Chap. VII.] 



THE PEARL FISHERY. 



561 



causes ; the received hypothesis being that tlie young 

 broods had been swept off their accustomed feeding 

 grounds owing to tlie estabhslnnent of unusual cur- 

 rents, occasioned by deepening the narrow passage at 

 Paumbam. It was also suggested, that a previous 

 Governor, in his eagerness to replenish the colonial trea- 

 sury, had so " scraped " and impoverished the beds as to 

 exterminate the oysters. To me, neither of these suppo- 

 sitions appeared worthy of acceptance ; for, in the fre- 

 quent disruptions of Adam's Bridge, there was ample 

 evidence that the currents in the Gulf of Manaar had 

 been changed at former times without destroying the 

 pearls ; and, moreover the oysters had disappeared on 

 many former occasions, without any imputation of im- 

 proper management on the part of tlie conservators, and 

 returned after much longer intervals of absence than that 

 which fell under my own notice, and which was then 

 creating serious apprehension in the colony. 



A similar interruption had been experienced between 

 1820 and 1828 : the Dutch had had no fishing for 

 twenty-seven years, from 1768 tiU 1796, and they had 

 been equally unsuccessful from 1732 till 1746. The 

 Arabs were well acquainted with similar vicissitudes, and 

 Albyrouni (a contemporary of Avicenna), who served 

 under Mahmoud of Ghaznee, and wrote in the eleventh 

 century, says that the pearl fishery, which formerly 

 existed in the Gulf of Serendib, had become exhausted in 

 his time, simultaneously with the appearance of a fisliery 

 at Sofala, in the country of the Zends, where pearls 

 were unknown before ; and says, hence arose the conjec- 

 ture that the pearl oyster of Serendib had migrated to 

 Sofala.^ 



^ " 1\ y avait autrefois dan.s lo 

 Golfe de Serendyb, iino pechorio de 

 perles qui s'ost epuisee de notre 

 temps. D'un autre cote il s'est 

 fonne une pecherie a Sofala dans le 

 pays des Zends, lu oii il n'en existait 



pas auparavant — on dil que c'est la 

 pec-herie de Serendyb qui s'est trans- 

 portee a Sofala." — ALHYitoixi, in 

 Reinaud's Frm/mens Anihc^, &v.y 

 p. 125 ; see .also Rkixaud's Mimoire 

 sitr VlmJe, p. 228. 



VOL. II. 







