101 
can be got most easily attached, and by this the shark is towed on 
shore; several boats are requisite for towing. The Mhor is often 
40, sometimes 60 feet in length; the mouth is occasionally 4 feet 
wide. 
All other varieties of shark are caught in nets, in somewhat like 
the way in which herrings are caught at home. The net is made of 
strong English whip-cord ; the meshes about six inches; they are 
generally 6 feet wide, and from 600 to 800 fathoms, or from three- 
quarters to nearly a mile, in length. On the one side are floats of 
wood about 4 feet in length, at intervals of 6 feet; on the other, 
pieces of stone. The nets are sunk in deep water, from 80 to 150 
feet, well out at sea. They are put in one day and taken out the 
next; so that they are down two or three times a week, according to 
the state of the weather and success of the fishing. The lesser sharks 
are commonly found dead, the larger ones much exhausted. On 
being taken home, the back fins, the only ones used, are cut off, and 
dried on the sands in the sun ; the flesh is cut off in long strips, and 
salted for food ; the liver is taken out, and boiled down for oil; the 
head, bones and intestines left on the shore to rot, or thrown into the 
sea, where numberless little sharks are generally on the watch to eat 
up the remains of their kindred. 
The fishermen themselves are only concerned in the capture of the 
Sharks. So soon as they are landed, they are purchased up by 
Banians, on whose account all the other operations are performed. 
The Banians collect them in quantities, and transmit them to agents 
in Bombay, by whom they are sold for shipment to China. 
Not only are the fins of all the ordinary varieties of Shark pre¬ 
pared for the market, but those of the Saw T -fish, of the Cat-fish, and 
of some varieties of Ray or Skate : the latter indeed acquires almost 
the size, aspect, and the form of the shark. The Cat-fish, known 
here by the same name as at home, has a head very like that of its 
European congener, from which it differs in all other respects most 
remarkably. The skin is of a tawny yellowish-brown, shading from 
dark brown on the back to dirty yellow on the belly. It is beauti¬ 
fully covered all over with spots of the shape and size of those of the 
leopard, similarly arranged. 
The fishermen along these coasts are divided into four great castes, 
over each of which a head man or Jemadar presides : 1. Koolies; 
2. Bundarries ; 3. Sarras ; 4. -. One great Jemadar, or chief, 
rules supreme in the craft over all these fisher castes. Our informers 
at Kurrachee were a chief of one of the castes and his brother, two 
of the finest men I ever saw. They were 6 feet 3 inches each, pro¬ 
perly made, and muscular in proportion, but not overgrown. They 
had brown beards, long black hair and bushy eyebrows, with fine 
white teeth, a singular openness of countenance and pleasingness of 
expression. They seemed greatly flattered by our inquiries, and 
most willing to give information on every point but one, that of 
the amount of sharks caught. They were quite delighted with the 
sketches I made of their boats and implements. 
