e is very warm. The region is decidedly tropical, the air is damp
and oppressive, and in the daytime especially the heat is almost
insupportable. I wonder, though, that they don't adopt the white linen
jacket for dinner purposes, just as the Europeans living in China and
Japan have done.

"Somerset, where we landed, is principally a pearl-fishing station, and
the pearl fishers who live there are a very rough-looking lot. The
business is very profitable, those engaged in it estimating that the
pearls pay all the expenses of their enterprise and a little more, while
the _nacre_, or mother-of-pearl, the smooth lining of the shells, is a
clear profit. The exportation of shells from Queensland is worth,
annually, about half a million dollars. The pearl shells sell ordinarily
for about one thousand dollars a ton. They are gathered by black divers
under the superintendence of white men.

"These white men own the sloops and schooners devoted to the pearl
fishery, and they go out with these craft, taking along a lot of black
men as divers. The diving is done in the same way as in pearl fisheries
all over the world, so that there is no necessity of describing it. The
shells are like large oyster shells; in fact, they are oyster shells and
nothing else. They are about twenty inches long, and from twelve to
fifteen inches from one side to the other; so, you see, it doesn't take
many oysters to make a load for a diver. The divers are paid according
to the number of shells they gather, and not by fixed wages. A man
familiar with the business said, that if you paid the men regular wages,
you would be lucky if you got one dive out of them daily.

"I tried to ascertain the value of some of the pearls obtained here,"
continued Harry, "but my information was not very definite. They told me
that several pearls worth five thousand dollars each had been taken, but
they were not very common, the value ordinarily running from a few
dollars up to one hundred or two hundred dollars each. My informant said
that the best pearls were found on the coast of West Australia, but that
the fishery in that locality was more dangerous than on the coast of
Queensland. He said that the sea in that locality was subject to
hurricanes, and sometimes an entire fleet of pearl-fishing boats would
be overwhelmed and sunk, hardly a man escaping. 'These disasters,' he
said, 'do not deter those who survive from taking the risk over again,
and there are always plenty