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AMERICAN PEARLS
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ing
in his best calico garments, he hastened to the nearest town to
indulge in release from restraint, in drunkenness and debauchery—the
highest dreams of happiness of a Yaqui Indian—thoughts of which served
to bring him to the fishery each year from his home across the gulf.
From
the Spanish conquest until 1874, the Mexican pearl fishery was
conducted exclusively by nude divers. The experiments with the
diving-bell in 1825 had been without favorable result, and also an
attempt by an American in 1854 to use a diving-suit with air-pump,
etc., this failure being credited to imperfection of apparatus. In
1874, through the influence of European pearl merchants, two schooners,
each of about 200 tons' measurement, one from Australia and the other
from England, visited the Mexican grounds, with a dozen boats fully
equipped with scaphanders or diving armor, including helmets, rubber
suits, pumps, etc. Owing to their working in deeper water than the nude
divers were able to exploit, their success was remarkable, and they
secured upward of a hundred thousand dollars' worth of pearls and
shells during the first season.
The
hitherto somnolent inhabitants of Eower California were amazed at
seeing their resources thus easily removed, and were awakened to the
opportunities afforded them to acquire the wealth which nature had
scattered at their very doors. With this object-lesson before them,
companies were formed for raising sufficient capital for the business,
and the leading operators equipped their men with scaphanders, to the
great annoyance of the would-be independent fishermen, who had not
sufficient means to purchase the costly equipment. Many of these
continued to employ nude divers, but after 1880 this method of fishery
was subordinate to the use of diving apparatus. The change was
accompanied by many accidents, and rarely did a month pass without the
loss of a man, due in most cases to faulty apparatus or to
inexperienced management.
In
1884 President Gonzalez inaugurated the policy of granting exclusive
concessions to the pearl reefs. On February 28 of that year, five
concessions were granted to as many persons, giving them and their
associates and assigns the exclusive right to all shell fisheries in
their respective zones of large area, for a period of sixteen years, in
consideration of a royalty and export duty, amounting altogether to
about $10 per ton of shells exported in the first three years, and $15
per ton for the remaining thirteen years of the term. Immediately these
five grants were consolidated, forming the Lower California Pearl
Fishing Company ("Compafiia Perlifera de la Baja California"),
incorporated under the laws of California with an invested capital of
$100,000.
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