Along the western coast of the Madras Presi dency, with its untaxed salt earth, these people prosper ; but all up the Coromandel coast, except where there are large towns, we find them reported to be decreasing in numbers, due to cholera or other diseases, emigration, or accepting service as lascars in coasting vessels.
The fishermen in Sind, in 1875, paid a tax of 10s. a ton yearly on their fishing boats. These people are well off. In Gujerat the fishermen are poor and the precarious living they make often induces them to accept service as sailors, labourers, or anything that ensures them a steady competence. They are in the utmost misery, not due to their own laziness, but as a result of I3ritish legislation imposing prohibitory duties on salt, and ca,using an enormousioss of food to the in habitants at large. In the Janjira district the fishermen supply themselves with boats and nets ; six or ten club together to obtain a boat and net, dividing the produce ; here they have decreased in numbers. At Broach and Kaira they have diminished. In Ratnagherry they are said to have increased.
In the Tinnevelly collectorate the fishermen as a nile are very poor. They work by a system of advances made by traders, a few of whom reside in each fishing village, and supply all tho requi sites for fishing, as well as the boats, taking one third of the captures as their share. In the Nellore district the inhabitants of the different villages prevent fishermen from other localities plying their occupation within what they believe to be their limits. At Cannanore the owners of fish
ing boats and nets supply them to tho fishers. A like plan obtains at Tellicherry, where the fishermen have framed rules for their own guid ance, oue of which is the right of the first dis coverer, among a lot fishing together, to a shoal of fish ; be is allowed to capture them without hindrance from tho others, even though at the time when the fish were discovered he was not prepared to launch his net. At Ootipadaram the native official estimated the daily earnings at three pence, taking all the year round, and excluding costs; and at Munjery at from three-halfpence to ninepence ; while at Tenkarei their earnings were computed at from threepence to one shilling a day.
Without tracing out tho condition of these people in each district on the coast, it will be sufficient to say that they are poor and miserable, but not so badly off as in the Bengal maritime districts, where they appear to be quite poverty stricken.
The chief cause of this impoverished state is undoubtedly the hampering in their avocation, occasioned by the salt monopoly, which restricts their traffic to the sale of fresh fish, sufficient merely for local consumption. In India, also, on the sea-eoast, it is aggravated by the caste customs preventing the fishing races taking to other avocations. Passing on to Burma with its cheap salt and freedom from caste, we find the fisher men well off.—Tennant's Christianity in Ceylon ; Day's Fisheries; Bombay 7'imes, 1850.