two
working days until April the fourteenth. The fishings take place in
March and April because the sea is usually calm at that period.
The
banks lie in five to ten fathoms over a shallow area nearly fifty miles
long by twenty miles broad, opposite Aripo. A steep declivity on the
western edge gives the sea a depth of one hundred fathoms in a few
miles. In the centre of the southern part of the Gulf of Manaar, west
of the Chilaw pearl-banks, the sea is one to two thousand fathoms deep.
Of
all the paars, or oyster beds (paar means rock or hard bottom) the
Periya paar is the largest. It is about eleven nautical miles long and
from one to two miles broad. Situated in about five to ten fathoms
close to the top of the western slope of the shallows, and running
north and south about twenty miles from land, it is exposed to the
southwest monsoon which runs up toward the Bay of Bengal for about six
months of the year. The natives call this the mother-paar, believing
that the young oysters are carried from it to the other paars, which
are thus stocked at its expense.
Between 1880 and 1902 twenty-one examina
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