East of Suez Part 3

A quarter of a mile from the official section of the city is the great human warren and business region, where black men and brown--Hindus, Mohammedans, Buddhists, and the East's flotsam of religions--dwell and traffic in peaceful communion. A broad thoroughfare, starting from the edge of the plateau overlooking the sea and extending inland until the settlement yields to the open country, is the "Main street"; and here, for ten or twelve weeks, is one of Asia's busiest marts. This part of Marichchikkaddi is planned with careful regard for sanitary needs and hygiene. Streets cross at right angles, and at every corner stands a lamp-post rudely made from jungle wood, from which suspends a lantern ingeniously fashioned from an American petroleum tin. Sites on the princ.i.p.al streets are leased for the period of the fishery to persons proving their purposes to be legitimate. For a good corner lot perhaps twenty feet square the government receives as much as a thousand rupees; and a few hours after the lease is signed up goes a cadjan structure--and a day later pearls worth a king's ransom may there be dealt in with an absence of concern astounding to a visitor.

Can these Easterners, squatting on mats like fakirs in open-front stalls, judge the merits of a pearl? Yes, decidedly. In the twinkling of an eye one of them estimates the worth of a gem with a precision that would take a Bond Street dealer hours to determine. The Indian or Cingalese capitalist who goes with his cash to Marichchikkaddi to buy pearls is not given to taking chances; usually he has learned by long experience every "point" that a pearl can possess, knows whether it be precisely spherical, has a good "skin," and a l.u.s.ter appealing to connoisseurs. A metal colander or simple scale enables him to know to the fraction of a grain the weight of a pearl, and experience and the trader's instinct tell him everything further that may possibly be known of a gem. It would be as profitless to a.s.sume to instruct an Egyptian desert sheikh upon the merits of a horse as to try to contribute information to the pearl-dealer of the East.

The calm period of the northeast monsoon is gentleness itself by the middle of February, and the Gulf of Manar is seldom more than rippled by its zephyrs. The fishery begins then. For weeks the divers have been arriving by craft of every conceivable type and rig. They are the aristocrats of the camp, and as they roam bazaars and streets or promenade the sea-front they are admired by coolies and peons as bull-fighters would be in Spain.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE LATE RANA OF DHOLPUR IN HIS PEARL REGALIA

This Indian prince is said to have owned pearls valued at seven and a half millions of dollars, the acc.u.mulation, perhaps, of his ancestors during several centuries]

St.u.r.dy fellows they are, lithe of limb and broad of chest. Each brings a tangle of pots and kettles, bags and bales, but wears nothing throughout the fishery save a loin-cloth and now and then a turban denoting nationality or caste. There were forty-five hundred of them in 1905, and those from the Madras Presidency were the backbone of the enterprise.

Nearly half the divers were registered from Kilakari, and hundreds came from the tip end of India. The men from Tuticorin were of the Parawa caste, and those hailing from Paumben were Moormen. The only Ceylon city contributing divers was Jaffna, whose men were of the fisher caste, said to be descendants of Arabs who settled sixty years ago at Jaffna. The divers coming the greatest distance were the negroes and Arabs from Aden and the Persian Gulf, most of whom landed at Colombo from trading steamers, and made their way by small boat or bullock hackery to the Cadjan City. These fellows have few equals as divers, but the administrative officers of the camp always fear that they will come into conflict with the police or launch a war in the name of Mohammed against the Hindus or Cingalese. Consequently, only a limited number are allowed to take part in the fishery.

An amusing incident was furnished last season by the arrival of a diver of some renown in India, who had partic.i.p.ated profitably in several fisheries. Accompanied by his "manduck," the fellow had crossed from Paumben as a deck pa.s.senger on a British India steamer. When the vessel was anch.o.r.ed, the diver summoned a rowboat to take himself and traps ash.o.r.e. Wearing nothing but loin-cloth and turban, the man descended the side-steps an example of physical perfection, and so thoroughly smeared with cocoanut b.u.t.ter that he shone like a stove-polish advertis.e.m.e.nt.

The boat grounding on the shelving bottom a hundred feet from sh.o.r.e, this precious Indian, who was to pa.s.s a good share of the ensuing ten weeks in the water, even at the bottom of the sea, deliberately seated himself astride the shoulders of his manduck, and was borne to dry land with the care of one whose religion might forbid contact with water. He carried beneath one arm throughout the trip from the small boat a gingham umbrella, and under the other an Indian railway guide.

