THE LURE OF THE PEARL
The bed of the Gulf of Manar, the arm of the Indian Ocean that separates
Ceylon from India, has given the world more pearls than all other
fisheries combined, for it has been prolific as a pearling-ground for
thousands of years. Pearling in the gulf was an occupation hoary with
age before the dawn of Christianity, for history tells us that Mardis,
admiral of Alexander the Great, when returning from a voyage having to
do with the Indian invasion, traversed the strait separating Ceylon from
the continent, and was informed of the importance of the pearl-banks
over which his fleet was passing. The great sailor was specially
interested in the manner of drilling the holes in pearls for stringing,
which was probably the same that it is to-day.
In the exuberant phraseology of the Orient, Ceylon is "the pearl-drop on
India's brow," and the Gulf of Manar is "the sea abounding in pearls"
and "the sea of gain." Ceylon appeals irresistibly to any possessor of
the wandering foot, for it is an island paradise. It is well governed,
of course, for its administration is that of a seasoned colony of
Edward VII's realm, and the guidance of austere, dignified Britain
countenances nothing like gambling in any of its lands--oh, dear, no!
State lotteries are pretty well relegated in these times to Latin
countries, everybody knows.
Yet the world's most gigantic gamble, pregnantly fruitful with chance in
all variations and shadings, is unquestionably the Ceylon pearl-fishery;
compared with it, any state lottery pales to insignificance. From the
taking of the first oyster to the draining of the last vatful of
"matter," every step is attended by fickle fortune; and never is the
interest of the people of Portugal or of Mexico keener over a drawing of
a lottery, the tickets of which may have been sold at the very
thresholds of the cathedrals, than is that of the natives of Ceylon and
southern India over the daily results of a Manar fishery.
Each bivalve is a lottery ticket; it may contain a gem worthy of place
in a monarch's crown, or be a seed pearl with a mercantile value of only
a few rupees. Perhaps one oyster in a hundred contains a pearl, and not
more than one pearl in a hundred, be it known, has a value of
importance. Nature furnishes the sea, pearling-banks, oysters, and all
therein contained; the Ceylon administration conducts the undertaking,
and for its trouble and trifling outlay exacts a "rake-off" of two
thirds of all that may be won from the deep. And mere man, the brown or
black diver, receives for his daring and enterprise one oyster in every
three that he brings from the ocean's depths--and his earnings must be
shared with boat-owner, sailors, attendants, and assistants almost
without number.
For size of "rake-off," there is no game of hazard in the world offering
a parallel. The Ceylon government used to exact three out of every four
oysters brought in, the current tribute of two out of three having
become operative only a few years since.
It should be known that the pearl-bearing oyster of the Indian Ocean is
only remotely related to the edible variety of America and Europe. It is
the _Margaritifera vulgaris_, claimed to belong to the animal kingdom,
and not to the fish family, and is never eaten. The eminent marine
biologist in the service of the Ceylon government, Professor Hornell, F.
L. S., who intimately knows the habits of the pearl-oyster of the East,
advances two interesting if not startling premises. One is that the
pearl is produced as a consequence of the presence of dead bodies of a
diminutive parasitical tapeworm which commonly affects the Ceylon
bivalve. The living tapeworm does not induce pearl formation. The
popular belief has been that the pearl was formed by secretions of nacre
deposited upon a grain of sand or other foreign particle drawn within
the oyster through its contact with the sea's bottom. The other Hornell
assertion is that the oyster goeth and cometh at its pleasure; that it
is mobile and competent to travel miles in a few weeks.
[Illustration: MAP OF THE GULF OF MANAR, "THE SEA ABOUNDING IN PEARLS"]
Scientists have long been aware that the pearl shell-fish possesses
locomotive powers, which it uses when in quest of food or protection,
and to escape impure localities. During the Dutch occupation of Ceylon,
for example, there was a period of several years when the oysters'
boycott of the Manar banks was virtually unanimous.
It is an accepted fact that pearls are excretions of superimposed
concentric _laminæ_ of a peculiarly fine and dense substance, consisting
in major part of carbonate of lime. Linnæus, believing in the
possibility of producing pearls by artifice, suggested the collecting of
mussels, piercing holes in their shells to produce a wound, and bedding
them for five or six years to give pearls time to grow. The Swedish
government succeeded in producing pearls of a sort by this process; but
as they were of trifling value, the experiments were discontinued.
Cunning Chinese and Japanese have sought of late years to assist or
improve on nature's pearl-making methods by inserting tiny shot or
grains of sand between the mantle and the shell, which in time become
coated with nacre. Not long since there was a movement in Japan to
embark in pearl production upon a basis wholly commercial, and its
promoters discussed it as they might a project for supplying a city with
vegetables. One of the claims of those exploiting the venture was that
they could keep pace with fashion's changes by supplying pearls of any
shape, pear, oval, or spherical. This has been accomplished in other
countries, and European and American dealers have had years of
acquaintance with the "assisted" pearl, a showy and inexpensive
counterfeit, but one attaining to no position in the realm of true gems.
