corundum, Sri Lanka.12, gems

AS SOON as a traveler sets foot on the shores of Ceylon he comes under the subtle charm of the land, and is quickly imbued with the feeling that it would be most incongruous if such a climate did not produce the most luxuriant foliage, the most beautiful flowers, the most luscious fruits; if such a soil did not give forth the most wonderful profusion and variety of precious stones; if such surrounding waters did not yield the most resplendent pearls. Ceylon has long been celebrated for its sapphires, rubies, cat’s-eyes, moonstones, opals, amethysts, carbuncles, and emeralds; but none of these, nor all of them combined, have given to the island the fame and the romantic setting that have been conferred on it by the product of the limpid waters that bathe its coral strands and sandy beaches. The poetic name of Ceylon today is “The Pearl on India’s Brow.” Colombo, the principal city of modern Ceylon, is a stopping place for all the steamers plying between Europe and Asia and Australia, and is therefore visited by thousands of tourists and travelers each year. But the pearl fishery is so remote from Colombo that not one visitor in ten thousand ever goes there. In Colombo a person sees only a fraction of the great pearl crop, of which more than 90 per cent—99 per cent in some years—goes to India; but this fraction is sufficiently seductive to the transient visitor to render uncertain the time and manner of his arrival home, for the pearl shops in Colombo are veritable magnets that irresistibly attract the contents of purse and wallet. The pearl fishery of Ceylon and of India and the Persian Gulf is of very great antiquity, and is thought to be the oldest established fishery now in existence. The Sinhalese records, going back to about 550 B.C., indicate that the fisheries were then well developed, and there is reason to believe that they flourished at least 500 years before. At a very early period the pearls brought the island into prominence abroad, and were in great repute in Rome at the time of Pliny, who, referring to Ceylon under the name of Taprobane, wrote that it was “the most productive of pearls of all parts of the world.” From the most remote period of which there is any record, it would appear that the pearl fishery played a very important part in the history of Ceylon, having had more or less direct and intimate relations with every important aspect of the civilization of the island. The information available clearly suggests that from the earliest times the fishery was conducted in much the same way as in our own day—the same methods of obtaining the pearl oysters, of handling the catch on shore, and of extracting the pearls. In the words of a local writer, “Ceylon is a place with a glorious past. Its once magnificent cities are now but a mass of crumbled and half-buried ruins; its native dynasty has passed away forever;”