Accordingly , early the next June, having settled my family comfortably in Carthage, New York (Bishop Rulison's old home), I set forth on my quest. For my purpose two things were necessary, a staunch little fishing schooner and a competent guide. I found a small vessel at Bay-of- islands in Newfoundland and after careful inquiry I engaged a Micmac Indian, without exception the greatest and most resourceful guide and woodsman I have ever known. Mattie Mitchell was remarkably tall for an Indian he must have stood at least six feet three. His body was lean and sinewy and his strength prodigious. Many a time I have seen him swing a pack onto his shoulders, which I could hardly lift from the earth, and sustain it lightly over very difficult rocks and ground for two or three miles. His countenance was grim and sombre, rarely lighted by a smile, and his features, except for his small eyes, strikingly resembled the head of Cardinal Newman. He had a low, musical voice. He differed from other guides in that he knew all parts of the island of Newfoundland equally well. When I mentioned him to other guides, they would say, "I knows my own river and my own hunting ground, but Mattie, sir, knows everything. He's been walking all over the island since he was a child, and you can't lose him anywhere." He had an Indian's natural reserve and it was a long time before he would talk freely with me. When a white man lives with an intelligent Indian, in the course of a few weeks the Indian knows him thoroughly, but after months the white Man knows little more of the Indian's soul than he did at the beginning. After associating with Mattie for several years, I asked him if he were a Christian and if he had been baptized, to which he replied, "Don't know notin' about dat." My cook, Michael Gillis, a devout Roman Catholic, was greatly scandalized. "You dirty heathen he cried, didn�t I see you confessing to the Father just before you left home?" this excessive reticence is due partly to the Indian's fear of ridicule. Mattie possessed a vast fund of Indian mythology and folk-lore. When he visited a hamlet the fishing people would gather around him and he would amuse them with his tales for hours at a time. If I appeared, he would instantly become silent, nor could I induce him to tell me any of the old Indian religious beliefs.

When I explained to him my desire to find pearls, he seemed not in the least surprised, and he informed me that we should have no difficulty in doing so. He said that if we could find a river where there were both muskrats and shells, there were sure to be pearls. This I subsequently verified. His idea was that in some mysterious way muskrats made pearls. Later I inquired as to this of the Smithsonian Institution and found it to be the case. The muskrat thinks of nothing but mussels and he is continually ransacking their beds. Thus he communicates to the shellfish (the large unio mussel) certain parasites with which his fur is infected. These parasites are apparently irritating to the mussel and to relieve itself of pain it isolates them and elaborates the bland nacreous body we know as a pearl.

The Indian preferred that only he and I should go on this search. Accordingly, we laid up the schooner in a harbor and, supplied with provisions for several days, we set out in a canoe to explore the rivers. Mattie told me that the higher up the river we should go, the better would be our chances. After several fruitless attempts we found a small, gently-flowing stream, only two or three feet deep. its bottom was covered with large black shells, and muskrats abounded on its waters. I had omitted to provide any dredging tools, except a strong landing net and my salmon gaff The Indian divested himself of his clothing and waded out into the stream. He cared nothing about getting wet and he would plunge his head and shoulders into the water and come up with his hands full of shells. These he would only look at and throw away. At last he came to me with two large, ancient-looking shells m his hand, and remarked, "Sumpin in dose shells." The first contained nothing. Out of the second I took a beautiful, white spherical pearl, without exaggeration as large as the ball of my fourth finger. I judged therefore that this was a good place. We remained there about a week, occupying ourselves with the hard, disagreeable task of opening shells and ransacking their contents. During those days we collected four hundred and ninety pearls. All these, of course, were not as large or good as the first pearl. In fact, in all my pearl fishing I found only two others comparable to this one. The pearls we found were of various sizes and colors. We kept only those which were round and bright. Later, I learned from a pearl merchant in New York that the mussel, having produced a fine pearl, does not always know when to stop, but covers it with a hard opaque casing which looks like mud. As the pearl is built up, in tiny leaves or layers, like an onion, he had found a way of stripping off this opaque covering and sometimes he would find beneath it a bright lustrous pearl.

St. Stephen's as a parish was composed largely of middle-aged and elderly men and women who seldom thought of marrying. For this reason we had very few weddings, which was a source of sorrow to me. After my first find I asked Mr. Caldwell, a jeweler and one of my vestry men to mount twenty-five of these stones for me in sample, pretty rings. When I happened to have a wedding, I would frequently slip a pearl ring over the bride's finger, after the bridegroom had placed a wedding ring on it, as my present to the bride. This news, I need hardly say, soon spread around Philadelphia and for the remainder of my Rectorship I had as many weddings as any other minister m the city. In this manner I gave most of my pearls away.

One day, in the late autumn, when I came home for dinner, my wife told me that a large, rough, wooden box had come from the North, on which she had paid express charges amounting to twenty-six dollars. On opening it, I found that it contained canned lobsters. These were not packed in the usual way, the cans were large and must have weighed about ten pounds apiece. I did not care much for canned lobsters and I wondered what misguided friend had sent me such a present. One day, when a frugal lunch left my appetite unappeased, I opened with difficulty one of these great receptacles of heavy block-tin. Prepared to take out a juicy morsel of lobster-meat, the first thong I encountered was a piece of an old, red flannel shirt. This did not please me. I threw it on to the plate, but when it fell I heard it chink. On examination, it proved to be a little bag containing sixty beautiful pearls. The subtle Indian had devised this manner of packing them in order that they might reach me safely. There was something mysterious in the procedure which made me uncomfortable. I did not open another can, and when we moved to Boston I left the box with at least another dozen tins un-opened in my cellar. I have often wondered what became of them.