The distinction between fine pearls and these intrusive nacre-coated
baubles, alluringly advertised as "synthetic pearls," has been
demonstrated by more than one devotee of science.
There are definite rules for determining when a Ceylon fishery will be
held, for twice a year the banks are systematically examined by the
marine biologist, and estimates made of the number of oysters present on
each bank. Whenever their age and size appear to warrant the step, a
sample catch of twenty thousand oysters is made by divers employed by
the government, and a valuation is formed of the pearls they produce. If
found to average ten or twelve rupees[1] to a thousand oysters, the
government is advised to proclaim a fishery. Advertisements are then
published throughout the East, especially in vernacular papers reaching
the Persian Gulf and the two coasts of southern India, at the instance
of the colonial secretary's office at Colombo. These detail the
valuation of the sample pearls, area of beds to be fished, and the
estimated number of oysters likely to be available upon each. The
advertisements are printed in Cingalese, Tamil, and English. As rapidly
as information can spread, it becomes known from Karachi to Rangoon, and
along the chain of seaports of the Malay states, that a fishery is to
be held. Divers, gem-buyers, speculators, money-lenders, petty
merchants, and persons of devious occupations, make speedy arrangements
for attending. Indian and Ceylon coolies flock by the thousand to the
coast of the Northern province, longing to play even humble rôles in the
great game of chance. The "tindals" and divers provide boats and all
essential gear for the work afloat; while ashore the government supplies
buildings and various forms of labor for dealing with the curious
industry.
[Footnote 1: The rupee of India and Ceylon is equal to 32 cents
U. S. A lakh is 100,000.]
It is during the calm period of the northeast monsoon,--February, March
and April,--when the sea is flat and the sky is bright and unflecked,
that the fishery is carried on. The line of banks--they are "paars," in
the languages of Ceylon--cover an extensive submarine plateau off the
island's northwest coast, from ancient Hippuros southward to Negombo.
This is of flat-surface rock, irregularly carpeted with coarse sand, and
dotted with colonies of millions of oysters. Dead coral and other
products of the sea are scattered everywhere on this plateau, and it is
a theory that these surface interruptions prevent overcrowding of the
oysters, and consequently assist in the bivalve's reaching the
pearl-producing stage. It is claimed that a crowded paar contributes to
a stunting of growth, bringing disease and premature death to the
oyster, and consequently no pearls of account.
The estimate of the experts upon which it was decided to announce a
fishery last year was that there were on the Southwest Cheval paar
3,500,000 oysters which might be gathered, on the Mideast Cheval paar
13,750,000 oysters, on the North and South Moderagam 25,750,000, and on
the South Cheval 40,220,000.
The announcement of this total of 83,000,000 bivalves produced an
electrical effect, and an unprecedented attendance, for it was equal to
announcing a lottery with that many tickets, and who knows how few
prizes!
The student seeking to determine the eighth wonder of the world should
not overlook the city of Marichchikkaddi. Stories of towns rising
overnight wherever gold is found, or diamonds discovered, or oil struck,
have become common to the point of triteness. Tales of the uprising of
Klondike and South African cities, once amazing, fade to paltriness in
the opinion of one who has seen the teeming city of Marichchikkaddi. In
a sense it is a capital, yet it is found in no geography; no railway
connects it with the world, yet a dozen languages are spoken in its
streets. Marichchikkaddi's population numbers no young children, no
persons too aged to toil, and the four or five hundred women sojourners
merit the right of being present through serving as water-carriers to
camp and fishing fleet.
[Illustration: COOLIES CARRYING PEARL OYSTERS FROM THE BOATS TO THE
"KOTTU," OR GOVERNMENT STOCKADE]
This place with double-mouthful name, almost defying pronunciation, is
the pearl metropolis of the universe. Probably there is not a stocked
jewel-case that does not contain gems that have been filtered through
this unique city by the sea. For a dozen reasons it is a wonderful town,
and the foremost of these is that it is the only city of size that comes
and goes like the tide's ebbing and flowing.
When a fishery is proclaimed, Marichchikkaddi is only a name--a
sand-drifted waste lying between the jungle of the hinterland and the
ocean. Yet nine months before forty thousand people dwelt here under
shelter of roofs, and here the struggle for gain had been prosecuted
with an earnestness that would have borne golden fruit in any city in
the Western world. There, where lies the skeleton of a jackal
half-buried in sand, an Indian banker had his habitat and office only a
few months before, with a lakh of rupees stacked in a conspicuous place
as glittering earnest of his ability to pay well for anything remarkable
in the way of a pearl. And beyond, where occurs the rift in the sand,
stood the shanty in which venturesome divers whiled away time and money
in trying to pitch rings upon the ends of walking-sticks, as do farmers'
boys at New England county fairs.
With the license permitting the calling of a pile of buildings formed of
stucco a "White City," this metropolis might with propriety be named the
"City of Brown," or, better, the "Cadjan City." For inaccessibility, it
is in a class by itself.
