“OYSTERS’ EYES”

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18761, 15 January 1923, Page 8

“OYSTERS’ EYES”

ROMANCE OF PEARLING. DIVERS’ WONDERFUL FEATS. When the j«earlcrs of Broome (W.A.) were trying to form a pool in pearl shell a few years ago, they pointed out that Australia produced 90 per cent, of the world's ahcl 1 , and had therefore almost a monopoly (says a correspondent in an Australian exchange). Pools were fashionable in those days, but the pearlers failed to get one. Yet a pearl pool would have been much raoro picturesque and* romantic than pools for wheat, wool, fruit, butter, cheese, or even opals or sapphires. If the Commonwealth had formed such a pool, any spare shell left on its hands could have been used to decorate the Federal Parliament House at Canberra—when it is built. There is a precedent in the church of the Melanesian Mission on Norfolk Island, where the seats are all inlaid wtih mother-of-pearl. This has a remarkably tine effect.

Perhaps 'the pearlers would have had better luck if there had been more pearls and less shell to put in tho pool. But us far as Australian pearling is concerned, the pearls are quite a secondary consideration. Where Japanese divers are employed, they insist on having the pearls as one of their perquisites, so that the pearls would not go into tho pool unless the divers agreed. There is a possible use for the pearl oysters as an article of food. But would it be fair to ask tho public to run the risk of swallowing a pearl? It is true that Cleopatra did it. She used enough vinegar to melt tho pearl, however, and not everyone likes vinegar to that extent. Cleopatra nearly had a humble and unconscious imitator in a native woman on Duke of York Island, Torres Straits. The woman was eating an oyster, when the pearl stuck in her throat and almost choked her. Tho natives sold tho pearl thus opportunely rescued for £SO. It eventually brought a great deal more than that. HOW PEARLS ARE MADE.

Science will have none of the delightful old fable of the Persian and Ceylonese pearlers, according to which the pearls are derived from the dew of Heaven. The theory is that in very calm weather the oyster comes to the surface and opens its mouth. Drops of dew fall into the open mouth and “ suffer a eea change, into something rich and strange.” This poetic notion modern science will not away with. It prefers the much lees pleasing notion that pearls are the oyster’s way of isolating bits of sand or grit or other noxious foreign substances. Mr James Clarke, of Brisbane, has a pearl shaped like a small fish, soine two inches long. On this theory the fish wandered in when the oyster was yawning, and was walled off with layers of pearl, as bees sometimes wall off an intruder into the hive.

A former resident of Duke of York Islaid (Mr Connolly, once a schoolmaster there) had a huge blister pearl nearly three inches long, in the shape of a crocodile or lizard. The shape was perfect, except for the legs, which had to be artificially supplied. Yet this can hardly be taken as evidence that this oyster had swallowed either a young crocodile or a lizard, and then turned it into a pear). Some of the Manilla divers say that the pearls are the tears that the oysters weep for drowned mariners. AMPHIBIOUS DIVERS. In the early days of pearling, and until comparatively recently, the divers worked naked, as the "skin-divers,” largely Australian aborigines, who collect trepang, still do. The. use of diving dresses has enabled the divers to reach much greater depths. Soon after dresses were first introduced in Torres Staits, a white man went down 40 fathoms, and some of the Japanese have gone nearly, if not quite, as deep. It is alleged that a diver has been known to stay under water for six minutes. To do so for three or even four minutes was no uncommon feat.

The other day at Manly a Thursday Islander, Silvio Blanche, swam 50 yards under water, and beat an opponent who swam in the orthodox way on tho (op. But 50 yards under water is nothing at Thursday Island, whatever they may think of it at Manly. With a diving dress the time under water can be almost indefinitely prolonged. There are Japanese divers at Thursday Island who claim to have walked over most of the bottom of Torres Straits in the course of their 'work. PEARLING HISTORY.

Just as the Sydney traders sought a sandalwood in Fiji, Tonga, end elsewhere in the South Seas long before any attempt was made to export the sandalwood that grows in Australia itself, whether round the Gulf of Carpentaria or in West Australia, so pearls and pearl shells were fished for among the islands long years before the richer grounds on the northern coasts of Australia itself were exploited. Ages before the white man appeared among them, the Polynesians of the South Seas had used peari shell for various purposes, and the early pearlers found their divers ready to hand in the Tahitians, Tongans, the Roturaah men ‘ who used to do much of the Torres Straits diving before they and the Manilamen alike wete displaced by tbe Japanese and others. In a letter to Governor Macquarie, written in 1812, William Campbell, master of the brig James Hay, states that after trading to what he calls the "Fagee” Islands for sandalwood in 1807, he had opened up a pearl fishery—“likewise promising to be productive of much benefit to trade from the colony” in the Paumotu Islands, 600 miles to the north-east of Tahiti.