PEARLS AND PEARL-DIVING 



a minute to the boat's side while he takes breath and then go 

 down again ; but, after a few such descents, he will be very 

 willing to be lifted aboard and let another man take his 

 place. Working thus alternately, diving scarcely stops 

 for an instant till the midday signal gun is fired, or till 

 the boat is full, when she at once makes for the shore as 

 fast as she can, anxious to be as near first in the field as 

 possible in order to get a good price for her cargo. Some- 

 times a boatload means as many as from twenty to forty 

 thousand fish, and these, packed in baskets or sacks, are 

 taken ashore, after having been sealed by an emissary 

 from a watch-boat, and carried to a large enclosure some 

 distance up the beach, checked, packed in heaps of a 

 thousand, and promptly offered for sale by the auctioneers. 

 Buyers from all the ends of the earth, and of all classes, 

 are waiting to bid, and each boatload is gradually dis- 

 posed of. 



Thus heaped up out of their natural element, the fish 

 are dead in a couple of hours, and then the heat of the 

 sun begins the work of putrefying them. The smell 

 but let us change the subject. Artificial means of opening 

 the oysters have been tried frequently in different parts 

 of the world, as, for instance, in South and Central 

 America by the sixteenth-century Spaniards, who were 

 wont to force the valves by exposure to a fierce fire ; but 

 such methods have generally resulted in serious damage to 

 the contents by discoloration and breakage. In Ceylon 

 also, impatient buyers, imitating the example of the 

 auctioneers, who are forced to open a few on the spot as 

 samples of what the heap for sale is likely to contain, 



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