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THE BOOK OF THE PEARL
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costume,
with walking-stick, patent leather boots, and other evidences of
contact with Europe. Smaller quantities of oysters are purchased by
Moormen of Kilakarai, Ramnad, Bombay, Adrampatam, Tondi, etc. A few
oysters are also purchased by the Nadans or Chânâr caste people of
Perunali, Kamuti, and Karakal. Over 99 per cent, of the 50,346,601
oysters sold by the government in 1905 were secured by Indian buyers,
and less than one per cent, by Cingalese. A few of the oysters—from two
to five per cent.—are sent to Indian and Ceylon ports, but most of them
are opened at the fishing camp.
The
purchaser of only a small number of oysters may open them at once by
means of a knife, and with his fingers and eyes search for the pearls.
By this method very small pearls may be easily overlooked, and it is
scarcely practicable in handling large quantities of oysters. These are
removed to private inclosures known as toddis or tottis, situated
some distance from the inhabited portions of the camp ; where, exposed
to the solar heat, they are permitted to putrefy, and the fleshy parts
to be eaten by the swarms of big red-eyed bluebottle flies, and the
residue is then repeatedly washed.
Shakspere
may have had in view some such scene as this when he spoke of the
"pearl in your foul oyster." The lady who cherishes and adorns herself
with a necklace of Ceylon pearls would be horrified were she to see and
especially to smell the putrid mass from which her lustrous gems are
evolved. The great quantity of repulsive bluebottle flies are so
essential to success in releasing the pearls from the flesh, that a
scarcity of them is looked upon as a misfortune to the merchants.
However, except it may be at the beginning of a fishery, there is
rarely ever a cause for complaint on this score, for commonly they are
so numerous as to be a great plague to persons unaccustomed to them,
covering everything, and rendering eating and drinking a difficult and
unpleasant necessity, until darkness puts a stop to their activities.
But the intolerable stench, impossible of description, the quintessence
of millions of rotting oysters, fills the place, and makes existence a
burden to those who have not acquired odor-proof nostrils. This animal
decomposition seems almost harmless to health; indeed, the natives
evidently thrive on it, and eat and sleep without apparent notice of
the nauseous conditions. And yet vegetable decomposition in this region
is usually followed by fatal results. Notwithstanding sanitary
precautions and the usual quarantine camp and hospitals, cholera
occasionally becomes epidemic and puts a stop to the fishery, as was
the case in 1889; but this probably was due more to the violation of
ordinary sanitary laws than to the decaying oysters.
In a large toddi the oysters are placed in a ballam, or a dug-out tank or trough, fifteen or twenty feet long and two or three feet deep,
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