Colombo is facetiously spoken of by Englishmen as the Clapham Junction
of the East, for the reason that one can there change to a steamer
carrying him virtually to any place on the globe.
But it is simpler for a white man to get to Melbourne, or Penang, or New
York, from Colombo, than to obtain passage to Marichchikkaddi, only a
hundred and fifteen miles up the coast. If he can wait long enough,
passage may be found, of course; but otherwise all the official and
editorial persuasion of Colombo--and the subsidized influence of the
head porter of the "G. O. H.," availeth nothing. Now and then he may
hear of a speculative Parsee's dhow that may be going to Manar for a
cargo of shell-cased lottery tickets, or of a native-owned launch that
will carry a limited number of passengers at an unlimited fare. A
fast-sailing outrigger canoe may always be chartered. Another
opportunity is to travel two days by post-cart to a village one never
heard of, transferring there to a bullock hackery that may take him
through jungle roads to the cadjan metropolis--provided he is able to
give instructions in Tamil, or a college-bred coolie can be found who
knows English. Still another way is to take the semi-weekly steamer from
Colombo to Tuticorin, in southern India, then zigzag about the continent
of Asia until he makes Paumben. Then it is a matter of only a few days
when there will be a boat crossing to the pearl-camp. This is the surest
way of getting to Marichchikkaddi; but it is like making the journey
from New York to Boston by way of Bermuda.
Ceylon's substitute for virtually everything elsewhere used in the
construction of buildings is the cadjan: it is at once board, clapboard,
shingle, and lath. Cadjans are plaited from the leaf of the cocoanut- or
date-palm, and are usually five or six feet long and about ten inches
wide; the center rib of the leaf imparts reasonable rigidity and
strength. Half the shelters for man and beast throughout the island are
formed of cadjans, costing nothing but the making, and giving protection
from the sun and a fair amount of security from the elements. The frame
of a house is made of stakes planted in the ground, with rafters and
beams resting in crotches conveniently left by the wood-cutter. This
slender frame is covered with cadjans, arranged systematically, and sewn
together with cocoanut-leaf strands or tender rattans. Not a nail is
used, and cadjan flaps that may be raised or lowered from within the
building take the place of glazed windows. A dwelling of this character,
carpeted with palm-mats, and flanked with verandas, brings a flowing
measure of comfort to the dweller in the tropics; but the gales of the
annual southwest monsoon play havoc with cadjan roofs and walls.
It being known that a fishery will bring together at least forty
thousand souls, a small army of coolies hastens to Marichchikkaddi a few
weeks prior to the announced date for opening the fishery, to prepare
the buildings necessary to house all and sundry, and to erect bungalows
for the British functionaries having the enterprise in charge. Public
buildings almost pretentious in size and design rise from the earth in a
few days, including a residence for the governor of Ceylon, who is
expected to grace the fishery by a visit; one for the government agent
of the province in which the interesting industry is carried on; and
another for the delegate of the Colonial Office. There rise,
mushroom-like, as well, a court-house, treasury, hospital, prison,
telegraph-office and post-office, and a fair example of that blessing of
the East known as a rest-house, each reflecting surprising good taste,
and being adequate to its purpose, and presumably completed at a cost
well within the appropriation. Jerry-builders and grafters have yet to
be discovered in Ceylon.
Marichchikkaddi parades structures dedicated neither to religion nor
dissipation. But the bazaar-like alleys branching from the thoroughfares
of the Cadjan City purvey many things not obtrusively obvious to the
British official. Whatever his faith, the disciple of the pearl may
solitarily prostrate himself beneath a convenient palm-tree, with face
turned toward Mecca, or on the sea-front indulge the devotions stamping
him a Hindu of merit.
In an administrative sense the important building is the
"Kachcherie"--mayor's office and superintendent's headquarters in one;
but the structure of material interest is the "kottu," wherein every
sackful of oysters taken from the boats is counted and apportioned
between the government and the divers. It is a parallelogram enclosure
of two or three acres in area, fenced with bamboo palings, and roofed
here and there to protect the coolies from the sun. For convenience, one
end is as near the sea as prudence will admit; and the other, the
official end, where accountants and armed guards are in command, is not
far from the governmental offices. A system perfected by years of
experience makes thieving within the kottu virtually impossible, and the
clerks who record the count of oysters, and issue them upon official
order, might safely conduct a bankers' clearinghouse. On occasions they
handle without error more than three million oysters in a day.
A quarter of a mile from the official section of the city is the great
human warren and business region, where black men and brown--Hindus,
Mohammedans, Buddhists, and the East's flotsam of religions--dwell and
traffic in peaceful communion. A broad thoroughfare, starting from the
edge of the plateau overlooking the sea and extending inland until the
settlement yields to the open country, is the "Main street"; and here,
for ten or twelve weeks, is one of Asia's busiest marts. This part of
Marichchikkaddi is planned with careful regard for sanitary needs and
hygiene. Streets cross at right angles, and at every corner stands a
lamp-post rudely made from jungle wood, from which suspends a lantern
ingeniously fashioned from an American petroleum tin. Sites on the
principal streets are leased for the period of the fishery to persons
proving their purposes to be legitimate. For a good corner lot perhaps
twenty feet square the government receives as much as a thousand rupees;
and a few hours after the lease is signed up goes a cadjan
structure--and a day later pearls worth a king's ransom may there be
dealt in with an absence of concern astounding to a visitor.
