Part 8

Expert divers who dive singly have an attendant, a manduck, who attends to the lines and looks out for his interests generally. The manduck drops a line with the oyster basket overboard and attaches to it another weighted with a forty to fifty pound stone. These are so fastened that they can be quickly released. The diver then drops into the water feet first and placing his foot in a loop in the line over the stone puts the basket on it, and releasing the lines, sinks to the bottom. Disengaging himself, he proceeds to fill his basket while the attendant pulls up the stone and adjusts it for the next descent. When ready to return he signals his attendant, and holding on to the line with the basket is drawn to the surface, occasionally accelerating his own return by climbing the rope hand over hand at the same time. He rests in the water by the boat's side until ready to dive again, making seven or eight descents before climbing into the boat for a longer rest and sun-bath.

The divers of India, Arabia and the Red Sea are natives of the Madras Presidency, descendants of Arab fishers at Jaffna in Ceylon, Arabs, and Egyptian Negroes. They travel long distances to the fisheries and there are many of them between the Red Sea and Ceylon. At the last fishing in the Gulf of Manaar there were about forty-five hundred. Their dress during the time of the fishing consists of a loin cloth only. They have many hereditary and class superstitions, chief of which is their faith in shark-charmers. While waiting for the fishing to begin they also seek to get from the fates an inkling of the luck which will attend them. One common method is by breaking a cocoanut on the diving stone; the more clean and even the break, the better the luck.

The mortality among divers at the fisheries is not great in Asiatic waters. Pneumonia is the greatest scourge, fatalities in diving being few. It is necessary however to select robust men for depths beyond forty feet; comparatively few can work without injurious effects below that.

Some curious mixtures of ancient days and present times, of the Pharaohs and infant industries, are seen. One may see a black slave diver in the Red Sea hanging over the edge of his boat taking observations through an old tin kerosene can with a bit of glass in one end of it. This he sinks a little way in the water and gazes through it below. Presently the can is discarded, over he goes and returns shortly with a few shells; while near by a clumsy monster emerges and a diver in dress climbs into his boat. This use of modern tin cans and glass is adopted in seas where the shells are scattered and is common to pearl-divers the world over.

The Moros have a method of fishing in very calm weather peculiar to themselves. They drop a three-prong catcher attached to a rattan rope upon the oyster bunches and so haul them up to the boat. This can only be done when the sea is perfectly still, as even a ripple would render a sight of the oysters impossible. Ordinarily they dive to any depth down to twenty fathoms.

Many attempts have been made to introduce dress-diving among the natives of the east but so far few have been successful. Results from experiments have not compared favorably with naked diving and so, with few exceptions, naked diving is still the rule in the east where natives control the fishings.

But of all, the Polynesians, both male and female, adhere most closely to the old way. Most of them will not even use a stone to assist the descent, and they probably reach greater depths than the naked divers of any other sea. Travellers report that, at a coral atoll in the Southern Pacific owned by the French government and known as Hikuereu, where the natives of Tahiti and other islands flock during the season to fish for pearls, the boys and girls and women are almost as expert as the men.

Whole families congregate here, remaining during the season housed in huts framed of light cocoanut palms roofed with leaves. These they bring with them, some coming several hundred miles. The shells are mostly in sixty to seventy feet of water; some however are brought from a depth of one hundred feet. It is reported that a boy, on an exhibition dive, remained under water for two minutes and forty seconds, going to a depth of a little over one hundred feet. He was in sight all the time, the water being so transparent that he could be seen on the bottom, leisurely selecting pieces of coral for the officers of the ship above. These divers hang in the water by one hand grasping the gunwale of the boat while they examine the bottom for oysters through a glass which they hold below the surface in the other hand.

When shells are sighted the glass is discarded, the lungs are filled several times and the air expelled slowly. Upon reaching a certain fit condition a long breath is taken until the lungs are inflated to their utmost capacity; the diver then suddenly lets go, sinks a few feet below the surface, turns quickly and head-first swims rapidly to the bottom.

Arriving there, he pulls himself along by grasping the coral branches and breaking the shells loose from their anchorage with his right hand, which is protected by a cloth wrapping, and stows them away in a cocoanut fibre basket slung over the shoulder. This done, he straightens himself and shoots to the surface with astonishing rapidity, seeming to leap up from the water as he arrives with almost sufficient impetus to carry him into the waiting canoe. In a few minutes he is ready to dive again. In some localities where divers were employed the women were preferred, not because they could do better work always, but one could depend on them more safely. This was true of the divers in Torres Straits between Queensland and New Guinea.

