Early in February the area to be gleaned is again examined, the limits of the oysters are charted and buoyed off, the number that may be obtained is estimated as accurately as possible, and valuation samples are collected. Several thousand oysters are taken up, the pearls are removed, examined, and valued by uninterested experts, and the results are published, so that prospective buyers may have a reliable idea as to their value. Otherwise this would not be possible until the merchants had washed some of their own purchases, which ordinarily would not be for a week or ten days after the opening of the season. The fishery usually begins late in February or early in March, as the sea is then relatively calm, the currents least perceptible, and there is less danger of storms. It is prosecuted from a temporary settlement or camp on the sandy shore at a place conveniently near the reefs. The important fisheries of the five years ending in 1907, were centered at the improvised settlement known as Marichchikadde. Although prosecuted from the coast of Ceylon, relatively few Cingalese attend compared with the large numbers who assemble from India, Arabia, and elsewhere. A week or two before the opening of the season, the boats begin to arrive, sometimes fifty or more in a single day, laden with men, women and children, and in many cases with the materials for their huts. In a short time the erstwhile desolate beach becomes populated with thousands of persons from all over the Indian littoral, and there is the noisy traffic of congregated humanity, and a confusion of tongues where before only the sound of the ocean waves was heard. Beside the eight or ten thousand fishermen, most of whom are Moormen, Tamils, and Arabs, there are pearl merchants—mainly Chetties and Moormen, boat repairers and other mechanics, provision dealers, priests, pawnbrokers, government officials, koddu-counters, clerks, boat guards, a police force of 200 officials, coolies, domestic servants, with numbers of women and children. And for the entertainment of these, and to obtain a share of the wealth from the sea, there are jugglers, fakirs, gamblers, beggars, female dancers, loose characters, with every allurement that appeals to the sons of Brahma, Buddha or Mohammed. Natives from the seaport towns of India are there in thousands; the slender-limbed and delicate-featured Cingalese with their scant attire and unique head-dress; energetic Arabs from the Persian Gulf; burly Moormen, sturdy Kandyans, outcast Veddahs, Chinese, Jews, Portuguese, Dutch, half-castes, the scum of the East and the riffraff of the Asiatic littoral, the whole making up a temporary city of forty thousand or more inhabitants.[136] THE Ceylon Company of Pearl Fishers, LIMITED. NOTICE