182 OUB HEKITAGE THE SEA 



for others. They toil like slaves and live like fish, 

 but with far less food, at what is one of the most 

 dangerous and distressing occupations known. Their 

 lives are short and hard, and certainly the ordinary 

 fisherman's calling, onerous and uncertain as it is, 

 cannot be nearly as much so as theirs. 



The whole coasts of the Bay of Bengal are thus 

 neglected in the matter of fishing, and it is not until 

 we reach the coral groups of the Maldives and Lacca- 

 dives that we find a regular fishing population, driven 

 to thus seeking a livelihood by the scantiness of the 

 food supply on shore. But when we enter the Indian 

 Archipelago, that marvellous congeries of huge fertile 

 islands, we find again the same indifference to ocean's 

 wealth, except where the frugal and industrious 

 Chinese are at work. But here a curious trade begins, 

 dependent entirely upon the strange tastes of the 

 wealthy in China itself. Neglecting the many fine 

 fish that abound, the seafarers, mostly Malays and 

 Siamese, with a sprinkling of Chinese who attend to 

 the business side, the fishermen here catch sharks for 

 their fins, and search the crowns of shallow reefs for 

 the Holothuria, or sea-slug, a black, loathsome-looking 

 tube, which exudes, when touched, a variegated skein 

 of slimy threads together with fragments of coral. 

 These two curious products of the sea are boiled, 

 dried in wood-smoke, and stored for conveyance to 

 China, where they fetch a price, varying according 

 to some strange standard of quality, from 100 to 

 200 per ton. With them is also conveyed another 

 strange food, which, while not strictly a product of 

 the ocean itself, is closely allied thereto, I allude to 

 the nests of the sea-swallow (callocalia esculentci), which 