Before dress-diving was introduced these naked natives would dive into ten or twelve fathoms and bring up an oyster under each arm. The shells were large, weighing three to six pounds together and sometimes ten, but they contained few pearls and those were generally small. As they were brought up the oysters were searched for pearls and the fish used for food. The shells sold in Sydney then for eight to nine hundred dollars the ton. Years ago the women of Chile about the Bay of Concepcion claimed as a right the fishing for mussels. The men rowed them out to the beds and stuck long poles into the shoal below, down which the women would slide, returning with both hands full of mussels. The fishing was done from canoes, each holding one man and one woman. The women did not consider this a hardship but a privilege of which they were quite jealous, for they devoted the proceeds of their catch to the purchase of finery.

Wonderful stories are told of the great depths to which these naked divers go and the great length of time they can remain under water. Many of these tales are gross exaggerations,—yarns which have grown more wonderful with the telling, or the reports of careless or inexperienced observers. As a matter of fact at most of the fisheries, twenty to thirty feet is good diving, and from forty to fifty feet is the maximum depth. Sixty to eighty seconds is the average limit of time they remain under water. If one will try to hold the breath for sixty seconds, even while remaining perfectly still, it will be at once understood that to do so while moving and working rapidly under water is a great feat. Nevertheless there have been instances undoubtedly, where naked divers have gone to much greater depths and remained under for several minutes. Such cases are rare however and occur most frequently among the natives of the South Sea Islands, who, male and female, are expert divers from childhood and spend much of their lives in the water.

Visitors have claimed that natives of the Tongarewa Islands, in longitude one hundred and fifty-eight degrees W. and latitude nine degrees S., can do twenty to twenty-five fathoms and will even go deeper when tempted by the sight of a few oysters lying in a hole or depression near by. Going below twenty-five fathoms results almost invariably in a sort of paralysis. The diver comes up howling and incapable of motion and unless companions at once seize and rub him vigorously with salt water until circulation is restored, a process lasting sometimes many hours, he dives no more. If restored he will dive again next day, and such is their recklessness that the same temptation would lead him to take the risk again.

Monsters abound in these waters. Should the diver be attacked by a devil-fish, shark, or sword-fish, he does not use a knife, as blood would attract other devils of the sea and becloud the water to his own confusion. Instead he seeks to avoid his enemy, and if the troubler is a sword-fish, tries to find shelter among the rocks. If the fish departs quickly, he escapes; but the time of a live man one hundred feet under water is short and sometimes the sword-fish over-stays it.

Helmets have been used to a certain extent in all parts of the world. Many of them were clumsy affairs, abhorred by all native divers, and were a bad introduction to the "dress" used in the large operations of big fisheries such as those of Australia and the Pacific coast of this continent. In the seas about Australia, modern appliances are being rapidly introduced. The Australians use them if possible, wherever they fish. On their own coast all diving is now done in dress; but among some of the islands of the Pacific, where they are extending their interests, native prejudice is still able to hinder the use of it.

Probably the chief reason for the general use of the dress on the Australian coast so early was that the shallows were soon exhausted, and naked diving was not successful beyond a depth of fifty feet. With the dress, a diver can work at much greater depths, remain under water an hour or two, and work all the year round.

In fisheries like those of Ceylon, where the banks are seldom over forty feet deep and well known, being fished over and over again at one season of the year only, at comparatively short intervals (four to six years), the necessity for dress-diving is less and the naked native diver will probably survive for many years although modern innovations are gradually creeping in even among the fisheries controlled by Orientals.

The dress consists of a rubber suit all in one piece, which the diver gets into through the neck; leaden-soled boots, corselet to which the helmet is screwed, and chest and back weights. The diver dresses and steps on to the ladder hanging over the boat's side. The air-pipe, life-line, and helmet are attached, the man at the air-pump is set to work, and last of all the face glass is screwed up.

A plunge, a splash, and he drops swiftly through the heaving billows to the quiet depths below, his life in the hands of the tender he has left in the boat. This man must feel the diver constantly by the life-line, keep him supplied with air and be ready for any of the emergencies always liable to arise. Only an alert man of good judgment and quick action should tend the life-line, though the most successful diver, a Japanese, on the Australian coast some years ago, had the best tender of that section in the person of his wife.

If it is the diver's first plunge, his ears and head will be racked with pain as he descends. This pain will leave him when he reaches bottom, but on his return to the surface he will find his nose and ears bleeding and will probably spit blood also. After this he will not experience pain in diving, but in common with nearly all divers will never be quite free from extreme irritability and bad temper while below; he will also have gained the diver's ability to blow smoke through the ears.

Diving is injurious to the health and, if persisted in, produces deafness and incipient paralysis. Few of the divers on the Australian coast now are aborigines. Their antipathy to the dress amounted in many cases to a superstition, so as the fishing was pushed out to deeper waters and the dress became a necessity, they were discarded with the old methods. It is said that in the old times diving had a peculiar effect upon the black-haired natives. By the end of the fishing season the color of their hair became yellow though the natural hue returned later.

