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PEARLS FROM ASIA 95
Jouchanan ibn Masouiah,1 in his book on stones, states that "the diver, when he dives, places upon his nose a masfâsa lest
water should enter into him, and breathes through the fissure, and
remains under water tor half an hour." According to Sebaldus Rau2 this masfâsa was
an article resembling a hood or cap, which the diver placed over his
nose. It was made of some impervious material and had a projection so
long that it reached to the surface of the water. The same writer
believes that this object was alluded to by Aristotle ("De part,
animal./' Lib. II, c. 16), where he likens the trunk of the
elephant to the instrument used by certain divers for aiding their
respiration, so that they could remain longer in the water and draw in
air from above the surface.3 And here we cease pursuit of further records, lest our faith in recorded testimony be too severely tested.4
A
superficial inspection of the above evidence, from the one or two hours
noted by Ibn Batuta about the year 1336, to the half an hour of
Diemerbroeck in 1672, the quarter of an hour of Vernatti in 1669, the
seven and one half minutes of Chardin in 1711, the six minutes of
Percival in 1803, to the no seconds of the present time, seems to
indicate very clearly a gradual but somewhat remarkable decrease in
the ability of the Asiatic divers, and that the pearl fishermen of the
present day are very different creatures from their ancestors. And
especially is this so when it is considered that the above records are
not isolated reports selected for the particular purpose of showing a
decrease in the length of diving; on the contrary they are
authoritative and representative publications of their respective
periods. We do not recall having seen in any report issued previous to
1675, an intimation that the limit of time was less than ten minutes.
However,
a careful consideration of the subject leads to the belief that there
has been no serious decrease in the length of time that the Arab and
Indian divers remain under water, and that either the writers were
misinformed or that the individual cases reported were extremely
exceptional. Ibn Batuta's instance of one to two hours
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1A Christian physician who lived in the time of the Khalif Wathek Billa, about 842 a.d.
2"Specimen Arabicum," Traiecti ad Rhe-num, 1784, p. 64.
3Ibid., p. 65.
4
Writers describing the early pearl fisheries on the American coast,
and especially at Cubagua on the present coast ol Venezuela, also
reported very lengthy stays. In 1526, Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y
Valdés wrote : " The thing that causeth men most to marvel is to
consider how many of them can remain at the bottom for the space of one
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whole
hour, and some more or less, according to expertness." ("Natural
Historia de las Indias," Toledo, 1526.) About 1588, the Jesuit priest
José de Acosta wrote: "I did see them make their fishing, the which is
done with great charge and labor of the poor slaves, which dive 6, 7,
yea 12 fathoms into the sea ... ; but yet the labor and toil is
greatest in holding their breath, sometimes a quarter, yea, half an
hour together under water." (Acosta, "Natural and Moral History of the
Indies," Hakluyt Society, 1880, p. 227.)
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