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Updated: May 1, 2025
He had been visiting sundry Hindoo shrines, and it was for the purpose of worshipping at the temple of Ramiseram, which is situate on the island of that name, in the Gulf of Manaar, forming part of Adam's Bridge, that he touched at Colombo.
Sometimes they enter into a coöperative engagement, sharing, that is, in the possible profits of the season, but as a rule they prefer to receive prompt and sure wages, and to run no risk as regards emolument. At this writing, there is a scarcity of pearl oysters at the old beds, both in the Gulf of Manaar and off the northeast coast.
The Portuguese cherished the belief in the mermaid, and the annalist of the exploits of the Jesuits in India, gravely records that seven of these monsters, male and female, were captured at Manaar in 1560, and carried to Goa, where they were dissected by Demas Bosquez, physician to the Viceroy, and "their internal structure found to be in all respects conformable to the human."
The flat boats go through safely; but if the small ships happen to miss the proper channel, they get fast on the shoals, by which many of them are lost. In coming back from the Indies, instead of this passage, they take the channel of Manaar, which has an ouze bottom, so that even in case of grounding they are generally got off again without damage.
The shells are generally left on the sand in carefully guarded heaps till they die and open, when the pearls are extracted, and the fish left to decay. Some of the oysters are taken in sealed-up sacks to Colombo, Kandy, and other inland places, in order to enable people to indulge their love of gambling and speculation, without the trouble of a journey to Manaar.
The trade in shells is one of extreme antiquity in Ceylon. The Gulf of Manaar has been fished from the earliest times for the large chank shell, Turbinella rapa, to be exported to India, where it is still sawn into rings and worn as anklets and bracelets by the women of Hindustan.
But large ships going for the eastern coast of India pass by the coast of Coromandel, on the other side of this gulf, beside the land of Chilao , which is between the firm land and the isle of Manaar.
I looked on the side where the land lay, and saw nothing but a dark line enclosing three parts of the horizon, from south-west to north west. The Nautilus, having returned during the night up the western coast of Ceylon, was now west of the bay, or rather gulf, formed by the mainland and the Island of Manaar.
The Captain said something to his second, who immediately went out. Soon the Nautilus returned to her native element, and the manometer showed that she was about thirty feet deep. "Well, sir," said Captain Nemo, "you and your companions shall visit the Bank of Manaar, and if by chance some fisherman should be there, we shall see him at work." "Agreed, Captain!"
The fables one hears relating to this shrine are legion, all thoroughly tinctured with gross absurdities; still, the place is well worth a visit, and careful study. The island of Manaar, close at hand, off the west coast, and from which Adam's Bridge extends towards the continent of India, is eighteen miles long, and but three or four wide.
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