128 
and Bengal! resorted every year to trade with the rich 
Hindu and Muhammadan merchants living there, a 
definite statement which shows that there was even then 
no difficulty in forwarding supplies of chanks direct by 
sea to the Dacca workshops. | 
Barbosa also tells us that at the time of his visit the 
fishery off this coast belonged to the king of Koulam 
(Quilon inthe southern part of Travancore) who gene- 
rally resided at Kayal and who farmed the pearl-fishery 
to a wealthy Muhammadan.* The chank-fishery so 
far as we know has always been an adjunct to the more 
romantic pearl-fishery and must almost certainly have 
been treated in a similar manner, both fisheries being 
considered everywhere in India from immemorial times 
as prerogatives of the sovereign. About 1524, the Portu- 
guese seized the Tinnevelly pearl-fishery, stationing a 
factor and guard boats on this coast—the Pescaria or 
fishery coast as it soon became termed. I[n 1563, Garcia 
da Orta speaks ofthe trade with Bengal having declined 
owing to the unrest caused by Muhammadan invaders 
in that country, but in 1644, Boccaro in a detailed report 
upon the Portuguese ports and settlements in India 
records that a large quantity of chanks fished off Tuti- 
corin were exported to Bengal ‘“‘ where the blacks make 
of them bracelets for the arm. Elewadds> rather 
quaintly the name of another Tuticorin production—‘‘the 
biggest and best fowls in all these eastern parts."t Exactly 
how the Portuguese conducted this trade and what pro- 
fits it yielded them are not known:to me; the Dutch, so 
far as they were able, destroyed the Portuguese archives 
in Tuticorin as well as in Ceylon, and we must await 
further research among the records at Lisbon before we 
can gain any further information. 
The Dutch, keen to distinguish the substance from 
the shadow, paid great attention to the development of 
the chank-fishery as distinguished from the pearl-fishery 
whereof one of their most able local Governors, Baron Van 
Imhoff, once queried (1740) whether the latter ‘‘is not 
more glitter than gold as so many things are which 
* Fide Yule’s ‘* Hobson-Jobson,” article ‘f Chank.” 
+ Fide Yule, “ ‘he Book of Ser Marco Polo,” Vol. II, p. 307, London, 1871. 