Can these Easterners, squatting on mats like fakirs in open-front
stalls, judge the merits of a pearl? Yes, decidedly. In the twinkling of
an eye one of them estimates the worth of a gem with a precision that
would take a Bond Street dealer hours to determine. The Indian or
Cingalese capitalist who goes with his cash to Marichchikkaddi to buy
pearls is not given to taking chances; usually he has learned by long
experience every "point" that a pearl can possess, knows whether it be
precisely spherical, has a good "skin," and a luster appealing to
connoisseurs. A metal colander or simple scale enables him to know to
the fraction of a grain the weight of a pearl, and experience and the
trader's instinct tell him everything further that may possibly be known
of a gem. It would be as profitless to assume to instruct an Egyptian
desert sheikh upon the merits of a horse as to try to contribute
information to the pearl-dealer of the East.
The calm period of the northeast monsoon is gentleness itself by the
middle of February, and the Gulf of Manar is seldom more than rippled by
its zephyrs. The fishery begins then. For weeks the divers have been
arriving by craft of every conceivable type and rig. They are the
aristocrats of the camp, and as they roam bazaars and streets or
promenade the sea-front they are admired by coolies and peons as
bull-fighters would be in Spain.
[Illustration: THE LATE RANA OF DHOLPUR IN HIS PEARL REGALIA
This Indian prince is said to have owned pearls valued at seven and a
half millions of dollars, the accumulation, perhaps, of his ancestors
during several centuries]
Sturdy fellows they are, lithe of limb and broad of chest. Each brings a
tangle of pots and kettles, bags and bales, but wears nothing throughout
the fishery save a loin-cloth and now and then a turban denoting
nationality or caste. There were forty-five hundred of them in 1905, and
those from the Madras Presidency were the backbone of the enterprise.
Nearly half the divers were registered from Kilakari, and hundreds came
from the tip end of India. The men from Tuticorin were of the Parawa
caste, and those hailing from Paumben were Moormen. The only Ceylon city
contributing divers was Jaffna, whose men were of the fisher caste, said
to be descendants of Arabs who settled sixty years ago at Jaffna. The
divers coming the greatest distance were the negroes and Arabs from Aden
and the Persian Gulf, most of whom landed at Colombo from trading
steamers, and made their way by small boat or bullock hackery to the
Cadjan City. These fellows have few equals as divers, but the
administrative officers of the camp always fear that they will come into
conflict with the police or launch a war in the name of Mohammed against
the Hindus or Cingalese. Consequently, only a limited number are allowed
to take part in the fishery.
An amusing incident was furnished last season by the arrival of a diver
of some renown in India, who had participated profitably in several
fisheries. Accompanied by his "manduck," the fellow had crossed from
Paumben as a deck passenger on a British India steamer. When the vessel
was anchored, the diver summoned a rowboat to take himself and traps
ashore. Wearing nothing but loin-cloth and turban, the man descended the
side-steps an example of physical perfection, and so thoroughly smeared
with cocoanut butter that he shone like a stove-polish advertisement.
The boat grounding on the shelving bottom a hundred feet from shore,
this precious Indian, who was to pass a good share of the ensuing ten
weeks in the water, even at the bottom of the sea, deliberately seated
himself astride the shoulders of his manduck, and was borne to dry land
with the care of one whose religion might forbid contact with water. He
carried beneath one arm throughout the trip from the small boat a
gingham umbrella, and under the other an Indian railway guide.
There are neither wharves nor landing-stages at Marichchikkaddi. Even
His Excellency the Governor must lay aside his dignity in going from his
boat to the shore. The horde of people working about the pearling fleet,
amphibious by nature, have little need for those accommodations and
necessities which the commercial world call "landing facilities."
The world over, gambling and speculation are joined in many ways to
superstition; and the Eastern diver is superstitious to the hour of his
death. At Marichchikkaddi he devotedly resorts to the mystic ceremony of
the shark-charmer, whose exorcism for generations has been an
indispensable preliminary to the opening of a fishery. The
shark-charmer's power is believed to be hereditary. If one of them can
be enlisted on a diver's boat, success is assured to all connected with
the craft. The common form of fortune-tempting nowadays is for a diver
to break a cocoanut on his sinking-weight just before embarking. If it
be a clean and perfect break, success is assured; if irregular and
jagged, only ordinary luck may be anticipated; and if the shell be
broken in without separating into halves, it spells disaster, and the
alarmed fisher probably refuses to go with the boat.
