CHAPTER XII.
The Pearl Fishery--Desolation of the Coast--Harbor of Trincomalee--Fatal Attack by a Shark--Ferocious Crocodiles--Salt Monopoly--Salt Lakes--Method of Collection--Neglect of Ceylon Hides--Fish and Fishing--Primitive Tackle--Oysters and Penknives--A Night Bivouac for a Novice--No Dinner, but a Good Fire--Wild Yams and Consequences--The Elephants' Duel--A Hunting Hermitage--Bluebeard's last Hunt--The Leopard--Bluebeard's Death--Leopard Shot.
While fresh from the subject of government mismanagement, let us turn our eyes in the direction of one of those natural resources of wealth for which Ceylon has ever been renowned--the "pearl fishery." This was the goose which laid the golden egg, and Sir W.Horton, when governor of Ceylon, was the man who killed the goose.
Here was another fatal instance of the effects of a five years' term of governorship.
It was the last year of his term, and he wished to prove to the Colonial Office that "his talent" had not been laid up in a napkin, but that he had left the colony with an excess of income over expenditure.
To obtain this income he fished up all the oysters, ruined the fishery in consequence; and from that day to the present time it has been unproductive.
This is a serious loss of income to the colony, and great doubts are entertained as to the probability, of the oyster-banks ever recovering their fertility.
Nothing can exceed the desolation of the coast in the neighborhood of the pearl-banks.

For many miles the shore is a barren waste of low sandy ground, covered for the most part with scrubby, thorny jungle, diversified by glades of stunted herbage.

Not a hill is to be seen as far as the eye can reach.

The tracks of all kind of game abound on the sandy path, with occasionally those of a naked foot, but seldom does a shoe imprint its civilized mark upon these lonely shores.
The whole of this district is one of the best in Ceylon for deer-shooting, which is a proof of its want of inhabitants.

This has always been the case, even in the prosperous days of the pearl fishery.
So utterly worthless is the soil, that it remains in a state of nature, and its distance from Colombo (one hundred and fifty miles) keeps it in entire seclusion.
It is a difficult to conceive that any source of wealth should exist in such a locality.