Page:Travels & discoveries in the Levant (1865) Vol. 1.djvu/343

Rh often bursts when the sponge is suspended round the diver's neck, and the liquid it contains causes deep ulcers in his flesh.

Before the sponges are exported, they are cleaned and spread out in fields to dry. In fine weather, many acres of sponges may be seen at Calymnos thus exposed. Part of the process of preparing them for the European market is the filling them with sand. The reason assigned for this singular practice is that, the sponges being always sold by weight, it was the practice fraudulently to increase the weight of the fine sponges by surreptitiously introducing a little sand. To meet this fraud, the sponge-merchants require all sponges to be filled with as much sand as they can hold; and as the quantity which each sponge can contain may be calculated, this amount is always deducted from the weight. The sand thus serves as a common measure.

Rather more than half the sponges from Calymnos are exported to Smyrna, and the rest to Syra, Trieste, and Marseilles. The annual value of the export is reckoned at about two millions of piasters (about £16,949). The number of caiques which go to fish for sponges is about two hundred, with a tonnage of from one to three tons each.

Latterly a rich and enterprising Calymniote merchant, by name Antonio Maillé, has built a ship of 200 tons, which he sends out every year to the more distant sponge-fisheries laden with a number of caiques and their crews. On arriving at their destination, the caiques are launched from the ship, which remains there till the fishing-season is