<A MONTHLY. ^ ^ 
XXIII. COLOMBO, FEBEUAEY 1st, 1904. No. 8. 
A SKETCH OP THE CEYLON PEARL 
FISHERY OP 1903. 
(By Everard im Thubn, c.b., c.m.g., Lihut,- 
GovEBNOR OP Ceylon.) 
Part II, 
(Concluded from page 4^5.) 
THE CEASE FISHING GUN AT NOON. 
Y noon most of the divers are 
tired out and, if it has been 
a fairly successful day, the 
boats are fairly loaded up. 
Moreover, at noon at this time 
of the year the wind almost 
invariably changes its direction 
and blows towards the land" 
At noon, therefore, a gun fired from the Mastar- 
Attendant's barqae gives the signal for pulling up 
the anchor, hoisting the sails, and beginning the run 
home. If the paar which is being fished is some 
distance from the !and, the run home may take any 
time, according to the strength of the fair wind, 
from three to five hours. 
PEARL THIEVING BY THE DIVERS, 
The run home is, I am afraid, a busy and, from 
a Government point of view, a bad time. The men 
other than the tired out divers, occupy themselves, 
nominally in picking over their oysters, throwing 
away stones, shells, and other useless things which 
in the hurry have been gathered in with the 
oysters, and in preparing the loads for easy trans- 
port from the boats to the shore. But, as a matter 
of fact, it is well known that this opportunity and 
these hours are employed in picking over the oysters 
in a difierent sense. The finest pearls almost in- 
variably occur just inside the edge of the shells, 
where they are held in position by so thin a mem- 
brane that they appear ready to fall out any mo- 
ment. There is no doubt that many of these finest, 
roundest, and best coloured pearls are picked out 
during the run home and concealed about the persons 
of the boat's crew, and this, despite the fact that 
each boat has a so-called Government guard on 
board, and that a farther check is supposed to be 
provided by the Government steam launches which 
run in with the fleet, and the crews of which are 
supposed to keep their eyes very wide open for the 
jllicit practices indicated. It is in this iniquitous 
practice of picking over that one chief reason why the 
Government does not get its fair share of the 
pearls lies. 
THE HOMEWARD RACE OF THE BOATS. 
It is as pretty a sight as one can well imagine, 
this homeward race before a strong wind and over 
a tropical sea of a hundred or so of ruddy-sailed 
craft, orientally fantastic in colour and shape, and 
each deck crowded with a motley crew of brown- 
skinned men and boys naked but for a few rags of 
brilliant coloured cloth. Each crew strives to get in 
first, in order to get first attention and so soonest 
to dispose of their loads and thus gain rest after 
a day of really hard labour. There is no lowering 
of sails as the shore is approached, no slackening 
of the speed till, as often as not. each boat buries 
its bow3 deep in the high sandbank which forma 
the shore, and comes with a sudden thud so violently 
to a stand that the expectant crew, each man already 
loaded with his basket or netted pack of oysters, 
is almost hurled into the narrow openings in the 
high wattle fence which surrounds the Government 
•kottus," the sheds where the oysters are first 
deposited and divided. 
Inside this fence is the huge wattle-walled and 
palm-thatched warehouse, where the division of the 
oysters between the divers and the Government is 
carried out. It is a vast rectangular building divided 
by rough posts and rails into long straight avenues 
of square pens, each pen numbered and provided 
with its Government clerks and counters. 
THE DIVISION OF THE SPOIL. 
The crew of each boat in some way gets itself, or is 
got by the otfioials, into a separate pen and there 
dumps down its oysters. Then the oysters are 
divided between the divers and the Government 
in the respective proportion of one-third and two- 
thirds, by a proceas of quite admirable simplicity 
and ingennit;. The divers themselves, and unassisted, 
