FISHING FOR PEARLS.
Pearls differ from any other kind of precious gems in requiring no aid from art to bring out their beauty. While diamonds and sapphires and rubies require to be cut and polished before they flash forth their lustrous light, pearls may be said to be ready-made wherever they are found.
Those who wear and admire them probably give little thought to the circumstances attending their production and collection; but there are few industries more interesting than that of ‘fishing’ for pearls, as practised in the most important pearl-producing districts. Pearls of an inferior quality to that of the true Oriental are found in a species of fresh-water mussel inhabiting Britain and other temperate countries: an important field for their production is being developed on the coasts of Queensland and Western Australia; and at the Cape of Good Hope specimens are occasionally found. But the great centres of the industry are the banks around the south and west coasts of the island of Ceylon, from which districts all the most celebrated pearls have been derived. The banks or paars there are under government supervision, and fishing is only allowed under the immediate inspection of the officials, who issue stringent regulations on the subject.
For some years the produce of the paars has been falling off, and a series of experiments has recently been carried out, and is now in course of completion, with the object of discovering whether, instead of allowing them to be fished every year, an interval of one, two, or three years between each season will not afford a better opportunity to the bivalves to spat and develop into pearl-bearers.
The last great fishing took place during the month of March in 1877; and, as the results are said to have exceeded those of any previous season for many years past, a short account of the manner in which the operations were carried out, together with a review of the system adopted for protecting the beds from exhaustion, may be interesting.
In the first place, it will be well to remove a misapprehension which exists as to the identity of the so-called pearl-‘oyster.’ This mollusc is not an oyster properly so called, but a species of mussel, and is easily distinguished from an oyster by the squareness and length of the shells at the ‘hinge.’ Like the common mussel of our own shores, it attaches itself to stones and rocks by means of certain fine but strong cords or byssus, which it spins at will; and not, like the oyster, by a secretion of shell-matter. These cords are very tough when the animal is young, but decrease in strength as it increases in age, till at last they rot away altogether, leaving the creature at the mercy of tides and storms.
While the pearl-oyster is still young, and before it has finally attached itself to a suitable rock, it often breaks away from its anchorage; so that it not unfrequently happens that a pearl-bank well filled with oysters suddenly disappears altogether. Some authorities assert that the pearl-oyster has the faculty of casting its byssus and voluntarily migrating; but whether this is the fact or not, it is certain that the above circumstances demand the serious attention of the authorities, and have led to the adoption of a system of half-yearly inspection of the banks, in order to determine two important points, namely whether the young brood has forsaken its birthplace, or the full-grown oysters are, through old age, breaking away and being destroyed.
The duration of the life of the oyster is another necessary point to determine; and various suggestions have been made, with the double object of ascertaining the age of an oyster without the necessity of continually watching its growth, and of shewing when a bed is fit to be fished. The weight of the mollusc affords some clue to the elucidation of this problem, but there is an obstacle to the adoption of this method in the difficulty of accurately weighing a number of specimens in an open boat at sea, even if the scales and weights should be at hand. One of the government officials, however, has suggested a method of ascertaining the age of the mollusc by the weight of the shells, cleaned and dried with the animal removed. This can be done at any time; and a series of experiments conducted by him gives the following results. The shells of an oyster one year old, with the body of the animal removed, weigh four drachms; those of an oyster two years old weigh twelve drachms; three years old, nineteen drachms; and four years old, twenty-five drachms. This scale of weights will apply of course only to pearl-oysters from the Ceylon banks; as a difference in the food, in the composition of the water and soil, and the temperature in other parts of the world, would no doubt affect the rate of growth and the deposit of the calcareous matter forming the shell. Empty shells have been found weighing as much as forty drachms, thus giving a probable age of about eight years.