There are neither wharves nor landing-stages at Marichchikkaddi. Even His Excellency the Governor must lay aside his dignity in going from his boat to the sh.o.r.e. The horde of people working about the pearling fleet, amphibious by nature, have little need for those accommodations and necessities which the commercial world call "landing facilities."

The world over, gambling and speculation are joined in many ways to superst.i.tion; and the Eastern diver is superst.i.tious to the hour of his death. At Marichchikkaddi he devotedly resorts to the mystic ceremony of the shark-charmer, whose exorcism for generations has been an indispensable preliminary to the opening of a fishery. The shark-charmer's power is believed to be hereditary. If one of them can be enlisted on a diver's boat, success is a.s.sured to all connected with the craft. The common form of fortune-tempting nowadays is for a diver to break a cocoanut on his sinking-weight just before embarking. If it be a clean and perfect break, success is a.s.sured; if irregular and jagged, only ordinary luck may be antic.i.p.ated; and if the sh.e.l.l be broken in without separating into halves, it spells disaster, and the alarmed fisher probably refuses to go with the boat.

Last year's fleet was the largest ever partic.i.p.ating in a Ceylon fishery, three hundred and twenty boats being enrolled. The largest boats came from Tuticorin, and carried thirty-four divers each. The smallest boat had a complement of seven divers. Each diver was faithfully attended by a manduck, who ran his tackle and watched over his interests with jealous care both in and out of the water. Besides the manducks, every boat had numerous sailors, food- and water-servers, and a riffraff of hangers-on. It was estimated that divers and manducks aggregated nine thousand souls. A system of apportionment gives every man in a boat an interest in the take, the divers generally retaining two thirds of the bivalves granted them by the government rule controlling the fishery. The Kilakari divers observe a time-honored custom of giving to their home mosque the proceeds of one plunge each day.

Nature obligingly a.s.sists the workers on the banks by supplying a gentle off-sh.o.r.e breeze at daybreak, which sends the fleet to the fishing ground, six or eight miles from the sh.o.r.e. By two o'clock in the afternoon a gun from a government vessel directs the boats to set sail for the return. By this hour the breeze is accommodatingly from the sea, and the fleet runs home with flowing sheets. Navigation, it will be seen, plays a very subordinate part in Marichchikkaddi's marine enterprise.

[Ill.u.s.tration: INDIAN PEARL MERCHANTS READY FOR BUSINESS]

With the exception of the divers from the Malabar coast, who plunge head foremost from a spring-board, the men go into the water in an upright position, and are hurried in their journey to the bottom by a stone weighing from forty to fifty pounds. Each diver's attendant has charge of two ropes slung over a railing above the side of the boat: one suspends the diving-stone, and the other a wide-mouthed basket of network. The nude diver, already in the sea, places the basket on the stone and inserts one foot in a loop attached to the stone. He draws a long breath, closes his nostrils with the fingers of one hand, raises his body as high as possible above water, to give force to his descent, and, loosening the rope supporting the weight, is carried quickly to the bottom. An Arab diver closes the nostrils with a tortoise-sh.e.l.l clip, and occasionally a diver is seen whose ears are stopped with oil-saturated cotton. The manduck hoists the weight from the bottom and adjusts it for the next descent. Meanwhile, the diver, working face downward, is filling the basket with oysters with speed. When the basket is filled or breath exhausted, the diver signals, and is drawn up as rapidly as possible by the rope attached to the basket, and a specially agile diver facilitates the ascent by climbing hand over hand on the line When a man has been in the water half an hour, and made perhaps seven or eight descents, he clambers aboard the boat for a rest and a sunbath, and in a few minutes is taking part in the interminable chatter of the Orient.

A diver coming up with basket filled wears a face of benign contentment; but when the oysters are few and far between, as they are oftentimes, and the man has prolonged his stay below to the limit of his air supply, his head is out of water not many seconds before he is volubly denouncing the official control forcing him to work on a "paar" where little but sand exists, and his confreres on the boat hurl savage invective at any government functionary within earshot.