Last year's fleet was the largest ever participating in a Ceylon
fishery, three hundred and twenty boats being enrolled. The largest
boats came from Tuticorin, and carried thirty-four divers each. The
smallest boat had a complement of seven divers. Each diver was
faithfully attended by a manduck, who ran his tackle and watched over
his interests with jealous care both in and out of the water. Besides
the manducks, every boat had numerous sailors, food- and water-servers,
and a riffraff of hangers-on. It was estimated that divers and manducks
aggregated nine thousand souls. A system of apportionment gives every
man in a boat an interest in the take, the divers generally retaining
two thirds of the bivalves granted them by the government rule
controlling the fishery. The Kilakari divers observe a time-honored
custom of giving to their home mosque the proceeds of one plunge each
day.
Nature obligingly assists the workers on the banks by supplying a gentle
off-shore breeze at daybreak, which sends the fleet to the fishing
ground, six or eight miles from the shore. By two o'clock in the
afternoon a gun from a government vessel directs the boats to set sail
for the return. By this hour the breeze is accommodatingly from the sea,
and the fleet runs home with flowing sheets. Navigation, it will be
seen, plays a very subordinate part in Marichchikkaddi's marine
enterprise.
[Illustration: INDIAN PEARL MERCHANTS READY FOR BUSINESS]
With the exception of the divers from the Malabar coast, who plunge head
foremost from a spring-board, the men go into the water in an upright
position, and are hurried in their journey to the bottom by a stone
weighing from forty to fifty pounds. Each diver's attendant has charge
of two ropes slung over a railing above the side of the boat: one
suspends the diving-stone, and the other a wide-mouthed basket of
network. The nude diver, already in the sea, places the basket on the
stone and inserts one foot in a loop attached to the stone. He draws a
long breath, closes his nostrils with the fingers of one hand, raises
his body as high as possible above water, to give force to his descent,
and, loosening the rope supporting the weight, is carried quickly to the
bottom. An Arab diver closes the nostrils with a tortoise-shell clip,
and occasionally a diver is seen whose ears are stopped with
oil-saturated cotton. The manduck hoists the weight from the bottom and
adjusts it for the next descent. Meanwhile, the diver, working face
downward, is filling the basket with oysters with speed. When the basket
is filled or breath exhausted, the diver signals, and is drawn up as
rapidly as possible by the rope attached to the basket, and a specially
agile diver facilitates the ascent by climbing hand over hand on the
line When a man has been in the water half an hour, and made perhaps
seven or eight descents, he clambers aboard the boat for a rest and a
sunbath, and in a few minutes is taking part in the interminable chatter
of the Orient.
A diver coming up with basket filled wears a face of benign contentment;
but when the oysters are few and far between, as they are oftentimes,
and the man has prolonged his stay below to the limit of his air supply,
his head is out of water not many seconds before he is volubly
denouncing the official control forcing him to work on a "paar" where
little but sand exists, and his confrères on the boat hurl savage
invective at any government functionary within earshot.
The powerful Eastern sun illumines the bottom sufficiently for a diver
to plan his operations before going down, and nine days out of ten the
overhead sun renders the sea sufficiently transparent to guide a boat's
crew to promising anchorages. Pearling economists insist that dredging
by machinery or the use of diving-suits can never compete with the
simple and inexpensive method in vogue on the Manar banks. At
Marichchikkaddi one hears frequent discussion of the time a diver may
stay under water, and many improbable accounts of what has been done are
told a visitor. An average Tamil or Moorman stays down not longer than
forty-five seconds, while the broad-chested Arab thinks nothing of
being under water from sixty to eighty seconds.
Depth has much to do with the time, and it is admitted that divers do
not suffer unduly from the trying nature of their calling except when
forced to work in unusually deep water. Seven or eight fathoms--about
the average on the Ceylon banks--produces no injurious effect, but nine
fathoms tell on all but men of sturdy build. Occasionally a declivity
perhaps ten fathoms below the surface has to be fished, and this demands
the service of picked men, divers possessing the highest vitality.
Several divers collapse every season through toiling at unusual depths,
and two or three pay the penalty of death. Most divers, however, live to
as full a span as men pursuing other humble callings.
When a fishery is at its height, the scene on the banks is one of
extreme animation, and a picture full of strangeness to New World eyes.
Each craft is a floating hive of competitive noise and activity, and the
center of a cordon of disappearing and reappearing seal-like heads, with
baskets splashing in the water or being hauled by excited hands. In the
distance floats the majestic barque _Rengasamy Puravey_, an old-timer,
with stately spars, a quarter-deck, and painted port-holes that might
cause a landsman to believe her a war-ship. For half the year the barque
is the home of the government's marine biologist, and his office and
laboratory, wherein scientific investigation and experimentation are in
constant progress, are in houses built on the quarter-deck. Small
steamers, having an official cut, move here and there among the fishing
boats, doing patrol duty and carrying instructions when necessary from
the _Rengasamy Puravey_.
"Would you like to go down in a diving-costume from a boat alongside the
barque?" asks the biologist; "it's perfectly safe, and I have a dress
that will fit you. Frequently I go to the bottom to study the curious
growths there, and last season the colonial secretary did the thing two
or three times."
