop hardens and ripens, and becomes a pearl; and who is so devoid of the perception of purity, beauty and worth as to despise a pearl?

Here about, pearls were found.  We delight in them, though they prove the previous existence of a filthy ailment.  Any oyster may contain a pearl, a pearl of great price—­a thing of beauty, a joy for ever.  Every gold-lip, every black-lip oyster, is a chance in a lottery.  Was there ever a Beachcomber so pure and elevated of soul as to refuse the chances that Nature proffers gratuitously?  My meagre horde includes pearls of several tints, black, pink, and white.  They represent the paltriest prizes. in the lottery that no Government, however paternal, may prohibit, being mere “baroque,” fit only to be pounded up as medicine for some Chinaman luxuriously sick.  Yet there is a chance.  Some day the great prize may be drawn.  And then, “Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook?” The Beachcomber may be perverted into—­well, the next best on the list.  Yet they say in pitiful tones, those who rake among the muck of the streets, “What a dull life!  What a hopeless existence!  He is out of it all!” Yes, with a gladsome mind, and all its sounds, if not forgotten, at least muffled by music, soft as dawn, profound as the very sea.

Kennedy Shoal has been mentioned incidentally.  Some miles further north are two bare sandbanks.  Prior to the year 1890 they were occupied by a beche-de-mer fisherman, whose headquarters were on the chief of the South Barnard Islands—­some 12 or 14 miles to the north.  In fateful March of that year a cyclone swooped down on this part of the coast with the pent up fury of a century’s restraint.  The enormous bloodwood-trees torn out by the roots on Dunk Island testified to the force and ferocity of the storm.  The sandbanks, are isolated, dreary spots, the highest portion but 2 or 3 feet above the level reached by spring tides.  A cutter—­the Dolphin—­with a crew of aboriginals, in charge of a couple of Kanakas, was anchored at the shoal, and as the cyclone worked up, the Kanakas decided that the one and only bid for life was to run before it to the mainland.  It was a forlorn hope—­so forlorn that four or five of the aboriginals declined to take part in it, deeming it