here accountants and armed guards are in command, is not
far from the governmental offices. A system perfected by years of
experience makes thieving within the kottu virtually impossible, and the
clerks who record the count of oysters, and issue them upon official
order, might safely conduct a bankers' clearinghouse. On occasions they
handle without error more than three million oysters in a day.

A quarter of a mile from the official section of the city is the great
human warren and business region, where black men and brown--Hindus,
Mohammedans, Buddhists, and the East's flotsam of religions--dwell and
traffic in peaceful communion. A broad thoroughfare, starting from the
edge of the plateau overlooking the sea and extending inland until the
settlement yields to the open country, is the "Main street"; and here,
for ten or twelve weeks, is one of Asia's busiest marts. This part of
Marichchikkaddi is planned with careful regard for sanitary needs and
hygiene. Streets cross at right angles, and at every corner stands a
lamp-post rudely made from jungle wood, from which suspends a lantern
ingeniously fashioned from an American petroleum tin. Sites on the
principal streets are leased for the period of the fishery to persons
proving their purposes to be legitimate. For a good corner lot perhaps
twenty feet square the government receives as much as a thousand rupees;
and a few hours after the lease is signed up goes a cadjan
structure--and a day later pearls worth a king's ransom may there be
dealt in with an absence of concern astounding to a visitor.

Can these Easterners, squatting on mats like fakirs in open-front
stalls, judge the merits of a pearl? Yes, decidedly. In the twinkling of
an eye one of them estimates the worth of a gem with a precision that
would take a Bond Street dealer hours to determine. The Indian or
Cingalese capitalist who goes with his cash to Marichchikkaddi to buy
pearls is not given to taking chances; usually he has learned by long
experience every "point" that a pearl can possess, knows whether it be
precisely spherical, has a good "skin," and a luster appealing to
connoisseurs. A metal colander or simple scale enables him to know to
the fraction of a grain the weight of a pearl, and experience and the
trader's instinct tell him everything further that may possibly be known
of a gem. It would be as profitless to assume to instruct an Egyptian
desert sheikh upon the merits of a horse as to try to