32 



divers have to move about on the bottom from place to place 

 in search of them. The divers usually stay beneath the 

 surface from 40 to 50 seconds. The longest dive which I 

 have myself witnessed was 54 seconds, and on that occasion 

 the diver, on his return to the surface, innocently inquired 

 how many minutes he had been under water. A single case 

 is on record of a native diver being drowned from over- 

 loading his net, so that he was unable to rise to the surface. 

 I can find no record of the death, in recent years, of a diver 

 at the hands of a shark ; but dread of sharks still clings to 

 the divers, and I read in the Times of Ceylon during the 

 recent pearl fishery that " at present there are said to be 150 

 boats with their full complement of men, all waiting at 

 Kilakarai in readiness to proceed to Dutch Bay, but they 

 will not leave until after some festivities which occur on the 

 15th instant, when it is customary for them to pray for 

 protection from sharks, &c., while engaged in diving." 



Further Tennent writes ^ : — 



' ' The only precaution to which the Ceylon diver devotedly 

 resorts is the mystic ceremony of the shark-charmer, whose 

 exorcism is an indispensable preliminary to every fishery. This 

 power is beHeved to be hereditary ; nor is it supposed that the 

 value of his incantations is at all dependent upon the religious 

 faith professed by the operator, for the present head of the 

 family happens to be a Eoman Catholic. At the time of our 

 visit this mysterious functionary was ill and unable to attend ; 

 but he sent an accredited substitute, who assured me that, 

 although he was himself ignorant of the grand and mystic secret, 

 the fact of his presence as a representative of the higher 

 authority would be recognised and respected by the sharks." 



The number of chanks collected in a day varies very 

 much according to the number of divers employed and other 

 conditions ; and the records show that as many as 6,000 

 or as few as 400 may be collected. The divers, who are 

 furnished with canoes, ropes, and other apparatus, are paid at 

 the rate of Rs. 20 per 1,000 shells.* At the close of the day's 

 fishery the chanks are brought on shore, and examined. 

 Those which are defective, either from cracks or irregularities 

 of the surface from their having been gnawed by fishes or 

 bored by marine worms, are rejected. 



The remainder are tested with a wooden gauge having a 

 hole 2 1 inches in diameter. Those shells which pass through 



' Sir J. Emerson Tennerxt's Ceylm, 1860, vol. II, pp. 564-5. 