The question arises, What are pearls? Are they a morbid concretion of matter produced in the endeavour to heal a wound or to cover some irritating body that cannot easily be ejected from the shells? Are they the result of a disease, or are they simply an over-production of the matter forming the shell of the creature? Whatever they are, it is only in the adult oyster that they are found of any size. The rate of growth in the size of a pearl cannot of course be actually ascertained; but by a series of averages, taken from the produce of a large number of oysters from the same bed in different years, it is proved that after the fourth year, the yield of pearls both in quantity and quality rapidly increases. It is in the hope of a bed of oysters which produces say five hundred rupees’ (L.50) worth of pearls per thousand oysters one year, so improving as to yield double that value next year, that many a fine bank has been left to perish from the causes referred to above, as well as from the attacks of enemies or sickness.
The whelk has lately been discovered to be a serious enemy to the pearl-oyster, just as it to the edible oyster of commerce; and a curious disease occasionally manifests itself among the inhabitants of the banks. The fatty portion of the animal, under which pearls are usually found, and which is usually of a pale cream colour, assumes a yellow tint, denoting sickness of some sort, the exact nature of which has not yet been ascertained.
Pearl-fishing is at the best only a gigantic lottery, the prizes in which bear a very small proportion to the blanks. But in this as in many other uncertain pursuits, hope always tells a flattering tale, and keeps awake the energies of thousands of interested operators. First there are the divers, who perform the actual operations of fishing for pearls. Arrayed in Nature’s garb, and provided with a knife and a small bag of netting in which to collect the gathered oysters, and with a rope tied round their waists, and a heavy stone attached to their feet, they are let down into the water, taking first a deep breath, and remaining there till forced to rise again. Expert divers will remain beneath the water for sixty, ninety, and even a hundred and eighty seconds. This period they occupy in detaching the mussels from the rocks, a matter frequently of much difficulty. Those of very small size they do not attempt to gather, for, as we have shewn, the larger the shells the more chance of their containing a pearl. The native divers are able to guess at the age of the oyster by the resistance it offers; and, as explained above, the older the oyster the more easily it is detached, and the greater the chance of its producing a large pearl.
On banks not over thickly populated, there is barely time to gather half-a-dozen oysters at a dive—a dozen is an extra good haul; in more favourable circumstances from fifty to one hundred may be collected by one man. The diver then detaches the stone from his feet, gives a tug at the rope, and is rapidly hauled up; the stone, attached to another line, being afterwards pulled up for use again. His gleanings are then placed on board the boat; and from it he descends again on another venture. It may be imagined that life among men who so overstrain their natural functions is very precarious; for though they are brought up to the practice from their boyhood, a diver seldom lives to see old age or even maturity.
The weather is an important factor in the calculation of the pearl-fisher. ‘Pearl-fishing weather’ is a proverb in Ceylon, and has much the same relation to the meteorological conditions of that island as ‘harvesting weather’ bears to our own climate. A light steady breeze from the north-east is the most favourable for fishing the paars on the south and west coasts of Ceylon, as the sea is sheltered by the island, enabling the boats to sail and manœuvre easily. Sometimes the wind will suddenly shift, and a squall will drive the boats home with no little danger to the crews; or a heavy thunder-storm, such as only the tropics can produce, will fall like a bomb-shell upon the scene of the industry; and the wonder is that the frail habitations fitted up for the accommodation of the fishers and others are not literally washed away.
Besides the actual divers, there are the working crews of the boats, the men employed in ‘washing’ the oysters on shore, the carrying boats, the provision-merchants, purveyors of arrack and other liquors, bazaar owners, the petty chetties or traders in pearls, the large merchants who buy thousands of oysters with a nod of the head, the police—and they form no small proportion of the whole population—and other government officials.
