180 A CRUISE IN THE LACCADIVE SEA 



The chief industry of Aucutta is, of course, the 

 manufacture of coir for export, but a good deal of 

 boat-building goes on, for the men are skilful fisher- 

 men and sailors. But of all these things I shall tell 

 hereafter, when I come to speak about the island of 

 Minnikoy, where I had time to see, and ask, and 

 learn for myself. 



Among the sights worth seeing at Aucutta are 

 the public baths. One would naturally expect that on 

 an island not a square mile in extent, with a large, 

 safe, and beautiful lagoon specially adapted for bathers 

 on its lee, the people would bathe in the lagoon, and 

 would keep all their dry land for coconut plantations, 

 or even for the pleasure of having a few acres of 

 spare ground amid all that waste of ocean. But as 

 no one nowadays, any more than in the time of 

 Adam and Eve, is content with what he has got, the 

 people of Aucutta, despising the sparkling lagoon, have 

 dug for themselves, inland, large bathing-tanks which 

 they have faced with blocks of dressed coral-stone, and 

 have sometimes even furnished with neat tiring-boxes 

 for ladies. What surprised me much about these 

 tanks, in which the water is quite fresh, was to see 

 swimming in them large schools of two of the very 

 same species of fishes — a grey mullet {Mugil [?'] bleekeri) 

 and a small sea-perch {Dtcles tcEuiura) — that one finds 

 in all the tidal pools of the reefs, where, of course, 

 the water is quite salt. These fish were all quite 



