101 



tant parts of the island, engaged in searching for stray 

 pearls in the sand formerly occupied by the washing kottus, 

 the site of which was indicated by the remains of the 

 fences and heaped up piles of oyster shells, and gaining as 

 the reward of their labour from one to two rupees a day, 

 being tbe sole human occupants of the sandy shore, on which 

 hosts of wading birds were ccmgregated. It was reported 

 that one woman had found five pearls, each of the size of an 

 ordinary pepper seed, for which she had been offered and 

 refused 150 rupees. 



The seaward face of the sand-spit was strewed with coral 

 fragments rolled in by the waves from the reef, which inter- 

 venes between the shorje and the pearl bank, and is partially 

 laid bare at low tide ; and the sand was riddled with the 

 burrows of a verj large Ocijpod {0. platytarsis). If one of 

 these crabs is killed and left on the shore, its fellow creatures 

 carry it away into a burrow, and, doubtless, devour it. 



On the day after our arrival at Dutch Bay we sailed in 

 one of the diving boats to Karaitivu and Ipantivu islands 

 and the mainland in search of a possible spot adapted for the 

 requirements of a pearl camp at the next fishery. In the 

 shallow water near the shore of Karaitivu island fishes — 

 Mugil and llotiiramphus — some of which leaped into the 

 boat and were eventually cooked, fell easy victims to fishing 

 eagles and gulls. Two hauls of the dredge in the sand and 

 mud brought up Amphioxus, Litaaria phalloideH, the Trepang 

 Holotlmria inarmorata, Astropccfcn /trnipricMi, Pliih/rascabri- 

 vscula, Chloeia flavn, and many molluscs ; the majority of 

 the species of mollusc, both here and in Dutch Bay, being 

 common to the Indian and Ceylon Coasts of the Gulf of 

 Manaar. On the mainland forming the eastern boundary 

 of Dutch Bay, into which the river Kala Oya discharges 

 its water b}' several mouths, dense jungle and swampy 

 ground teeming with the mollusc Pt/rnzus palustris reach right 

 down to the water's edge ; and, as we walked along the 

 shore, we came across solid evidence of the recent presence 

 of elephants. We were told by a native that bears and wild 

 pigs are so thick in the jungle that one trips over them as 

 one walks along ! 



In 1868 large numbers of young pearl-oysters are re- 

 ported to have been spread over a considerable extent of the 

 muddy bottom of Dutch Bay in from one to two fathoms 



