In his prose work The Sea of Cortez, a work which describes Steinbeck's and Ed Rickett's explorations in the Gulf of California, Steinbeck reports a story that he heard in the lower California Peninsula; it was reported as a true story occurring in "La Paz in recent years." Steinbeck writes:
An Indian boy, by accident, found a pearl of great size, an unbelievable pearl. He knew its value was so great that he need never work again. In this one pearl he had the ability to be drunk as long as he wished, to marry any one of a number of girls, and to make many more a little happy too. In his great pearl lay salvation, for he could in advance purchase masses sufficient to pop him out of purgatory like a squeezed watermelon seed. In addition, he could shift a number of dead relatives a little nearer to Paradise.
The original story continues by pointing out how every pearl buyer to whom he tried to sell the pearl offered such a small price that the young Indian finally refused to sell the pearl and, instead, hid it under a rock. For two nights in a row, the young man was attacked and beaten. Then, on the third night, he was ambushed and tortured, but still he refused to reveal the whereabouts of the Pearl of the World. Finally, after careful planning, he "skulked like a hunted fox to the beach," removed the pearl from its hiding place and threw it back into the Gulf.