The powerful Eastern sun illumines the bottom sufficiently for a diver to plan his operations before going down, and nine days out of ten the overhead sun renders the sea sufficiently transparent to guide a boat's crew to promising anchorages. Pearling economists insist that dredging by machinery or the use of diving-suits can never compete with the simple and inexpensive method in vogue on the Manar banks. At Marichchikkaddi one hears frequent discussion of the time a diver may stay under water, and many improbable accounts of what has been done are told a visitor. An average Tamil or Moorman stays down not longer than forty-five seconds, while the broad-chested Arab thinks nothing of being under water from sixty to eighty seconds.

Depth has much to do with the time, and it is admitted that divers do not suffer unduly from the trying nature of their calling except when forced to work in unusually deep water. Seven or eight fathoms--about the average on the Ceylon banks--produces no injurious effect, but nine fathoms tell on all but men of st.u.r.dy build. Occasionally a declivity perhaps ten fathoms below the surface has to be fished, and this demands the service of picked men, divers possessing the highest vitality.

Several divers collapse every season through toiling at unusual depths, and two or three pay the penalty of death. Most divers, however, live to as full a span as men pursuing other humble callings.

When a fishery is at its height, the scene on the banks is one of extreme animation, and a picture full of strangeness to New World eyes.

Each craft is a floating hive of compet.i.tive noise and activity, and the center of a cordon of disappearing and reappearing seal-like heads, with baskets splashing in the water or being hauled by excited hands. In the distance floats the majestic barque _Rengasamy Puravey_, an old-timer, with stately spars, a quarter-deck, and painted port-holes that might cause a landsman to believe her a war-ship. For half the year the barque is the home of the government's marine biologist, and his office and laboratory, wherein scientific investigation and experimentation are in constant progress, are in houses built on the quarter-deck. Small steamers, having an official cut, move here and there among the fishing boats, doing patrol duty and carrying instructions when necessary from the _Rengasamy Puravey_.

"Would you like to go down in a diving-costume from a boat alongside the barque?" asks the biologist; "it's perfectly safe, and I have a dress that will fit you. Frequently I go to the bottom to study the curious growths there, and last season the colonial secretary did the thing two or three times."

With a readiness of speech rivaling gunfire in promptness I nipped in the bud the preparations for carrying out the proffered courtesy, explaining that I was glad to accept a vicarious description of things at the ocean's bottom.

The dingy fleet blossoms into a cloud of canvas, with every boat headed for Marichchikkaddi, the instant the "cease work" gun is fired. The scene suggests a regatta on a gigantic scale, and from a distance the leaning lug and lateen sails of the East give the idea of craft traveling at terrific speed. It is a regatta, a free-for-all, devil-take-the-hindmost affair. The prizes are choice berths on the beach as near as possible to the kottu, and the coolies who must carry the sacks of oysters see to it that the "tindal" and his sailors make no r.e.t.a.r.ding error.

The camp had been peaceful and somnolent while the boats were out; but the word that the fleet was coming in had roused every laborer, every petty dealer, speculator, and harpy to nervous activity. Everybody goes to the sea-front to witness the beaching of the boats and to watch the unloading. An hour probably elapses between the coming of the leader of the fleet and the arrival of the slowest boat. During this period the important functionary is the beach-master, who shouts his commands to boats seeking to crowd into positions not rightly theirs. When a boat is securely drawn upon the strand, there is no waste of time in getting the cargo started for the government storehouse. Muscular porters, glistening in their perspiring nudeness, go in single file between boat and kottu like ants executing a transportation feat. In a very few minutes the oysters are being counted by nimble-handed coolies.

Important gamblers in oysters, men with sharp eyes and speculative instincts, have only to note the number of sacks delivered from one or two boats--and secure a hint from an obliging diver as to whether the bivalves are "thin" or "thick"--to arrive at a safe hypothesis of what the day's take has been, and also whether the oysters promise to be fairly pearliferous. The opinions of two or three of these experts make a basis for starting the prices at the auction in the evening, and these "sharps" are seldom wrong in their estimate of what would be a safe offer for a thousand chances in the great lottery of Asia.

The count in the kottu is soon completed, and each boat's catch is divided into three piles, when an official selects two for the government, and the third is so expeditiously removed that a quarter of an hour later the share of the divers is being huckstered throughout the camp to small speculators.

