XIV

QTarifal of Hp? Carnaftc

C7\ LONG a strip of the Ooromandel stretches one of the
P" most beautiful Marinas—the Marina of Madras.

Parallel to this white strip of sand, more than three
miles long, runs the macadamized road of this Fork

St. George, one^ of the early settlements of the British
in India.

Three hundred years ago a fortified factory and
a few villages stood here; one of them, the fishing
village, still lives and thrives. The fishermen have not
changed their profession since those times; they set out
in their midget riders of the waves, the catamarans, to
wrest a livelihood from the harvest of the sea. Accord-
ing to a seventeenth century traveller,"....they seize 4, 5,
or 6 large pieces of buoyant timber together, and this
they call a catamaran upon which they can load 3 or
4 tons weight. When they go fishing, they are ready
with very small ones of the like kind, that will carry
four, three, two, or one man only, and upon these
sad things they will boldly adventure out of shore, but
indeed, they swim as naturally as spaniel dogs." Practi-
cally nothing has changed in the lives of these fisherfolk
since the last two hundred and fifty years, except that
they have forgotten that their ancestors used ropes of
cocoanut fibre, for today, ropes are bought in the
market; while the picturesque little sails made of the
bark of trees come now from the local mills.

Thirty decades of history can be seen in the build-
ings which line the Marina, and recall the days of