544t NOTES. 



temples and at the Hindu festivals. If any of the reversed variety of these shells are found 

 with the opening on the left instead of on the right side of the shell, they may, it is said, in 

 consequence of a peculiar religious prejudice in favour of such variety amongst the Hindus, 

 be sold at any Hindu temple for their weight in gold. As the Ceylon divers learn to dive for 

 pearl oysters, which are found in eight or nine fathoms water, by diving for the chanks which 

 are found in three or four fathoms, the chank fishery is considered a nursery for the pearl 

 divers. 



(C). The principal pearl banks belonging to His Majesty's Government are situated along the 

 western coast of Ceylon, a little to the southward of the island of Manar. The East-India Com- 

 pany have a chank fishery at Killecarr^, and a pearl fishery at Tuticoreen, both which places are 

 situated on that part of the coast of the southern peninsula of India which is opposite to the island 

 of Ceylon. It is said that the chank and pearl fisheries on the coast of the peninsula and the 

 chank and pearl fisheries on the coast of Ceylon were, at the time when the Mohammedans were 

 established at Manar and Mantotte, under one management: the policy of this arrangement is 

 obvious, for as most of the divers who dive on the one bank also dive on the other, the fisheries at 

 one place may, if under separate management, materially interfere with the fisheries on the other. 

 These fisheries seem to have been carried on along the same parts of the respective coasts of the 

 peninsula of India and of Ceylon from the most ancient limes, as I ascertained in the course of 

 an examination which I made of the coast near Killecarre. I have little doubt that Killecarre 

 was, as is stated by some authors, the Colchis mentioned in the Periplus of the Erythrean sea, 

 and that the pearl fishery which is mentioned in the Periplus as having been carried on at 

 Colchis in ancient times, is the same pearl fishery as that which is now carried on off the 

 coast of Tuticoreen and Killekarre. 



(D). The great quantities of rice which in former days were exported from Trincomalee to 

 all parts of India were the produce of the eastern provinces of Ceylon, the produce of which 

 is at the present time so reduced as to be scarcely sufficient to supply the small population which 

 inhabits them. By a report made to me in 1806, it appeared that there were at that time in 

 those provinces upwards of six hundred tanks or reservoirs of water in a state of complete ruin, 

 two of which, Minere and Kandelle, are of immense dimensions, the former being about twenty 

 miles, the latter about sixteen miles in circumference. At the former, the embankment which 

 keeps in the water is a quarter of a mile long, and about sixty feet wide at its top ; at the latter, 

 in order to encompass and keep in the water of the lake, two hills are joined by an enbank- 

 ment the length of which is one mile and a quarter, its perpendicular height about twenty feet, 

 its breadth at the base one hundred and fifty feet, and at the summit about thirty feet. 



(E). The indigo which was exported from Trincomalee is the produce of the indigqfera 

 tinctoria of Linnseus. It was celebrated in ancient times all over India, Arabia, and Persia, 

 for the brightness of its colour, and was an article upon which the merchants of Ceylon 

 in former days appear to have made a great profit ; it grows at present perfectly wild 

 between Trincomalee and Batticaloa, but is no longer an article of export. As his Majesty's 

 Government at my suggestion, in the year 1810, took off the restrictions which previously 

 existed against Europeans holding lands on the island of Ceylon, a gentleman is now about to 

 apply to Government for a grant of land in that part of the country where the indigqfera 



