Pearls and Pearling life

FIRST EDITION, half title, chromolithograph frontispiece, ownership note on title head, 8 chromolithograph plates, 1 folding map, illustrations, contemporary tree calf, spine gilt, extremities a little rubbed, 8vo, George Bell, 1886

Streeter was a very successful London jeweller. An international dealer and something of a buccaneer. Streeter outfitted his own pearling schooner, the Shree-Pas-Sair and he, himself, sailed on her and engaged in pearling in the Sulu Archipelago in the early 1880s. This is the same Streeter who put together the syndicate that successfully bid against the Rothschild’s to lease the ruby mines of Mogok after the British conquest of upper Burma in 1855. What is particularly interesting is his first person account of the Sulu islands and of the amusing adventures of his agent during Streeter’s attempt to corner the Ceylon market by buying the entire output of shell, from a harvest off the N. W. coast of Ceylon in 1880.