ever, he said at
once that they must be pearl-divers; and as the wind was very light, and
we passed close to them, we had an opportunity of observing their
proceedings. There appeared to be about a dozen men in each boat, half
of whom were evidently, from their want of dress, the divers, while two
other men we took to be the chief and an assistant. A large sugar-loaf
stone was let down overboard by a thick rope. A diver stepped on the
gunwale, holding on by the rope, and apparently placing his toe in a
loop or hole to keep his foot in its place. On the other foot a net was
fastened. With this apparatus the diver began to descend. Before,
however, his head reached the water I saw that he held his nose very
tightly with his hand. This was, I understood, to prevent the water
getting into his nostrils. We calculated that about four from each boat
were down at a time, and we judged that each man remained from two to
three minutes below the water. Up he came again at the end of that
time, apparently very little exhausted, although he must have been
making active exertions to collect the shells. After he had come to the
top, the net containing the oysters was drawn up, and in that time he
had collected from a hundred to a hundred and fifty.

We watched them with great interest, and were anxious to procure some of
the oysters, but the chiefs would not sell them; indeed, they all belong
to merchants who have rented the fishing for the season. Some of the
men, we observed, suffered far more than others, and discharged water
from their mouths and ears and nostrils, and some even blood; but,
notwithstanding this, the same men were ready to go down again when
their turn came. We learned that most of them will make from forty to
fifty plunges in one day, and that a few of the most experienced and
strongest remain down nearly five minutes. Their greatest danger is
from the ground shark, which lies in wait at the bottom. However, some
of these men will face even the shark, with knives in their hands, and
come off victorious. To secure themselves still further, some of the
boats carry conjurers or priests on board, who, by their incantations,
are supposed to preserve them from the attacks of the shark. Of course,
if a diver is picked off by a shark, the conjurer asserts that he has
not properly obeyed his directions, and thus does not lose his credit.
The saw-fish is another of the diver's foes, more dangerous, because
m