A White Australia 215 



fitted with an air-pump and diving apparatus, 

 although Thursday Island still sends boats to the 

 shallower fishing-grounds manned with swim- 

 ming divers only. The maximum depth at 

 which the man in diving dress can work is twenty 

 fathoms, or one hundred and twenty feet, and, at 

 that depth, the pressure of water is so great as to 

 produce very unpleasant effects upon those who 

 are called upon to endure it. At one time, white 

 divers were not unfrequent upon the pearling 

 grounds, but so many of them became afflicted 

 with paralysis that diving as an occupation has 

 been abandoned to the coloured man. The white 

 master may occasionally descend in the diving 

 dress for the purpose of examining the fishing- 

 grounds for himself, but that is all. 



When the diver is at work, the boat is allowed 

 to drift, and he walks along the ocean-bed beneath 

 it. The shell he gathers is sent in a bag to the 

 surface, where the master opens it and searches for 

 the pearls. This is the speculative side of the 

 business, which appeals most keenly to the ad- 

 venturous class engaged in it. Fortune is pro- 

 verbially fickle, and men who have spent many 

 years at the fisheries without finding a pearl of 

 great value have to accept with resignation the 

 fact that the most precious gem ever found in 

 Australia, sold in London for ^"5000, fell to a 

 novice who had just embarked in the pearling 

 trade. On those northern coasts of Australia, 

 the difference between the tides is very great, and 



