While each day's catch is being counted the average run is carefully watched by experts who judge by the size, weight and general appearance of the oysters as to the probable yield of pearls. Opinions so formed are usually quite correct and bidding at the auctions are based on them to a great extent. The principal buyers are from Madras, Bombay, and other cities on the Coromandel and Malabar coasts of India, though local speculators buy many. The catch runs about one million per day. In 1903 forty-four million oysters were taken, but they realized much less than the catch of 1904, when the number was not quite twenty-six and three-quarter millions, though it netted the government $350,000; 1905, however, will be the record year as it is claimed the profits will reach the large sum of $830,000. These figures represent the government's share only.
The price realized at these sales varies not only with the season but from day-to-day. Ten to fourteen dollars per thousand is a fair average, though there are days when as much as twenty-four dollars is realized. Prices have ranged from $7.50 to $40.00 per thousand in one season. The net proceeds go to the revenue of Ceylon.
This has been the system under which the Ceylon fisheries were managed until lately. For some reason unknown to the public, the government, after a season of unequalled profit in 1905, leased the fisheries to a company, the Pearl Fishers of Ceylon (Limited), for a period of twenty years from January 1, 1906. The company is to pay the government $103,333 per annum and is to expend annually upon the improvement of the fishery not less than $16,666, or more than $50,000, at the discretion of the government. The expenses of supervision and protection by the government must also be borne by the company.
As a result of the first fishery (1906), the company after setting aside $49,628 for depreciations and reserve and carrying forward $77,382, show a profit of $256,960 which affords dividends of 36 cents on ordinary shares and 18 cents on deferred shares, a remarkably good beginning. The government revenue from the fishery of 1905 was $801,882 after the expenses, $73,510 were deducted; over $111,000 more than the profit of 1904 which was the most successful up to that time.
The inspector of pearl-banks anticipated a good fishery in 1906 but was of the opinion that after a small fishery in 1907 and probably 1908 the banks would fail for some years as they have done in the past.
After the pearls are taken from the dead oysters they are first sorted for size. This is done by passing them through a series of ten small brass sieves known as baskets, containing from twenty to one thousand holes. The sieves have twenty, thirty, fifty, eighty, one hundred, two hundred, four hundred, six hundred, eight hundred and one thousand holes respectively. The pearls are then sorted for color and quality, weighed and valued. As with all things, really fine pieces are rare, the great mass being ordinary or poor. Herein lies the attraction and excitement of the business for some will find great gems. One may imagine the keen interest of the swarthy buyer who has parted with his hoards, hoping to find a "pearl of great price" when he washes the lustrous spheres from the putrid mass of decaying fish: the eager search; the joy when his eye lights upon a big, white, shining sphere rising up among the heap of little ones; the growing exultation as he picks it out and with feverish interest rolls it about between his fingers to find it without flaw or blemish, or the keen disappointment should his inspection show, as it most frequently does, that it is full of imperfections.
Hovering about are the buyers for the great Hindu merchants, agents of far-off princes and Europeans, all watching sharply for great finds and ready to enter into the combat of wits which marks an oriental trading.
If one remembers that there are probably twenty-five thousand traders congregated on the hot sands of this far-off shore, the fair dame, whose neck is clasped by a string of these precious globules, may conjure from their lustrous skins, scenes as wild and weird as any fairy tale that set her youth to dreaming.
The pearls are sorted into a number of grades. Those perfect in sphericity and luster are called "ani." Anitari meaning "followers" or "companions," are of the same general character, but poorer in those important qualities. Masanku are somewhat irregular in shape and faulty, especially in luster and color. The poorest of this class, lacking the essential qualities, are separated into another grade and called "kallipu." Next come "kural," double or twinned, and "pisal," are misshapen or clustered. Folded or bent pearls are "madanku," and what we would call "rejection," a mixed lot of all sorts and sizes too poor to include in any of the regular classifications, are termed "vadivu." Seed-pearls, the very small pearls of which there are great quantities, are known as "tul." Many of these are ground to "chunam" or shell-lime, and used as an ingredient in a favorite masticatory.
The assortments being made, they are weighed and recorded in kalanchu (kalungy) and manchadi (manjaday). The kalanchu is a brass weight equal to 67 grains troy, and the manchadi is a small red berry that is of very even weight when full sized, and is reckoned twenty to a kalanchu.