Upon each craft throughout the day has been a native watchman of supposed honesty, in the government's employ, whose duty has been to see that no oysters were surrept.i.tiously opened on the banks or during the run home. Suspicion of the extraction of pearls on the part of any member of the crew leads to the police being informed, and an arrest follows. A favorite way of hiding pearls is to tie the gems in a rag attached to the anchor that is thrown overboard when the boat lands.

Another is to fasten a packet to a piece of rigging adroitly run to the masthead, there to remain until opportunity permits the dishonest schemer to remove it un.o.bserved.

On their way to their sleeping quarters it is interesting to observe divers stopping at boutiques and tea saloons for refreshments, paying their score with oysters, extremely acceptable to the shopkeeper itching to test his luck. In a small way, oysters pa.s.s current in the Cadjan City as the equivalent of coins. Probably the variations in value lead to fluctuations in exchange, but these are so keenly understood that the quotations are apparently adjusted automatically, like exchange between nations.

The sale is held in the building where the camp magistrate all the afternoon has been dispensing justice in breaches of Marichchikkaddi's morals--simple a.s.saults, thieving, and other petty misdemeanors usual to police courts. Punctually at sunset the auction begins. If the universe offers a stranger gathering for which commerce is responsible, it would be difficult to give it location. The gentle government agent sits on the platform, and in front of the rostrum is the splendidly appareled chief mudiliyar, to interpret between auctioneer and buyers.

The bidders-to-be number half a hundred, and their eager faces are directed toward the august official of the government, each probably praying secretly to his G.o.d that undue compet.i.tion be not inspired to the extent of excluding bargains. In the throng are chetties. Moor merchants, and local hawkers, hoping to get a few thousand bivalves at a price a.s.suring a profit when peddled through the coastwise villages.

"Do these men represent actual capital!" you ask the agent. "They do, indeed," is the reply, "and collectively they are backed by cash in hand and satisfactory credits in Ceylon banks of at least a hundred lakhs of rupees." Forced as you are to accept the statement, you inwardly confess that they don't look it, for $3,200,000 is a goodly credit anywhere.

In the fading light of day the agent announces that approximately two million oysters are to be sold, and he invites offers for them by the thousand--the highest bidder to take as many as he chooses, the quotation to be effective and apply to others until it is raised by some one fearing there will not be oysters enough to satisfy the demands of everybody. It is the principle of supply and demand reduced to simplicity. The compet.i.tion to fix the price of the first lot consumes perhaps a minute. The initial bid was thirty rupees; this was elevated to thirty-two, and so on until thirty-six was the maximum that could be induced from the motley a.s.semblage. With his pencil the agent taps the table, and the mudiliyar says something in Hindustani meaning "sold."

The buyer was an Arab from Bombay, operating for a syndicate of rich Indians taking a flier in lottery tickets. In a manner almost, lordly he announces that he will take four hundred thousand oysters. Then a sale of two thousand follows at an advanced price to a nondescript said to have come all the way from Mecca; a towering Sikh from the Punjab secures twenty thousand at a reduced rate, and so on. In ten or twelve minutes the day's product is disposed of to greedy buyers for the sum of 62,134 good and lawful rupees. A clerk records names of buyers with expedition, glancing now and then at a doc.u.ment proving their credit, and in a few minutes issues the requisitions upon the kottu for the actual oysters that will be honored in the early morning.

The primitive process by which the pearls are extracted from the oysters is tedious, offensive to the senses, and of a character much too disagreeable to be a.s.sociated with the jewel symbolizing purity. A few million oysters are shipped to southern India, and some go to Jaffna and Colombo; but the preponderating bulk is dealt with in the private kottus in the outskirts of the camp belonging to the men who crowd the auction room. To open fresh from the sea and scrutinize every part of the oyster would be too slow a method to be applied to the business of pearl-getting. The native who obtains a few dozen seeks shelter under the first mustard-tree, and with dull-edged knife, dissects each bivalve with a thoroughness permitting nothing to escape his eye.

