THE XORTnERN PEOVIXCE. 253 



going after, but " coral " was to my servant-interpreter a word of 

 unknown meaning. By no possible description could I make the 

 natives understand what I wanted, and finally, as a last resort, I 

 made a little sketch on a piece of paper, when they aU exclaimed, 

 " Oh ! Koki calli ! " The mystery was solved. 



We got into our boat and pulled along the eastern side of Man- 

 deti^al, a small island to the south of Jaffna, with the expectation 

 of finding coral off its most southem point. It was low water when 

 we started, and the ebbing tide had left bare a wide strip of sand 

 and mud all along the Jaffna shore. For fully five miles around, the 

 sea is very shallow, the depth at low water varying from one foot 

 to six ; but it is oftener thi-ee feet than otherwise. Small as our 

 boat was we had to follow the channel until clear of the sandbanks, 

 and then we headed south. We saw a number of native fishermen 

 (among them some women also) wading around out in the sea more 

 than a mile from shore, catching crabs, and picking up other edi- 

 ble invertebrates. We overhauled one old woman who was thus 

 cruising about waist deep in water, with a basket slung at her side 

 and a stick in her hand. Her basket contained three fine crabs, two 

 cmious little chsetodons, and a large sea-anemone {Actinia) which 

 quite resembled a cauliflower with a concave centre. We bought 

 her enth-e catch for ten cents and went our way. These waders 

 sometimes take cast-nets with them when they go a-wading, with 

 which they catch a good many small fish. The water is so clear that 

 all objects on the bottom are quite discernible, and the crabs, being 

 very slow on foot, are easily caught by hand. 



AU around Jaffiaa, the bottom of the sea is of white sand, in 

 some places thickly overgrown -nith seaweed and in others clean 

 as a floor. 



After two hours' pulling at the oars we came to good collecting 

 ground, just off the southeastern shore of Mandetivu. The water 

 was only three to four feet deep, and my old diver got out of the 

 boat to wade around. First we found dozens of holothurians lying 

 scattered about hke so many brown sausages, six inches long ; so 

 numerous were they, in fact, that one wonders why the natives do 

 not collect and dry them for shipment to China, as is done farther 

 down the coast in the Gulf of Manaar. We could have gathered 

 a hundi-ed without much trouble ; but a dozen were sufficient for 

 our wants. It is strange the natives do not eat them, as they do 

 nearly everjlhing else that comes out of the sea. 



Next we found some verj- pretty little star-fishes [Asteria), and 



