Nearly all the British India steamers in their zigzag journeys up the Persian Gulf, calling first at the Arabian coast and then at the Persian coast, stop at the pearl islands of Bahrein. Half-way up the Gulf and thirty miles from the mainland of Arabia, this group of islands has been famous for centuries as the most valuable pearl fishery in the world. For at least two thousand years the Arabs have been diving in these waters and bringing up the costly shells. Before the days of Christ, and even before the time of Solomon, pearls from Bahrein were shipped to the Western world, and it is probable that the dress and the conversation of the men and the boys of to-day is about the same as it was a thousand years ago. The boats are probably of the same pattern, with very little improvement. Bahrein is an Arabic word which means the _two seas_, and this name was given to the islands because the Arabs fancied that here two seas met, the fresh water and the salt water mingling together. The islands have very little rainfall—during the summer none at all—and yet they are famous for their fresh-water springs, which find their source on the mainland of Arabia or Persia, and the water not only bubbles out in pools and wells on shore, but below the tide level there are fresh-water springs several miles out at sea. You would be interested to see the Arabs go out in their boats, place a bamboo over the opening in the rock and then collect fresh water above sea level in their great leather skins. Bahrein is historically most interesting, because here the old Chaldeans and Phœnicians made their home. Some of the mounds on the island are older than the ruins of Babylon, and it is said that the Phœnicians worshipped the fish-god who, it is supposed, carried Noah’s ark over the flood. The pearl fisheries at Bahrein employ about 3,500 boats, large and small. The boats measure from one to fifty tons. The smaller boats carry from three to fifteen men and work near the shore; the large boats, employing from fifteen to thirty men, fish all over the Gulf. It is a pretty sight to see the fleet sailing out of the harbour, the large sails, set to the wind, gleaming white in the sun, the blue waters underneath and the bluer sky overhead. Have you ever seen a diving outfit? It looks rather ungainly to me. The Arab divers do not use anything so elaborate as do the divers in America. White overalls to cover their dark skin (because they say sharks do not care for white people), a _fatam_, or clothes-pin on the nose, and leather thimbles for scratching up the shells, and a basket to hold the catch, with a rope attached to a girdle to draw them up with—this is the complete outfit. When prayers have been said and a _Bismillah_, down he goes, quickly fills the basket, and with a tug on the rope, he is hauled up, his basket is emptied while he takes a short breathing spell, then down again; and so on from sunrise to sunset.