With the dress, a diver can work comfortably at one hundred to a hundred and twenty-five feet, but men who know the fisheries doubt if that can be exceeded. Nor does it seem needful to go deeper, for in seas which have been explored at greater depths it is usually found that the bottom consists of ooze unsuitable for the life and growth of the oyster.

Beyond those inherent to the art of diving, either method has its peculiar difficulties after bottom is reached. In naked diving, especially at the shoals of Ceylon and Venezuela, where the shells are small and abundant, it is simply a question of gathering as many as possible while the breath lasts and looking out for the dangerous fishes indigenous to tropical waters.

Sharks are common in many of the pearl-oyster seas, but experienced divers do not fear them greatly, as the fish, formidable as it may appear, and dangerous as it is when it can come upon one unawares, is easily frightened. Many expert swimmers of the Indian and Pacific oceans do not hesitate to attack them in their own element. Usually vigorous splashing will frighten them away. The dress-divers of Australia scare them off by allowing a jet of air to escape. As the bubbles start for him, the man-eating monster shoots away from them as if terror-stricken.

The diamond-flounder of the Pacific and Indian oceans, a huge flat fish with a habit of seizing its prey between the side fins and crushing it, is more dangerous. If a dress-diver of experience sees one of these approaching, he is apt to shut off the air-escape of his helmet and signal to his tender that he is coming to the surface as fast as he can get there.

The rock-cod also is sometimes troublesome on the Australian coast. Occasionally he attains an enormous size. This fish lies hidden in submarine caves, his head protruding and his monstrous jaws yawning vertically wide like an entrance to the cave itself. But accidents from the denizens of the sea are comparatively few; the physical results of deep-sea diving are more to be dreaded, for paralysis hovers close to the thirty-fathom line.

Although dress-diving has the advantage over naked diving that it gives a supply of air to breathe while at work, it also entails dangers and difficulties from which the old method is free. An imperfect supply of air may cause the bursting of a blood-vessel. Fouling of the lines might not only cut off the air supply entirely, but prevent the man, anchored by his heavy dress under twenty fathoms of water more or less, from signalling the man at the life-line. As on dry land, there are holes and precipices at the bottom of the sea to be avoided.

In some seas there are swift currents and as the dress-diver remains under water for some time, instead of returning at once like his naked brother, he must keep moving with it, and as he moves, the boat must move in unison and his tender must keep the lines free. Both diver and tender must be skilful and alert to do this. Nor is it always easy in deep-sea diving to find the oysters. They lie in scattered bunches, often hidden by sponges, coral or other sea growths, their gray or moss-grown exteriors scarcely to be distinguished from the surroundings; if in mud, only an inch or so of the sharp lips of the two valves projecting above the surface are in evidence; while if in stooping to gather the shells he should fall, he is likely to shoot feet foremost to the surface.

Though dress-diving has heretofore been confined almost entirely to white men, the Japanese, Chinese, Malays, South Sea Islanders, and others in different places, are now being educated to it chiefly through an Australian fishery.

At the northwestern corner of Australia, a thousand miles from the nearest railroad and ten days from the nearest port, there are pearl fisheries where the climate is so hot that white men cannot be obtained for the work. Colored men are shipped there from Singapore to man the boats, the pearl-fishers giving a bond to the government of 100 pounds sterling for each man employed, as a guarantee that he will not go to other parts of the state. A fleet of about three hundred boats and fifteen hundred men are employed there, the supply station being at Broome township.

In all things, when once the improvements of science gain a foothold anywhere in the world, the whole earth succumbs eventually to their advantages, and so with diving; the habits and prejudices of thousands of years will be forced by commercial pressure to submit themselves to modern appliances, and the picturesque nakedness of the swarthy orient will soon be hidden under the ugly but useful dress of civilization.

HABITAT OF THE PEARL OYSTER

The Pearl Oyster is found in more or less abundance on the shoals and reefs about the shores of every land within a belt of the earth lying between 30 degrees north and south of the equator. Coral reefs and limestone foundations usually form the beds on which they propagate. Beyond these limits the abalone is found at Japan, on the California coast, Queen Charlotte's Island, the Cape, Australia, New Zealand, China, about the English Channel, and on the coast of France, where the shores are washed by equatorial currents. It exists also on the shores of India and the Canary Islands.

The largest and heaviest shells, which yield fine mother-of-pearl most abundantly are confined almost entirely to the Pacific Ocean within twenty degrees south of the equator. The best white shells come from the northern shores of Australia and the Aroo islands. The best black shells are found about Tahiti, the Gambier Islands, and the Tuamotu Archipelago. Of the big yellow variety, the best are obtained in the Merguian Archipelago and Dutch Indies. The shells of this district at Ceram, Batjan, and elsewhere, vary somewhat but the bulk of them are yellow.

