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UNITED STATES, CANADA AND MEXICO 223
fying
the air in the working chamber, thus dispensing with the necessity of
communicating with the surface as it furnished an atmosphere in which
men could work for a whole day with perfect ease. The company procured
a lease of property at the island of Tiburon, hoping, with their
facilities, to secure unusual returns; for, with their submarine boat,
they would have the advantage of exploring, locating, and working beds
where divers could not go. Presumably their efforts were not
successful, for the company soon went out of existence.
During
the subsequent summer a new company obtained the concession for the
Lower California pearl fisheries, and they decided that all the
fisheries on the Gulf of California should in the future be worked by
Chinamen.
For
more than 300 years these fisheries have been in the possession of
private grants dating back to the days of the conquest The Mexican
Government has in recent years annulled the old grants and leased the
fisheries to the highest bidders. The house of Gonzales & Ruffo,
having offices both in La Paz and the City of Mexico, secured a
concession for sixteen years permitting them to work the fisheries
around the Espiritu Santo and La Paz Islands, which are considered the
best of the beds. The Government has recently granted to a single firm
the exclusive right to raise the mother-of-pearl shells, and for the
reproduction of such oysters the system used in the State of Maryland
will be followed. The fisheries, which constitute one of the leading
industries of Lower California, are now diminishing yearly, and, owing
to the continued exploitation, many of the ship-owners find themselves
losers at the end of the season.
In
the year 1831, according to T. J. Farnham,' more than $40,000 worth of
pearls were taken from the coast of Sonora. The pearls from this
fishery at one time brought from $150,000 to $200,000 a year. As the
search has been so actively carried on, the Government has deemed it
necessary to prohibit fishing the second time for a period of two years.
Robert A. Wilson," in speaking of pearls, says : " Their abundance is one of the first things to strike a stranger on entering
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1 Scenes on the Pacific, p. 307.
2 Mexico, its Geography, its People, and its Institutions (New York, 1846), p. 307.
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