With a readiness of speech rivaling gunfire in promptness I nipped in
the bud the preparations for carrying out the proffered courtesy,
explaining that I was glad to accept a vicarious description of things
at the ocean's bottom.
The dingy fleet blossoms into a cloud of canvas, with every boat headed
for Marichchikkaddi, the instant the "cease work" gun is fired. The
scene suggests a regatta on a gigantic scale, and from a distance the
leaning lug and lateen sails of the East give the idea of craft
traveling at terrific speed. It is a regatta, a free-for-all,
devil-take-the-hindmost affair. The prizes are choice berths on the
beach as near as possible to the kottu, and the coolies who must carry
the sacks of oysters see to it that the "tindal" and his sailors make no
retarding error.
The camp had been peaceful and somnolent while the boats were out; but
the word that the fleet was coming in had roused every laborer, every
petty dealer, speculator, and harpy to nervous activity. Everybody goes
to the sea-front to witness the beaching of the boats and to watch the
unloading. An hour probably elapses between the coming of the leader of
the fleet and the arrival of the slowest boat. During this period the
important functionary is the beach-master, who shouts his commands to
boats seeking to crowd into positions not rightly theirs. When a boat is
securely drawn upon the strand, there is no waste of time in getting the
cargo started for the government storehouse. Muscular porters,
glistening in their perspiring nudeness, go in single file between boat
and kottu like ants executing a transportation feat. In a very few
minutes the oysters are being counted by nimble-handed coolies.
Important gamblers in oysters, men with sharp eyes and speculative
instincts, have only to note the number of sacks delivered from one or
two boats--and secure a hint from an obliging diver as to whether the
bivalves are "thin" or "thick"--to arrive at a safe hypothesis of what
the day's take has been, and also whether the oysters promise to be
fairly pearliferous. The opinions of two or three of these experts make
a basis for starting the prices at the auction in the evening, and these
"sharps" are seldom wrong in their estimate of what would be a safe
offer for a thousand chances in the great lottery of Asia.
The count in the kottu is soon completed, and each boat's catch is
divided into three piles, when an official selects two for the
government, and the third is so expeditiously removed that a quarter of
an hour later the share of the divers is being huckstered throughout the
camp to small speculators.
Upon each craft throughout the day has been a native watchman of
supposed honesty, in the government's employ, whose duty has been to see
that no oysters were surreptitiously opened on the banks or during the
run home. Suspicion of the extraction of pearls on the part of any
member of the crew leads to the police being informed, and an arrest
follows. A favorite way of hiding pearls is to tie the gems in a rag
attached to the anchor that is thrown overboard when the boat lands.
Another is to fasten a packet to a piece of rigging adroitly run to the
masthead, there to remain until opportunity permits the dishonest
schemer to remove it unobserved.
On their way to their sleeping quarters it is interesting to observe
divers stopping at boutiques and tea saloons for refreshments, paying
their score with oysters, extremely acceptable to the shopkeeper itching
to test his luck. In a small way, oysters pass current in the Cadjan
City as the equivalent of coins. Probably the variations in value lead
to fluctuations in exchange, but these are so keenly understood that the
quotations are apparently adjusted automatically, like exchange between
nations.
The sale is held in the building where the camp magistrate all the
afternoon has been dispensing justice in breaches of Marichchikkaddi's
morals--simple assaults, thieving, and other petty misdemeanors usual
to police courts. Punctually at sunset the auction begins. If the
universe offers a stranger gathering for which commerce is responsible,
it would be difficult to give it location. The gentle government agent
sits on the platform, and in front of the rostrum is the splendidly
appareled chief mudiliyar, to interpret between auctioneer and buyers.
The bidders-to-be number half a hundred, and their eager faces are
directed toward the august official of the government, each probably
praying secretly to his god that undue competition be not inspired to
the extent of excluding bargains. In the throng are chetties. Moor
merchants, and local hawkers, hoping to get a few thousand bivalves at a
price assuring a profit when peddled through the coastwise villages.
"Do these men represent actual capital!" you ask the agent. "They do,
indeed," is the reply, "and collectively they are backed by cash in hand
and satisfactory credits in Ceylon banks of at least a hundred lakhs of
rupees." Forced as you are to accept the statement, you inwardly confess
that they don't look it, for $3,200,000 is a goodly credit anywhere.
In the fading light of day the agent announces that approximately two
million oysters are to be sold, and he invites offers for them by the
thousand--the highest bidder to take as many as he chooses, the
quotation to be effective and apply to others until it is raised by some
one fearing there will not be oysters enough to satisfy the demands of
everybody. It is the principle of supply and demand reduced to
simplicity. The competition to fix the price of the first lot consumes
perhaps a minute. The initial bid was thirty rupees; this was elevated
to thirty-two, and so on until thirty-six was the maximum that could be
induced from the motley assemblage. With his pencil the agent taps the
table, and the mudiliyar says something in Hindustani meaning "sold."
