202 THE BOOK OF THE PEARL
labor,
working for his food, tobacco, and the simplest articles of clothing.
There was no complaint that the men thus impressed were treated with
inhumanity; on the contrary they were well fed and cared for ; yet,
with a view to protecting them and preventing even a suspicion of
wrong-doing, the Australian government enacted regulations restricting
pearling contracts with the natives. Nearly every year these
regulations became more stringent, affecting the hours for diving, and
limiting the work to depths of six and a half fathoms, so that the
employment of Australian aborigines in the fishery became extremely
troublesome and annoying.
The
government of the Netherlands also placed severe restrictions on the
employment of natives of the Dutch Indies, requiring security of £20
per head for the repatriation of each man ; and the local chiefs or
rajahs also expected a rake-off before permitting their men to ship.
These Malays—from the islands of Solor, Allor, Adonare, etc.,—also
expected much better pay and better provisions than the Australian
blacks.
The following interesting account by Henry Taunton gives a graphic description of the fishery as carried on at that time :
The
work was far from easy. It was exhausting and perilous for the clivers,
and full of privation, exposure, and danger for the white men. Only the
hope of a prosperous season reconciled one to the life. When shells
were plentiful and the weather fine, the work was exciting and
interesting enough; but during rough weather, when one had to be
constantly straining at the oar to keep the dinghy from drifting too
rapidly, or when hour after hour might pass without the men bringing up
a single shell, the discouragement was great. The rays of the vertical
sun beating down on one's shoulders at such times seemed as if it would
never reach the western horizon, which was the signal for returning on
board.
As
may well be imagined, when three or four white men had to control and
compel some thirty or forty natives to carry on work which they
detested, a very strict discipline had to be maintained. It was the
rule that no talking was allowed amongst the divers when in the dinghy,
nor were they even permitted to address the white man, unless, maybe,
to answer a question as to the nature of the bottom, whether nanoo (sand) or bannin (shelly
bottom), etc., or unless some urgent necessity arose. Sometimes,
indeed, I have pushed off from the vessel's side of a morning and have
not heard a word spoken until we returned on board at night, unless
chance might take me within hail of some other dinghy, when
felicitations or condolences would be exchanged, as good or bad luck
might happen. At times, when the "patch" was small, the dinghys of the
whole fleet might be congregated on a very small area, in which case
the scene was animated enough. On all sides you could see divers
slipping into the water and others just coming to the surface, puffing,
blowing, and coughing to clear their eyes, ears, and mouth from the
salt water—some with,
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