The boats are manned with a crew of one or two men, and frequently a ‘counter’ to take reckoning of all the oysters brought up. The boats are usually worked over the ground in circles, being ranged in line some yards apart, and each taking a small circle and advancing gradually over a certain assigned area. Sometimes they are placed close together and advance in line across the bed. But before the boats are permitted to start, the beds, having been examined by government officials, are buoyed off, and no boat is allowed to go beyond the limits thus defined. When the number of boats entered is very large—and sometimes as many as five or six hundred collect together for the prosecution of the industry—they are placed in separate divisions of eighty to a hundred each, and lots are cast for the order in which the divisions shall proceed, each division taking a day or a tide in rotation.
For the accommodation of the large numbers of people brought temporarily together by the fishery, large villages, the houses of which are composed of bamboo, wood, furze, mud, and any light material, suddenly spring up along the seashore, the population being further increased by the arrival of the buyers and merchants. From China, Japan, and all parts of the East, connoisseurs in pearls and pearl-oysters are attracted to the scene of operation, and the activity and excitement are often intense. A sample of five or six thousand oysters is examined by the government, and from the results of this sample the sales proceed. The government take three-fourths of every boat-load brought in, and special officials are appointed to dispose of these shares as soon as possible and at the best possible price. A daily auction takes place, and the lots are knocked down to the highest bidder. The method of valuing is so much per thousand oysters, the prices ranging from forty rupees (L.4) to one hundred and twenty rupees (L.12) per thousand.
The fishermen, who sell their own share on their own account, generally receive higher prices than those fetched by the government sales; for the small traders, buying by the dozen, naturally pay more dearly than if they bought several thousands at a time; besides, the fishers can afford to wait longer till a good offer occurs. Sometimes the chetties will buy a dozen at a time and open them, repeating their purchases dozen after dozen, in the hope of finding a good gem, which they either sell on the spot or take away with them into the interior. The occurrence of a good pearl always sends prices up; and a man may sell an unusually fine specimen for seven or eight hundred rupees, and see it change hands for twice and three times the amount.
The collection of so many thousand natives, with very rudimentary ideas of the laws of health and cleanliness, and with facilities for drinking arrack and other ardent liquors which are as regularly to be met with on the shores of Ceylon as they are in the crowded fairs and race-courses of our own country, is often the cause of an outbreak of cholera, smallpox, or other zymotic disease. The greatest precautions are, however, taken to prevent such a catastrophe, and all cases of illness are at once isolated.
The operation of opening the pearl-oysters is also conducive to disease. To open each oyster when fresh would be a work of infinite labour; they are therefore packed together in large vessels called ballams, where, under the tropical heat, the animals soon die and putrefy, and the shells, gaping open, are easily washed and examined.
The greatest watchfulness has to be exercised over the natives employed in this work, where the owners do not perform the operation themselves. A pearl is very easily secreted either in the folds of the scanty dress, or in the mouth or ears, or even swallowed; and the Singhalese and indeed all the natives of the East are adepts in the art of thieving. To cheat the government out of their shares of the spoil, it is no unusual thing for the boatmen to throw large packages of oysters overboard, buoying them, so that they may be recovered under cover of darkness or on the last day of fishing, which is usually devoted to a general sanjayan or scramble. All boats, whether belonging to the authorised divisions or not, are then allowed to go out and keep what they can get.
These divers render essential service in discovering and reporting the existence of unrecorded rocks and shoals; and many a permanent record of their operations is left in the shape of a warning buoy, stationed to warn the navigator of a treacherous reef.
When, from the diminished daily results of the fishing, a sign is given that the bed is being exhausted, the order is given to stop fishing. The sanjayan over, the bed is deserted, save by the government launch appointed to remove the buoys which marked off the limits of the ground; the boats gradually make off as wind and weather permit, for their respective ports; the merchants pack up their purchases and take their departure for the great towns and cities; the government officials, having completed the records of the fishery, are gradually recalled; the temporary huts are burnt to the ground; and the place assumes its normal state of peaceful repose, disturbed only, or rather intensified, by the presence of some wandering native bird, or by the occasional visit of a roaming elephant or jackal.