64 MADRAS FISHERIES BULLETIN [VOL. XVI, 



and by the courtesy of the Gomez family we were enabled to 

 interview the headmen of the divers in their house — Xavier Gomez, 

 who had been one of the assistant beach-masters at the Ceylon 

 Fishery, acting as interpreter. 



The head diver, M. Kirutuneina, who claims to be 70 years old 

 and to have dived from the age of nine, had much to say, but few 

 facts of consequence were elicited; he and the other elders had 

 never known or heard of mature pearl oysters in quantity on any of 

 the Pars between Kilakarai and Pamban. The nearest locality 

 they knew of was the vicinity of Nallatanni-tivu, and even there 

 they had never seen a bed of living oysters, the evidence as regards 

 this locality resting entirely upon the abundance of old oyster 

 shells that litter the sand hills of that island. 



In Kilakarai, signs of prosperity were visible everywhere ; boat- 

 owners were arranging for the building of new craft, their agents 

 gone to Cochin for timber; diver-fishermen were investing in new 

 nets and goldsmiths were busy with orders for jewellery for the 

 womenfolk. The talk everywhere was of money, of profits past 

 and prospective, individual and collective, and of their determina- 

 tion to send more boats and divers to the next year's Ceylon fishery 

 which they were already exploiting in imagination ! Incidentally 

 the head diver informed us that as the result of careful calculation, 

 the best informed people of the place estimated that this one town 

 had brought away from the Ceylon fishery a sum of fully ten lakhs 

 of rupees — the earnings of the divers, munduks, and boatmen, and 

 the profits of the pearl merchants and boutique keepers — a sum 

 equal to the gross proceeds received by the Ceylon Government 

 from their share of the fishery. 



This year the high profits made at the Ceylon fishery were 

 doubly welcome as being unexpected, news having been univers- 

 ally circulated at the end of last year (1903) that, as the result of the 

 November inspection of the banks had proved disappointing, no 

 fishery would take place. 



The Kilakarai men are the best and most reliable of the local 

 divers who attend the pearl fisheries of the Gulf of Mannar. Their 

 abstemious lives consequent upon fairly faithful observance of the 

 Prophet's laws, predispose to health and regularity of working and 

 while more industrious than the Roman Catholic Parava divers 

 they also make better use of their earnings than do the latter, who, 

 I am assured on all sides — even by their own people — dissipate 



