Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 688

On the great Ning-po river the same principle is used on a more extended scale with boats and nets. The boats are ready for the flow of the tide to take them in crowds up the river, and when they halt, the nets are thrown out, and the oars and sculls beat the water with a loud plashing noise. After resting in the same place for ten minutes or a quarter of an hour, they move on again to another station, and there repeat the beating and splashing. The noise on the surface is meant for an alarm, as in the case of the fish-catcher; and it is said that this mode of fishing soon loads the nets.

Another curious method employed by the Chinese is generally practised at night, and depends upon a peculiar power which a white screen, stretched under the water, seems to possess over the fishes, decoying them to it and making them leap. A man, sitting at the stern of a long narrow boat, steers her with a paddle to the middle of a river, and there stops. Along the right-hand side of his boat a narrow sheet of white canvas is stretched; when he leans to that side it dips under the surface, and if it be a moonlit night, gleams through the water. Along the other side of the boat a net is fastened so as to form a barrier two or three feet high. The boatman keeps perfectly still. If another boat passes by, he will not speak; he is only impatient at the slight breaking of the silence. While he keeps thus without a sound or stir, the fish, attracted by the white canvas, approach and leap, and would go over the narrow boat and be free in their native waters on the other side, but for the screen of netting, which stops them, and throws them down before the man's feet.

Every one must have heard of the fishing cormorant, which is actually trained in China to catch fish. A man takes out ten or twelve of these web-footed birds in a boat, and as soon as the boat stops, at his word they plunge into the water and begin at once searching for and diving after fish. They are most diligent workers, for if one of them is seen swimming about idly, the Chinaman in the boat strikes the water near the bird with the end of a long bamboo; and, not touched, but recalled to a sense of duty, the cormorant at once turns to business again. As soon as a fish is caught, a word from the man brings the bird swimming towards him. He draws it into the boat, and it drops its prey from its bill. There is always a straw or string tied round the neck, to prevent the fish from being swallowed, and this string requires the nicest adjustment, lest it may choke the bird – a result which would certainly follow if it slipped lower down on the neck. The sagacity and workman-like method of the birds are shewn when they get into difficulties. If the fish caught is too large for one beak to secure, another cormorant comes up to the struggle, and the two with united efforts bring their prize to the boat. On the rivers and canals near Ning-po, Shanghae, and Foo-chow-foo, the employment of these birds is by no means an uncommon sight; but they are never to be seen fishing in the summer months, their work being in the winter, beginning always about October and ending in May. The birds have of course to be subjected to a system of training, which is carried on in the cormorant breeding and fishing establishments, one of which is at a distance of thirty or forty miles from Shanghae.

Some tribes of Indians catch fish by drugging them. They make the soft branches of the Indian milk-bush or the euphorbia into pulp, and throw it into the water of the ponds. When the fish taste it, they lose the power of swimming, and are easily taken floating helplessly in the water. They also mix with dough a powder made from the Cocculus Indicus, the effect of which is that when thrown into the water it intoxicates the fish, and they swim in circles on the surface, where they can be caught in a hand-net. Lime is sometimes used in the same way; but the disadvantage of that system is that it causes such wholesale slaughter that there is danger of small ponds being rapidly cleared.

A still more singular practice is to be found amongst the Chonos Indians, who train dogs to help them on their fishing expeditions in much the same way as the shepherd's dog helps the shepherd. The net is held by two men standing in the water, and the dogs, swimming out far and diving after the fish, drive them back towards it. They enjoy their work just as a good horse, though hard pressed, seems to enjoy the hunt; and every time they raise their heads from the water they tell their pleasure by clamorous barking. The Fuegians, one of the most miserable and degraded races on the earth, train their dogs in a similar manner to assist them in catching birds. They have a wonderful contrivance for killing the sharks which abound off their coasts. A log of wood shaped so as to appear something like a canoe is set afloat, with a rope and large noose hanging from one end of it. Before long a shark attacks the supposed canoe, swimming after it, and is caught in the noose hanging from the stern. It closes on him so that he cannot extricate himself, and the weight of the log keeps him swimming slowly without being able to sink. Then the Fuegians in their canoes, generally steered by women, approach at their leisure and finish the shark with their spears.

All these contrivances of savage nations or of the strangely civilised Chinese, are meant to kill or seize the fish by natural means. It is much nearer home that we have to look to find the element of superstition prevailing, and useless customs invested with the importance of charms. An instance may be found in the case of the Sicilian fishermen, who, when in search of sword-fish, chant a jargon of words the meaning of which even they themselves do not know. The song is supposed to be some old Greek verses, which, by time and use among those ignorant of their meaning, have become so altered as to be almost unrecognisable. The fishermen regard the medley as a sure means of attracting the sword-fish, which they harpoon from the boat, when the charm, as they suppose, has brought them within reach. Far away in northern regions there is a novel method of fishing under ice, which shews more ingenuity than the simple lowering and fastening of a net. A small square hole is cut in the ice, and in this is placed an upright stick, supported by a cross pin run through it and resting at each side on the ice; the end of the stick below this cross pin is short, and to it the line is fastened with the bait and hook attached, while at the top of the stick is a piece of coloured rag. Now, though we have called the stick upright, it is meant to fall from that position and lie along the ice, until a fish seizing the bait pulls its lower end, when with a jerk it rises. This contrivance is called a 'tip-up,' from the movement which is certain to follow the seizure of the bait. The fluttering of the coloured rag, as the stick rises, tells of the capture; and a great number of these self-acting fishers and indicators may be placed near together, each having its own hole in the ice; and each, by the fluttering rag, telling its own tale the moment a fish is caught.

