80 CINGALESE SUPERSTITION. 



then a signal gun is fired, and the boats returning with 

 the government vessel, form an animated and pleasing 

 scene, which is succeeded by the bustle of selling the 

 oysters by auction, and distributing the shares to the 

 several temples, various subordinate officers, the boat- 

 owners, and shark-charmers. 



The last-mentioned persons are always attendants at 

 the pearl-fishery; they belong to one family, and no 

 one who does not belong to it can aspire to that office. 

 The natives believe that they have power over the 

 monsters of the sea, nor would they descend to the 

 bottom of the deep unless they knew that one of them 

 was present in the fleet. Two of them are constantly 

 employed ; one goes out regularly in the head pilot's 

 boat, the other performs certain ceremonies on shore. 

 Stripped of his clothes he is shut up in a room, where 

 no person sees him from the period of the sailing of the 

 boats until their return. He has before him a brass 

 basin full of water, containing one male and one female 

 fish full of silver. Should any accident happen from a 

 shai'k at sea, it is supposed that one of these fishes will 

 be seen to bite the other. The shark-charmer is called, 

 both in the Malabar and Hindostanee languages, a binder 

 of sharks. The divers likewise imagine that if the 

 conjuror should be dissatisfied, he has the power. of 



