Pearls: The Pearl Fisheries of the Persian Gulf Page 188



	146	THE BOOK OF THE PEARL

	ment of Lien-chau and near the city of Hohpu. Fishing began in the spring, and was preceded by conciliating the gods through certain sacrifices, in order that the weather might be propitious and that no disaster might be suffered through sharks and other agencies. The five sacrificial animals,—horses, cattle, sheep, swine, and fowls,—were presented; but ordinarily paper images of these were economically substituted, as equally acceptable to the Chinese rulers of destiny. In the details of the diving, the fishery resembled somewhat that prosecuted about the same period in the Gulf of Manaar. The diver was let down by a rope, and after collecting the mollusks and placing them in a basket, he was drawn up at a given signal. Much complaint was made that the divers would open the mollusks, extract the pearls and conceal them in the mouth before returning to the surface. The business became so perilous and the loss so great, that about the beginning of the sixteenth century, according to the same encyclopedia, dredges were adopted. These at first were simple rakes ; later large dredges were trailed along between two boats, by means of which great quantities of shells were gathered. So important was the industry that an officer was designated by the viceroy of Canton to collect a revenue therefrom. It does not appear that pearls have been collected in considerable numbers on this part of the Chinese coast for very many years, probably not since the advent of Europeans. Pearls are yet found in the river mussels in all parts of eastern Asia, from Siberia to the Indian Ocean, and from the Himalayas to the Pacific. It is represented that they are not from the Unio marga-ritifera, the common river-mussel of Europe, but from other species, such as Unto mongoliens, U. dahuricus, Dipsas plicatus, etc. It is quite impossible to obtain a reliable estimate of the total number of persons employed, or the output of pearls in China, but these items are certainly very much larger than the average Occidental believes. In the vicinity of Canton the Dipsas plicatus has been used for centuries by the Chinese in the production of artificial pearls, this industry giving employment to thousands of persons.¹ The pearl-mussel fishery is of importance in Manchuria, where it has been carried on for hundreds of years, not only by the citizens, but by the military department on account of the government, and especially in the streams which flow into the Songari, a tributary of the Amur. Jacinth relates that in case of a deficit, the officers and subalterns were punished by a deduction from their pay, and also by corporal chastisement.² Witsen speaks of the pearls from the River Gan, a tributary of the Amur, and also from the islands of the Amur, the ¹ See p. 288 for an account of the methods. * Statist, "Beschreibung des chines. Reiches," 1842, Vol. II, p. 11.