UNITED STATES, CANADA AND MEXICO 221
In
1860, in order to conduct pearl gathering in a more scientific manner,
the owner of the Mexican grants, Seftor Navarro, procured from San
Francisco, Cal., a number of expensive schooners, surf-boats,
professional divers, and costly apparatus. After several years'
experience he found that his experts, with their expensive outfit, were
no more successful than the naked Indian divers, while the exorbitant
wages demanded by them so diminished his profits that he wisely went
back to the primitive methods followed by his ancestors. At present
those shipowners who undertake the fisheries on a large scale use
apparatus imported from France and England, by means of which each man
is able to bring up daily 300 pearl oysters. The men employed are
powerful Mexicans, and every diver has five assistants. Four men work
the air pumps for the suited diver, and the fifth attends to the
life-line, letting down the diver and hauling him up, as well as
hoisting up the nets or baskets full of shells and lowering the empty
ones. The pump-men are fed and housed, and receive $15 a month; the
life-line man is similarly looked after, and receives $25 a month ; the
diver receives $45 a month, and one-tenth of all he brings up, netting
him as high as $500 a month, if he is fortunate. Connected with each
fishing party is a schooner of from 60 to 200 tons burden, and two or
three small boats. The men live on the schooner during the entire six
months. In addition there are numerous divers who work independently,
and who show wonderful skill and aptness in their work. Generally, with
no other appliance than a heavy stone attached to the waist, they
plunge naked to the bottom, select suitable bivalves, and gather them
into a bag, remaining under water as long as two minutes. The shells
containing the pearls vary in diameter from 2 to 8 inches, 6 inches
being the average size. They are
found on hard rocks or on sandstone at the bottom of the sea,
usually in bunches, holding to the rocks by a fibrous beard
(byssus),
the circular opening being on top and the shells usually a little
open. The oysters are vertical, not lying on the flat. Each diver has a
knife, with which he cuts a bunch loose and places them in a basket or
net by his side ; this is hoisted up when full, an empty one descending
at the same time. On
