[Footnote 1:  It is almost unnecessary to say that the shell fish which produces the true Oriental pearls is not an oyster, but belongs to the genus Avicula, or more correctly, Meleagrina.  It is the Meleagrina Margaritifera of Lamarck.]

During the progress of a pearl-fishery, this singular and dreary expanse becomes suddenly enlivened by the crowds who congregate from distant parts of India; a town is improvised by the construction of temporary dwellings, huts of timber and cajans[1], with tents of palm leaves or canvas; and bazaars spring up, to feed the multitude on land, as well as the seamen and divers in the fleets of boats that cover the bay.

[Footnote 1:  Cajan is the local term for the plaited fronds of a coco-nut.]

I visited the pearl banks officially in 1848 in company with Capt.  Stenart, the official inspector.  My immediate object was to inquire into the causes of the suspension of the fisheries, and to ascertain the probability of reviving a source of revenue, the gross receipts from which had failed for several years to defray the cost of conservancy.  In fact, between 1837 and 1854, the pearl banks were an annual charge, instead of producing an annual income, to the colony.  The conjecture, hastily adopted, to account for the disappearance of mature shells, had reference to mechanical causes; the received hypothesis being that the young broods had been swept off their accustomed feeding grounds, by the establishment of unusual currents, occasioned by deepening the narrow passage between Ceylon and India at Paumbam.  It was also suggested, that a previous Governor, in his eagerness to replenish the colonial treasury, had so “scraped” and impoverished the beds as to exterminate the oysters.  To me, neither of these suppositions appeared worthy of acceptance; for, in the frequent disruptions of Adam’s Bridge, there was ample evidence that the currents in the Gulf of Manaar had been changed at former times without destroying the pearl beds:  and moreover the oysters had disappeared on many former occasions, without any imputation of improper management on the part of the conservators; and returned after much longer intervals of absence than that which fell under my own notice, and which was then creating serious apprehension in the colony.

A similar interruption had been experienced between 1820 and 1828:  the Dutch had had no fishing for twenty-seven years, from 1768 till 1796[1]; and they had been equally unsuccessful from 1732 till 1746.  The Arabs were well acquainted with similar vicissitudes, and Albyronni (a contemporary of Avicenna), who served under Mahmoud of Ghuznee, and wrote in the eleventh century, says that the pearl fishery, which formerly existed in the Gulf of Serendib, had become exhausted in his time, simultaneously with the appearance of a fishery at Sofala, in the country of the Zends, where pearls were unknown before; and hence, he says, arose the conjecture that the pearl oyster of Serendib had migrated to Sofala.[2]