ver 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]

[Footnote 1: This suspension was in some degree attributable to disputes
with the Nabob of Arcot and