The burning sun, bringing putrefaction and decay to the oyster, is the operator's agency for securing what pearls his purchase may contain. For a week or ten days the oysters are stacked in his private kottu, and the process of disintegration is facilitated by swarms of flies and millions of maggots. When the tropical sun can do no more, the contents of the sh.e.l.ls--putrid, filthy, and overpoweringly odoriferous--are gathered in troughs and other receptacles to be put through a process of cleansing by washing with water frequently drawn away. The residue, carefully preserved, is picked over when dry by experts, working under the watchfulness of owner or his deputy--and in this manner the pearls of my lady's dainty necklace and the engagement ring are wrested from nature.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE LATE MAHARAJAH OF PATIALA IN HIS PEARL REGALIA]

Sometimes an impatient speculator is seen with his coolies on the beach carefully washing vatfuls of "matter," perhaps employing a dugout canoe as a washing trough. Wherever the work is done the stench is almost overpowering, and the odors defy neutralization. The wonder is that some dread disease of the Orient does not make a clean sweep of the city's population. The medical officers claim that the malodorous fumes are not dangerous, and experience has taught these officials to locate the compounds, wherein millions of oysters are to decompose, in positions where the trade winds waft the smells seaward or inland, without greatly affecting the camp's health. The British official whose olfactory organ survives a season at the pearl camp deserves from his home government at least the honor of knighthood.

Interesting as Marichchikkaddi is to the person making a study of the conduct of unusual industries and the government of Eastern people, the medical officer looms important as the functionary shouldering a greater responsibility than any other officer of the camp. To draw forty thousand people from tropical lands, grouping them on a sand plain only a few hundred miles above the equator, is an undertaking pregnant with danger, when considered from the standpoint of hygiene. Strange to say, Marichchikkaddi's health is always satisfactory; but tons of disinfectants have to be used. Malarial fever is ever present, but is of a mild type. The outdoor dispensary does a rushing business, but only seventy-five cases were sufficiently serious last season to be sent to hospital, and only ten of these were fatal. The divers are p.r.o.ne to pneumonia and pleurisy, and these diseases carried off five. The deaths out of hospital totaled twenty-two.

In the hospital I saw a man with grizzled beard whose escape from death bordered upon the marvelous. His head had been jammed four days before between colliding boats, cracking his skull to the extent of letting the brain protrude. He was rushed to the hospital to die, but had no intention of pa.s.sing to another world, the doctors learned. Sitting upright on his cot-bed, the poor fellow said to me with an earnestness almost compelling tears: "Help me to get out of this place, please. I want to be with my boat, for there is no better diver than I am, and I can earn a hundred rupees a day as easily as any man in Marichchikkaddi."

As an ill.u.s.tration of the white man's supremacy, in dealing with black and brown peoples, Marichchikkaddi probably has no equal. Here, in an isolated spot on the coast of Ceylon, hours from anywhere by sea, and shut off from the large towns of the island by jungle and forest wherein elephants, leopards, and other wild animals roam, twelve or fifteen Britishers rule, with an authority never challenged, more than forty thousand adventurous Asiatics--men whose vocation is largely based on their daring, and whose competing religions and castes possess the germ of fanaticism that might be roused to bloodshed. The white man's control is supported by the presence of two hundred policemen, it is true, but these are natives. The keynote of this exposition of a mult.i.tude ruled by a handful of Europeans is the absolute fairness of their control, of course. Were justice non-existent, it would be inviting disaster for the white official to apprehend a wrong-doer, place him on trial, and personally administer with lash or birch the corporal punishment to be witnessed any morning in front of the camp lockup.

And what might happen if the divers, through their ringleaders, objected to surrendering to the Ceylon government the demanded "rake-off" of two thirds the oysters rescued from the sea by their efforts, in the event of these courageous fellows being a.s.sured that all the law in the world on the subject says that all the sea and all therein contained, beyond the distance of three nautical miles from sh.o.r.e, belongs to the universe! But the Manar diver knows naught of the three-mile law, presumably.

Does the fishery pay? Tremendously, so far as facts upon which to base an answer are obtainable. The government treasury is sometimes enormously expanded as a result of the enterprise. In 1905, the most prosperous of all Manar fisheries, the government sold its fifty million oysters for two and one half million rupees, and at least $600,000 of this was profit. Years ago, it is true, there were several fisheries producing for the treasury nothing but deficits. n.o.body ever knows what reward visits the purchasers of oysters, for it is their habit to spread the report of non-success and disappointment. But the buyers and speculators come each year in larger numbers, with augmented credits, and they pay in compet.i.tion with their kind a larger price for the oysters. The conclusion is, therefore, that they find the business profitable.

