A week or two before the opening of the season, the boats begin to arrive, sometimes fifty or more in a single day, laden with men, women and children, and in many cases with the materials for their huts. In a short time the erstwhile desolate beach becomes populated with thousands of persons from all over the Indian littoral, and there is the noisy traffic of congregated humanity, and a confusion of tongues where before only the sound of the ocean waves was heard. Beside the eight or ten thousand fishermen, most of whom are Moormen, Tamils, and Arabs, there are pearl merchants—mainly Chetties and Moormen, boat repairers and other mechanics, provision dealers, priests, pawnbrokers, government officials, koddu-counters, clerks, boat guards, a police force of 200 officials, coolies, domestic servants, with numbers of women and children. And for the entertainment of these, and to obtain a share of the wealth from the sea, there are jugglers, fakirs, gamblers, beggars, female dancers, loose characters, with every allurement that appeals to the sons of Brahma, Buddha or Mohammed. Natives from the seaport towns of India are there in thousands; the slender-limbed and delicate-featured Cingalese with their scant attire and unique head-dress; energetic Arabs from the Persian Gulf; burly Moormen, sturdy Kandyans, outcast Veddahs, Chinese, Jews, Portuguese, Dutch, half-castes, the scum of the East and the riffraff of the Asiatic littoral, the whole making up a temporary city of forty thousand or more inhabitants.[[136]]
THE
Ceylon Company of Pearl Fishers,
LIMITED.
NOTICE
Is hereby given that a Pearl Fishery will take place at Marichchukkaddi, in the Island of Ceylon, on or about February 20, 1907.
The Banks to be fished are—
The Karativu, Dutch Moderagam and Alanturai Pars, estimated to contain 21,000,000 oysters, sufficient to employ 100 boats for twenty-one days with average loads of 10,000 each per day.
The Northwest and Mid-West Cheval, estimated to contain 2,000,000 oysters, sufficient to employ 100 boats for two days with average loads of 10,000 oysters.
The Muttuvaratu Par, estimated to contain 8,000,000 oysters, sufficient to employ 100 boats for eight days with average loads as before stated: each boat being fully manned with divers.