Production of Isinglass on the Coasts of India. 1 1 1 



the rivers, in the interior of India. It may be thought that this 

 change has taken place in modern times, but if this were so, it is 

 curious that in the Institutes of Menu, who is said to have 

 nourished 800 or 900 years before the Christian sera, he should 

 make an exception, in limiting the legal interest of money, in 

 regard to adventurers at sea, and that Fa-hian, in the fifth cen- 

 tury, made a voyage from Java to Ceylon in a vessel belonging 

 to Brahmins. 



In the present day, Sir A. Burnes represents " the mariner of 

 Cutch as truly adventurous," putting to sea, for a trifling reward, and 

 stretching boldly across the ocean to Arabia, the Red Sea, and the 

 Coast of Zanguebar in Africa. The sea vessels of Curachee sail to 

 Muscat, Bombay, and the Malabar Coast ; and the fishing-boats at 

 the mouths of the Indus he describes as good sea-boats, as sailing 

 very quickly, and as numerous, because the fisheries there are exten- 

 sive, and form a source of commerce. So Dr. Cantor states, that at the 

 mouths of the Ganges the fishermen have sea- going boasts, which 

 they build themselves ; and that they are a superior description of 

 Indian Sailors, of much more industrious habits than the majority 

 of the natives of India. If we look still further to the eastward, we 

 shall see the Burmese and Siamese almost living in boats, and the 

 Malays most formidable as Pirates in the India Seas. Mr. Crawford 

 represents the Indian Islanders as expert fishermen, and that there is 

 no art which they carry to such perfection as fishing, which the 

 nature of their climate allows them to practise, with hardly any in- 

 terruption, from one end of the year to the other, the fishing-boats 

 proceeding to sea with the land-breeze at an early hour of the morn- 

 ing, and returning with the sea-breeze a little after noon. The 

 fisheries afford a most valuable branch of their commerce, as a 

 great variety of their fish are dried in the sun, or salted and 

 dried, and sent by the inhabitants of the Coast in large quantities 

 into the interior of their islands, or transmitted to every part of 

 the Archipelago. 



Seeing that the inhabitants of the Coasts of these various coun- 

 tries already practise fishing to some extent, it is desirable to inquire 

 whether it may not be still further extended. Dr. Cantor has parti- 

 cularly called attention to the importance of attending to, and encou- 



