PEARL FISHERY IN 1903. 63 



and the oyster bearer has often divested himself at highly 

 remunerative rates of his whole burden before he emerges at the 

 other side of the throng. If he has any left, he hurries to a native 

 buyer and disposes of the remainder. Then he hurries to wash 

 the brine off his tired limbs in one or other of the tanks specially 

 reserved for the purpose ; and at last follows much-needed rest. 



In time every boat has reached the shore and every boat's crew 

 has, as above described, passed through the kottus. 



No sooner has the load of any boat been deposited, divided into 

 lots, and the diver's lot carried off, than the Government counters 

 begin to count the share left for Government, and, by using an 

 ingenious system of tallies, do this so quickly that the millions of 

 oysters which generally form the Government share of a day's take 

 are counted with remarkable accuracy within a couple of hours or 

 so. Each counter reports his total to the representative of the 

 Government Agent sitting in one corner of the kottu enclosure, 

 and by eight or nine o'clock almost the exact numbers composing 

 the great heaps of oysters on the kottu floor is known and reported. 

 The kottus then are closed for the night, and a few sentries are 

 left throughout the night to watch by the light of the long lines 

 of dimly burning cocoanut oil lamps to see that none of the 

 bivalves are removed or tampered with. 



Here incidentally may be put on record a little incident within 

 my own experience. A mouse wandering through the deserted 

 kottus in the silence of the night and, impelled either by hunger 

 or curiosity, put its head in between the gaping valves of an 

 oyster and was caught before it could draw back. Oyster and 

 mouse, the head of the latter tightly clipped by the former, now 

 stand in a glass jar of arrack on my table. Such an incident 

 appears to be not uncommon ; and Sir William Twynam in his 

 interesting little museum at Jaffna has a bird imprisoned by an 

 oyster in the same fashion. 



At about 9 P.M. each night the Government Agent repairs to 

 the court-house, where are collected ail who wish to buy oysters 

 wholesale. The Government Agent first announces how many 

 of the bivalves are lying in the kottus and puts these up for sale by 

 the thousand. Any number of thousands, from one to perhaps 

 fifty thousand or more, are taken by individual purchasers or by 

 syndicates. The prices in a single night vary curiously and 

 inexplicably ; a high price, say, Rs. 35 per 1,000, may be given at 

 the beginning of the evening, later not more than Rs. 22 can be ex- 

 tracted, and yet again later higher prices prevail. There is keen and 

 zealous competition, the larger buyers competing against the smaller, 

 or all combining in a ring against the Government auctioneer. 



