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80 polish and thread, and use as jewels, so that from the stomach of the lower animals, and from the secretions of a shell-fish, the still grasping, prying, worrying, proud, vain-glorious, busy man gets him an ornament for her whom he most loves; for him whom he most honours.

The question of obtaining pearls and of slaying divers; of feeding sharks with human limbs; of the eyeballs starting and the tympanum of the ear bursting; of the pains, perils, and penalties of the pearl divers, must be touched incidentally in any true account of this precious gem.

Vanity demands the aid of cruelty, and for her gratification human sacrifices are still made.

At the Persian Gulf, at Ceylon, and in the Red Sea, the early sources of the Greeks and Romans, we yet find our supply. Pearls are also found in the Indian Ocean along the Coromandel coast and elsewhere; but the two grand head-quarters are in Bahrein Island, in the Persian Gulf, and in the Bay of Condalchy, in the Gulf of Manaar off the Island of Ceylon. There our pearl oyster dredgers bring up their natives.

The fishery at Ceylon is a monopoly of the British Government; but, like many Government monopolies, it is said to cost a great deal more than it produces. In 1804, Government leased it for 120,000l. per annum; in 1828, it only yielded 28,000l. It is a desert and barren spot; no one can fall in love with it; sands and coral rocks are not picturesque; yet, in its season, it attracts more to its shores than one of our best watering-places. Divers, merchants. Arab-hawkers, drillers, jewellers, and talkers; fish-sellers, butchers, boat-caulkers, and Hindoo Robinsons and Walkers are all found there. The period is limited to six weeks, or two months at most, from February to April; and whilst they are making money, these people are rather eager, look you. But the fishers themselves, victims of cruelty as they are, are also victims to their own superstition and ignorance. A Hindoo or Parsee blesses the water to drive away the sharks; a diver may be frightened or ill, and the holidays are so numerous, that the actual work-days amount only to thirty in the season.

The boats assembled sail at ten at night, a signal gun being then let off. They then set sail, reach the banks before daybreak, and at sunrise the divers begin to take their “headers.” They continue at this work till noon, when a breeze starting up, they return. The cargoes are taken out before the night sets in, and the divers are refreshed.

Each boat carries twenty men—ten rowers and ten divers—besides a chief, or pilot. The divers work five at a time alternately, leaving the others time to recruit. To go down quickly they use a large stone of red granite, which they catch hold of with their foot. Each diver holds a net-work bag in his right hand, closes his nostrils with his left, or with a piece of bent horn, and descends to the bottom. There he darts about him as quickly as he can, picking up with toes and fingers, and putting the oysters into his network bag. When this is full, or he exhausted, he pulls the rope, and is drawn up, leaving the stone to be pulled up after him. When the oysters are very plentiful, the diver may bring up one hundred and fifty at a dip.

After this violent exertion, blood flows from nose, ears, eyes. The divers cannot exceed generally one minute’s immersion. One and a half, and even two, have been reached by extraordinary efforts. Those who can endure four and five minutes are spoken of. One also we are told of, an apocryphal fellow, we should think, who coming in 1797 from Arjango, stayed under water six minutes.

The divers live not to a great age. Heart-diseases, surfeits, sores, blood-shot eyes, staggering limbs, and bent backs—these are part of their wages. Sometimes they die on reaching the surface, suddenly, as if struck by a shot.

At Bahrein, the annual amount produced by the pearl fishery may be reckoned at from 200,000l. to 240,000l.; add to this purchases made by the merchants of Abootabee, and we have 360,000l. to include the whole pearl trade of the Gulf, since, through their agents at Bahrein, merchants from Constantinople, Bagdad, Alexandria, Timbuctoo, New York, Calcutta, Paris, St. Petersburg, Holy Moscowa, or London make their purchases.

“But,” says our credible informant, “I have not put down the sum at one-sixth of that told me by the native merchants.” But even then an enormous amount is that to be used in mere ornament, and in one article only.

Well, not exactly ornament. “In Eastern lands,” says Mr. Thomas Moore, “they talk in flowers.” Very flowery certainly is their talk. They also, good easy people, take pearls for physic—not for dentifrice, Easterns always having white teeth, apparently, so far as I have been able to judge, without the trouble of cleaning them, but as a regular dose. They call it majoon; it is an electuary, and myriads of small seed pearls are ground to impalpable powder to make it. As for the adulteration in this article, doubtless to be found, I say nothing. The simple lime from the inside of the shell would be just as white and just as good. Common magnesia would have the same effect; but, good sirs, if an old Emir, or rich Bonze, wishes to pay an enormous price for something to swallow to comfort his good old inside, why not? Do not let us brag too much: from the time of old Gower, doctor of physic, to Dr. Cheyne, we have, sir, allowed everything, from toad’s brains to the filings of a murderer’s irons, to be taken as physic.

The Bahrein fishery-boats amount to 1500, and the trade is in the hands of merchants who possess much capital. This they employ in a manner which the associated operatives, and amongst them the operative, at present unassociated, who has compiled this paper, would consider unjust. They lend it out at cent. per cent.; they buy up, and they beat down, they juggle, cheat, rig the market, rob in a legal way a whole boat’s crew, grow enormously rich, and preach morality.

Nor do they forget superstition. In the chief boat, when they fish, sits a jolly old cheat, a conjuror, called the binder of sharks, who waves about his skinny hands, jumps, howls, incants, and otherwise exerts his theological powers, and will not allow the divers, nor are they willing, to descend till he declares the moment propitious. To add some weight to their devotions, they debar