Beginning with the east coast of Africa, the pearl oyster is found in the Red Sea, where it has been fished for ages. The shell here is of medium size and weight; much larger than those of Venezuela, Ceylon, or the Persian Gulf and smaller than the shells of the Pacific. The mother-of-pearl is not of the finest quality and is used now for inferior work only. It was more used formerly but since the fresh-water unio shell of the United States came into the market, it has displaced to a great degree the Egyptian and Panama shells. The inner edge of the Red Sea shell is of a greenish-gray color.

South of the Red Sea, on the East of the African coast, pearl oysters are found in a number of places between Zanzibar and Inhambane, particularly at the Bazaruto Islands, but nowhere in sufficient abundance to develop the fishing for them into a regular industry. Good mother-of-pearl is abundant on the German East African coast, but the oysters carry few pearls.

Travelling east, they are next found in large numbers in that arm of the Arabian Sea known as the Persian Gulf. Here they have existed for many centuries. The mollusk is of the smaller species and the shells are known in the market as Lingahs, from the name of the centre of the pearl trade in this district. The shells are of no commercial importance.

After these come the ancient fisheries of India, the most prolific in the world. The oysters here are smaller than those of the Arabian Sea and the shells are of no value, but they mature rapidly and yield great quantities of pearls. Myriads of them cover the shoals and banks between the coast of India, at the South-eastern point, and Ceylon, and as the beds are under government supervision, they cannot be destroyed by the reckless fishing of immature oysters.

Crossing the Bay of Bengal and the Malay Peninsula, between longitudes 100 and 120 degrees E., there are pearl oysters on the coasts of China, the Merguian Archipelago and western Australia. Between longitudes 120 degrees E. and 150 degrees E., these mollusks flourish on many coasts, including those of Japan, the Sulu Archipelago, the Dutch Indies, the Spice Islands, the Banda Islands, the Aroo Islands, New Guinea and northern Australia.

The Australian shells are large and the lining is white and fine. As shell fisheries they are the largest in the world and although the value of the pearls found is small compared with the amount realized from the sale of the shells it is considerable and growing. The Aroo shells are white like the Australian. Those from the Banda Islands are a smaller black-edge shell. Most of the others like the Manila shell of the Sulu Islands, are yellow.

At longitude 165 degrees E. the fisheries of New Caledonia are becoming notable for the number of fine fancy colored pearls found there. Both avicula margaritifera and meleagrina margaritifera are taken off the west coast.

In the waters of the Fiji Islands, longitude 180 degrees E. pearl oysters of the black-edge shell variety similar to the Bandas but a little larger are fairly abundant.

Fine shells, often containing very beautiful pearls, are taken off the coasts of Tahiti, Gambier, and throughout the Tuamotu Archipelago, lying between longitudes 130 degrees W. and 150 degrees W. The shells are of the black-edge type, large and heavy. The nacre is thick and has a particularly mellow luster; throughout this section both shells and pearls rank among the best.

All over the South Sea, pearl oysters are found about the islands and in the lagoons within the atolls which stud it, but in quantities too small in many places to induce capital to establish fisheries. Fishing for them is confined therefore to native divers who are rewarded by the occasional find of a few pearls, which often they sell at ridiculous prices to the stray traders who may chance to come their way.

This eastward journey now brings us to the Pacific coast of the American continent. Here the pearl-bearing mollusk is found on the shores of Lower California, about the Islands of the Gulf of California, at various points on the Mexican coast-line south to Acapulco and at Panama. They exist also on the coast of Ecuador but of late years fishing has not proved remunerative and it is now carried on in a desultory way only. They are found also on the western coast of Nicaragua.

The Mexican shells known as Panama shell or bullock shell have a dark, dirty, greenish rim and are much less valuable than the white or black shell. Similarly, dark, slaty-colored pearls are known as Panamas because many pearls taken on this coast are of that character. This color tendency however often results more advantageously as many of the pearls are sufficiently dark to be classed as fancy and some beautiful black and red pearls are found in these waters. Panama pearls also have the reputation of being softer than others. There are pearl oysters also on the Peruvian coast but this section has not yet been fished.

On the Atlantic side of America pearl oysters are abundant in the Gulf of Campeche and on the shoals about the islands and shores of Venezuela. The shells of Central America are similar to the Panamas only more yellow, while those of Venezuela are small and valueless. Between the east coast of America and the Red Sea are no fisheries save at Haiti, for no discoveries of any importance have been made on the western coast of Africa.