The buyer was an Arab from Bombay, operating for a syndicate of rich
Indians taking a flier in lottery tickets. In a manner almost, lordly he
announces that he will take four hundred thousand oysters. Then a sale
of two thousand follows at an advanced price to a nondescript said to
have come all the way from Mecca; a towering Sikh from the Punjab
secures twenty thousand at a reduced rate, and so on. In ten or twelve
minutes the day's product is disposed of to greedy buyers for the sum of
62,134 good and lawful rupees. A clerk records names of buyers with
expedition, glancing now and then at a document proving their credit,
and in a few minutes issues the requisitions upon the kottu for the
actual oysters that will be honored in the early morning.
The primitive process by which the pearls are extracted from the oysters
is tedious, offensive to the senses, and of a character much too
disagreeable to be associated with the jewel symbolizing purity. A few
million oysters are shipped to southern India, and some go to Jaffna and
Colombo; but the preponderating bulk is dealt with in the private
kottus in the outskirts of the camp belonging to the men who crowd the
auction room. To open fresh from the sea and scrutinize every part of
the oyster would be too slow a method to be applied to the business of
pearl-getting. The native who obtains a few dozen seeks shelter under
the first mustard-tree, and with dull-edged knife, dissects each bivalve
with a thoroughness permitting nothing to escape his eye.
The burning sun, bringing putrefaction and decay to the oyster, is the
operator's agency for securing what pearls his purchase may contain. For
a week or ten days the oysters are stacked in his private kottu, and the
process of disintegration is facilitated by swarms of flies and millions
of maggots. When the tropical sun can do no more, the contents of the
shells--putrid, filthy, and overpoweringly odoriferous--are gathered in
troughs and other receptacles to be put through a process of cleansing
by washing with water frequently drawn away. The residue, carefully
preserved, is picked over when dry by experts, working under the
watchfulness of owner or his deputy--and in this manner the pearls of my
lady's dainty necklace and the engagement ring are wrested from nature.
[Illustration: THE LATE MAHARAJAH OF PATIALA IN HIS PEARL REGALIA]
Sometimes an impatient speculator is seen with his coolies on the beach
carefully washing vatfuls of "matter," perhaps employing a dugout canoe
as a washing trough. Wherever the work is done the stench is almost
overpowering, and the odors defy neutralization. The wonder is that some
dread disease of the Orient does not make a clean sweep of the city's
population. The medical officers claim that the malodorous fumes are not
dangerous, and experience has taught these officials to locate the
compounds, wherein millions of oysters are to decompose, in positions
where the trade winds waft the smells seaward or inland, without greatly
affecting the camp's health. The British official whose olfactory organ
survives a season at the pearl camp deserves from his home government at
least the honor of knighthood.
Interesting as Marichchikkaddi is to the person making a study of the
conduct of unusual industries and the government of Eastern people, the
medical officer looms important as the functionary shouldering a greater
responsibility than any other officer of the camp. To draw forty
thousand people from tropical lands, grouping them on a sand plain only
a few hundred miles above the equator, is an undertaking pregnant with
danger, when considered from the standpoint of hygiene. Strange to say,
Marichchikkaddi's health is always satisfactory; but tons of
disinfectants have to be used. Malarial fever is ever present, but is of
a mild type. The outdoor dispensary does a rushing business, but only
seventy-five cases were sufficiently serious last season to be sent to
hospital, and only ten of these were fatal. The divers are prone to
pneumonia and pleurisy, and these diseases carried off five. The deaths
out of hospital totaled twenty-two.
In the hospital I saw a man with grizzled beard whose escape from death
bordered upon the marvelous. His head had been jammed four days before
between colliding boats, cracking his skull to the extent of letting the
brain protrude. He was rushed to the hospital to die, but had no
intention of passing to another world, the doctors learned. Sitting
upright on his cot-bed, the poor fellow said to me with an earnestness
almost compelling tears: "Help me to get out of this place, please. I
want to be with my boat, for there is no better diver than I am, and I
can earn a hundred rupees a day as easily as any man in
Marichchikkaddi."
As an illustration of the white man's supremacy, in dealing with black
and brown peoples, Marichchikkaddi probably has no equal. Here, in an
isolated spot on the coast of Ceylon, hours from anywhere by sea, and
shut off from the large towns of the island by jungle and forest wherein
elephants, leopards, and other wild animals roam, twelve or fifteen
Britishers rule, with an authority never challenged, more than forty
thousand adventurous Asiatics--men whose vocation is largely based on
their daring, and whose competing religions and castes possess the germ
of fanaticism that might be roused to bloodshed. The white man's control
is supported by the presence of two hundred policemen, it is true, but
these are natives. The keynote of this exposition of a multitude ruled
by a handful of Europeans is the absolute fairness of their control, of
course. Were justice non-existent, it would be inviting disaster for
the white official to apprehend a wrong-doer, place him on trial, and
personally administer with lash or birch the corporal punishment to be
witnessed any morning in front of the camp lockup.
