Western Australia is another fruitful field for pearl-oysters, and until a few years ago they were taken there by native blackfellows, diving without weights or any other assistance in any water not more than ten fathoms deep. The inshore shallows have now been so cleared of shells that the only profitable industry is to go down in deep water in diving-dress and make a thorough clean-up of each “patch” where the shells seem numerous.
The divers find it an interesting and curious world where they work, but one full of fright and peril. Some men who attempt it are so unnerved that they will never make a second descent. None can endure the practice long without ill health resulting; and the native Australians will never enter a diver’s dress, declining to go down where it is too deep to dive naked.
MITER-SHELLS.
a. Mitra vulpecula.
b. Mitra episcopalis.
As for the dangers, drowning by some accident to the apparatus, or through the stupidity of the boatmen above, is only one of them. The warm waters in which these men work are the home of the largest and most deadly sharks, and of various other submarine creatures one would rather not meet in their own element. Of them all the sharks are most to be dreaded, especially by the naked men. As a rule, however, they are easily frightened away, or can be avoided by the clever swimmer, who quickly stirs up the mud of the bottom, and rises in the fog before the dull shark discovers that he has gone. East Indians are said to fight sharks quite fearlessly, stabbing them with a knife as they roll over preparatory to a close attack. I have read a story to the effect that formerly the Mexican Indian divers on our western coast used to take down with them a stick of hard wood about two feet long and sharpened at both ends. When a shark was encountered from which they could not readily escape, they would snatch this weapon from their belts, grasp it in the middle, and thrust it dexterously crosswise into the widely distended mouth of the monster, opened to seize them. To shut down his jaws upon such a skewer would undoubtedly discomfit a shark or anything else; but when one thinks of the time, nerve, and sure aim it would require to accomplish this feat, he begins to doubt whether it really ever was tried. I advise you, therefore, to prove the story better than I have been able to do, before you pin all your faith to it.
VENUS’ COMB, ONE OF THE MURICES OF CHINA.
A MUREX (“MUREX PALMA-ROSÆ”) OF CEYLON.