The Persian Literature, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The...

I saw an Arab, who was standing amidst a circle of jewellers at Busrah, and saying: "On one occasion I had missed my way in the desert, and having no road-provision left, I had given myself up for lost, when all at once I found a bag of pearls. Never shall I forget that relish and delight, so long as I mistook them for parched wheat; nor that bitterness and disappointment, when I discovered that they were real pearls." In the mouth of the thirsty traveller, amidst parched deserts and moving sands, pearl, or mother-of-pearl, were equally distasteful. To a man without provision, and knocked up in the desert, a piece of stone or of gold, in his scrip, is all one.