And what might happen if the divers, through their ringleaders, objected
to surrendering to the Ceylon government the demanded "rake-off" of two
thirds the oysters rescued from the sea by their efforts, in the event
of these courageous fellows being assured that all the law in the world
on the subject says that all the sea and all therein contained, beyond
the distance of three nautical miles from shore, belongs to the
universe! But the Manar diver knows naught of the three-mile law,
presumably.
Does the fishery pay? Tremendously, so far as facts upon which to base
an answer are obtainable. The government treasury is sometimes
enormously expanded as a result of the enterprise. In 1905, the most
prosperous of all Manar fisheries, the government sold its fifty million
oysters for two and one half million rupees, and at least $600,000 of
this was profit. Years ago, it is true, there were several fisheries
producing for the treasury nothing but deficits. Nobody ever knows what
reward visits the purchasers of oysters, for it is their habit to spread
the report of non-success and disappointment. But the buyers and
speculators come each year in larger numbers, with augmented credits,
and they pay in competition with their kind a larger price for the
oysters. The conclusion is, therefore, that they find the business
profitable.
Even rumors of luck and profit would bring more speculators and rising
prices at the auction sales, manifestly. Reports of fortunate strikes at
Marichchikkaddi may more frequently be heard in India than in Ceylon,
let it be said; and it is the gilded grandees of Hind--princes,
maharajahs and rajahs--rather than the queens of Western society, who
become possessors of the trove of Manar.
No Colombo merchant or magnate, or man or woman of the official set, is
superior to tempting fortune by buying a few thousand oysters freshly
landed from Marichchikkaddi. And the interminable question of caste,
banning many things to Cingalese and Tamil, inhibits not the right to
gamble upon the contents of a sackful of bivalves. If the fishery be
successful, all Ceylon teems with stories of lucky finds, and
habitations ranging from the roadside hut to the aristocratic bungalow
in the Cinnamon Gardens are pointed to as having been gained by a
productive deal in oysters. A favorite tale is that of the poor
horse-tender, who, buying a few cents' worth of oysters, found the
record pearl of the year; another is of the 'rickshawman suspected of
having money in the bank as a result of a lucky find on the seafront of
Colombo of three or four oysters dropped from a discharging boat--in a
shaded alley between buildings he forced the bivalves to disgorge a
pearl worth hundreds of pounds sterling. Most stories of this character
are as untrue as the reports of soubrettes and telephone boys winning
fortunes in Wall Street.
Did I try my luck? Of course I did. Who could resist the temptation? I
purchased two great sackfuls of oysters, a thousand in number, which
were brought off to the government tug _Active_ by salaaming peons from
the government agent's office. At five o'clock the tug was ready to
start Colomboward the instant the "despatches" I was to deliver came on
board. At last the precious package, with a parade of red tape and
impressive wax seals, was handed over the side. It may have contained
something as priceless as a last year's directory; I never knew. It was
my deep-seated suspicion, however, that the packet was somebody's excuse
for letting the public treasury expend a few hundred rupees in carrying
one in private life back to Colombo to catch his steamer for China the
next evening.
Confident was I that the bags on the stern grating that had been freshly
soused with seawater as the _Active_ steamed away from Marichchikkaddi
contained a wealth of pearls. In the cool of the early morning I would
subsidize the eight native sailors, getting them to open the shelled
treasures, while I garnered the pearls. With this thought uppermost, I
turned in on a cushionless bench to snatch a few hours' sleep. But
slumber was out of the question; my brain was planning what might be
done with the pearls I was soon to possess. Yes, there surely would be
plenty for a pearl-studded tiara for the loved one awaiting me; and any
superfluity might be made into ropes and collars for admiring relatives
at home. Cousin Jessie had always coveted a necklace of pearls with a
diamond clasp. The dainty baubles were in those sacks; there was no
question about that. Yes, my luck at pearl-getting would compensate for
missing Sir Thomas Lipton's dinner in Colombo. Sleep always comes in
time, and at last I was dreaming of the cargo of priceless gems with me
on the boat.
How extremely uncomfortable the bench was! What was that! I was not
asleep, but very wide-awake--and such pains! In an instant I was rolling
on the deck and shrieking from the terribleness of my suffering. Could
it be cholera, the plague, or simply appendicitis with which I was
stricken? The sailors held me down, but not a soul on board knew a word
of English. I was positive that my end had come, and the thought of
expiring away from friends and with a pocketful of prepaid
around-the-world tickets was not agreeable. In an hour the pain was
excruciating, and it continued for ten long hours with varying severity.
Morning came, and the Indian skipper was plying his furnace with
lubricating oil and turpentine--with anything that would help him get me
to Colombo and medical skill. At last, eighteen hours out from
Marichchikkaddi, the _Active_ was in the harbor and I was being carried
to the Grand Oriental Hotel.
"What about the two bags of oysters, the captain wishes to know!" the
hotel interpreter asked.
"Oh, give them to the men," was the answer; "I have ceased to care for
pearl-studded tiaras and collars. I'm glad to get away alive from the
decaying millions of oysters at the fishery. Even God's free air there
is poisoned by them. What I want most is a doctor."