322 NATURALIST'S CABINET. 



Dr. Goldsmith's remarks 



destined to fish for pearls, are either negroes, oir 

 some of the poorest of the natives of Persia. 

 The clivers are not only suhject to the dangers 

 of the deep, to tempests, to suffocation at the 

 bottom, to being devoured by sharks, but from 

 their profession universally labor under a spitting 

 of blood, occasioned by the pressure of air upon 

 their lungs in going down to the bottom. The 

 most robust and healthy young men are chosen 

 for this employment, but they seldom survive it 

 five or six years. Their fibres become rigid, 

 their eye-balls turn red, and they usually die 

 consumptive. It is amazing how long they arc 

 seen to continue at the bottom. Some, as we 

 are assured, have been known to continue three 

 quarters of an hour under water without breath- 

 ing, and to one unused to diving, ten minutes 

 would suffocate the strongest. They fish for 

 pearls, or rather the oysters that contain them, 

 in boats twenty-eight feet long ; and of these 

 are sometimes three or four hundred at a time, 

 with each seven or eight stones, which serve for 

 anchors. There are from five to eight divers 

 belonging to each, that dive one after another. 

 They are quite naked, except that they have a 

 net hanging down from the neck to put their 

 oysters in, and gloves on their hands to defend 

 them while they pick the oysters from the holes 

 in the rocks, for in this manner alone can they 

 be gathered. Every diver is sunk by means of a 

 stone, weighing fifty pounds, tied to the rope by 



