Dredging
for coral is not pleasant sport. The coral fishers of Genoa and Naples
are bold and venture far, even to the coasts of Sardinia, Corsica,
Calabria, Morocco, Tunis or Algeria, braving all weathers for days on
end and knowing that their livelihood will depend on a lucky strike.
Their
method is this. When their craft has come within a promising fishing
ground they cast overboard a heavily weighted wooden cross, to which is
attached a stout net. As the vessel moves through the water, whether
driven by a favouring wind or by a small auxiliary motor, the dredging
net, perhaps sooner, perhaps later, perhaps not at all, encounters the
coral outcrop. Sometimes it is a whole "tree" of coral that is enmeshed
and uprooted, but more often it is only one or more protecting branches
which are torn from the parent colony and brought to the surface.
Whatever
it is it brings contentment aboard, for coral is the whole livelihood
of owner and crew alike, who know no other trade but this, and whose
fathers and grandfathers before them to the rath generation have also
lived on coral. In Naples, which with Genoa has pracÂtically a monopoly
of the trade, there is one suburb where the whole population, men,
women and children, are enÂgaged in cutting, shaping, carving, drilling
and polishing the coral. Most of the polishing, stringing and drilling
of the beads is done by the women and young girls. Even to-day, when
coral is not "fashionable" in the West, the finished product is
exported to all parts of the world.
Perhaps one fact that keeps coral popular is that in