Even rumors of luck and profit would bring more speculators and rising prices at the auction sales, manifestly. Reports of fortunate strikes at Marichchikkaddi may more frequently be heard in India than in Ceylon, let it be said; and it is the gilded grandees of Hind--princes, maharajahs and rajahs--rather than the queens of Western society, who become possessors of the trove of Manar.

No Colombo merchant or magnate, or man or woman of the official set, is superior to tempting fortune by buying a few thousand oysters freshly landed from Marichchikkaddi. And the interminable question of caste, banning many things to Cingalese and Tamil, inhibits not the right to gamble upon the contents of a sackful of bivalves. If the fishery be successful, all Ceylon teems with stories of lucky finds, and habitations ranging from the roadside hut to the aristocratic bungalow in the Cinnamon Gardens are pointed to as having been gained by a productive deal in oysters. A favorite tale is that of the poor horse-tender, who, buying a few cents' worth of oysters, found the record pearl of the year; another is of the 'rickshawman suspected of having money in the bank as a result of a lucky find on the seafront of Colombo of three or four oysters dropped from a discharging boat--in a shaded alley between buildings he forced the bivalves to disgorge a pearl worth hundreds of pounds sterling. Most stories of this character are as untrue as the reports of soubrettes and telephone boys winning fortunes in Wall Street.

Did I try my luck? Of course I did. Who could resist the temptation? I purchased two great sackfuls of oysters, a thousand in number, which were brought off to the government tug _Active_ by salaaming peons from the government agent's office. At five o'clock the tug was ready to start Colomboward the instant the "despatches" I was to deliver came on board. At last the precious package, with a parade of red tape and impressive wax seals, was handed over the side. It may have contained something as priceless as a last year's directory; I never knew. It was my deep-seated suspicion, however, that the packet was somebody's excuse for letting the public treasury expend a few hundred rupees in carrying one in private life back to Colombo to catch his steamer for China the next evening.

Confident was I that the bags on the stern grating that had been freshly soused with seawater as the _Active_ steamed away from Marichchikkaddi contained a wealth of pearls. In the cool of the early morning I would subsidize the eight native sailors, getting them to open the sh.e.l.led treasures, while I garnered the pearls. With this thought uppermost, I turned in on a cushionless bench to s.n.a.t.c.h a few hours' sleep. But slumber was out of the question; my brain was planning what might be done with the pearls I was soon to possess. Yes, there surely would be plenty for a pearl-studded tiara for the loved one awaiting me; and any superfluity might be made into ropes and collars for admiring relatives at home. Cousin Jessie had always coveted a necklace of pearls with a diamond clasp. The dainty baubles were in those sacks; there was no question about that. Yes, my luck at pearl-getting would compensate for missing Sir Thomas Lipton's dinner in Colombo. Sleep always comes in time, and at last I was dreaming of the cargo of priceless gems with me on the boat.

How extremely uncomfortable the bench was! What was that! I was not asleep, but very wide-awake--and such pains! In an instant I was rolling on the deck and shrieking from the terribleness of my suffering. Could it be cholera, the plague, or simply appendicitis with which I was stricken? The sailors held me down, but not a soul on board knew a word of English. I was positive that my end had come, and the thought of expiring away from friends and with a pocketful of prepaid around-the-world tickets was not agreeable. In an hour the pain was excruciating, and it continued for ten long hours with varying severity.

Morning came, and the Indian skipper was plying his furnace with lubricating oil and turpentine--with anything that would help him get me to Colombo and medical skill. At last, eighteen hours out from Marichchikkaddi, the _Active_ was in the harbor and I was being carried to the Grand Oriental Hotel.

"What about the two bags of oysters, the captain wishes to know!" the hotel interpreter asked.

"Oh, give them to the men," was the answer; "I have ceased to care for pearl-studded tiaras and collars. I'm glad to get away alive from the decaying millions of oysters at the fishery. Even G.o.d's free air there is poisoned by them. What I want most is a doctor."

CHAPTER IV