The tip-up not only saves the fisher the trouble of holding his line in position and watching with particular care, but also makes the fish itself 'strike' and announce that it is ready to be pulled out! In fact its ingenuity is only surpassed in the old tale of the Irish monastery, where at the neighbouring salmon-leap a large pot was hung so as to be just clear of the falling water, but in the way of any salmon that leaped recklessly; and a bell was placed so that the fish could not fail to ring its own knell as it fell; thus announcing to the good brothers at the monastery that he was there, not only secured, but actually in the pot, ready to be boiled for dinner.

For the following curious fishing items we are indebted to a writer in The Field. Regarding fishing in the Japanese seas, he says:

'Through an inlet on this coast our small boat is sculled by two sturdy Japanese fishermen, who drive the light craft across the shadows of the hills with speed remarkable. Standing on their feet, they swing with wonderful power a long heavy oar poised on a pin on the quarter; and while we go, these men are watching the tangle sheltering their prey – the octopus, the cuttle-fish, and the sea-cucumber. With bodies blackened by the sun to the colour of the sea-weed, these almost naked men were incommoded by neither the rain nor the winds. Like the fishermen of all lands, their restless eyes were wandering from the sea to the heavens. With no guides but the stars by night and the blue edge of the land by day, there was need for keen eyesight and watchfulness. In all the Eastern seas there is no more adventurous race than these men.

'We could see the floats of burnt wood which buoyed the ends of our fishermen's lines, and to the nearest of these we were sculled. A kind of wood, light and buoyant, and with some resemblance to cork, is used for such floats. It grows in the forests thereabouts, and after being shaped and charred to prevent decay, lasts, without further trouble, for a longer time than bladders or skins. With some impatience the black buoy and the line attached are brought on board. Like an inverted bell-shaped flower-pot comes the first earthenware jar, hardly the size of a child's head, attached to the line. Mouth downward, the jar is pulled up from the bottom, and when all the water has been poured out, the fishermen give a look inside. No occupant being found, the jar is once more lowered into the sea by the attached string, which is overrun till the next jar is pulled up, brought on board, and similarly examined. When six or seven are examined, and no occupant is found in any of these, the fishermen shew no impatience. But presently from a jar an octopus is jerked upon the floor of the boat, and with some satisfaction the Japanese watch its tentacles wriggle all about the planks and cling round their legs. Changing its hues, the disgusting cephalopod loses its redder blotches for paler patches, and eventually crawls into a darker corner to coil itself away. Pouring the water more carefully from the inverted pots, the fishermen secure a few more of these animals, which crawl and twine about with snake-like contortions. The long string of pots took time to overhaul, but the spoils were reckoned reward for the trouble. When the fishing was completed, and the black floats were again left to mark the spot, our boat was sculled somewhat farther down the land.

'We had then time to learn something more of this fishing for tako, as the octopus is named by the Japanese fishermen. Through our friends, we learn that the tako needs no bait to entice it to enter the earthen jars used by the fishermen to entrap it; but crawling about on the bottom, or shooting itself through the sea by the expulsion of water, it finds in the dark earthen jar "a comfortable house," and so occupies it until the fisherman finds it and captures it. The tako is largely eaten in Japan, where all the products of the sea are accounted equally wholesome with those of the land; and beneath an ugly skin the flesh of this speckled monster is thought very good, cooked in several ways, and eaten with or without soy or vinegar. Nevertheless, as if to vindicate the dread its constantly changing hues excite, the eating of the octopus is not unattended with danger. Through some poisonous taint either occasionally or always present, but modified by the process of cooking, people sometimes die from eating this animal. And yet the knowledge of this interferes but to a trifling extent with the use of food having such a questionable reputation – indeed at certain seasons it is largely used by the Japanese, when the cuttle-fish are far more plentiful and also more wholesome. Caught by trolling a small wooden fish barbed with hooks, they make good sport, chiefly to the older fishermen, who are not active enough to go off to sea.'

A RELIC OF ANTIQUITY

Owing to various causes, the relics of antiquity in our Great Metropolis are year by year becoming fewer and fewer in number. The utilitarianism of the age has, doubtless, much to answer for; but much harm is done by pure carelessness and neglect. Only a few days back the house in which John Milton lived was pulled down; for that act some excuse on the ground of public improvement may doubtless be urged; but none surely can be successfully pleaded for allowing so interesting a relic as the ancient Pyx Chamber in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey to go to ruin. Judging, however, from what the Warden of the Standards states in his recently published Report, this seems likely to be the case, unless he can induce the Office of Works to do something for its preservation. We hope that success may attend his efforts. This ancient historical chamber is so interesting from its associations, and so curious as a rare specimen of early Norman architecture, that we shall perhaps be pardoned for abridging some brief particulars respecting it from the Report alluded to.

This ancient crypt, which forms part of the Saxon or very early Norman substructure of the outbuildings of the Abbey, is certainly as old as the time of Edward the Confessor, and is believed to have been constructed in his reign. It has also been known as Edward the Confessor's Chapel. The vaulted and groined ceiling is supported by massive stone pillars, and the building is one of the very earliest Norman works in the country. The floor is paved with ancient coloured tiles. After the Conquest, this chamber was used as one of the king's treasuries, as a sacred place of deposit. The remains of an altar at the east end, and of a piscina, seem to indicate its original sanctity. There is, however, a tradition that what has the appearance of a stone altar is the tomb of Hugolin, the Confessor's chamberlain. In 1303, the thirty-first year of King Edward I., the whole of the king's treasures were deposited in this ancient chamber, the entrance to which, on the west or cloister side, was at that time, as now, secured by two massive doors with seven locks. During the king's absence in Scotland, when engaged in war, the northern wall of the chamber was broken through by some of the monks of Westminster Abbey, and the whole of the treasure carried off. It included four crowns, with the king's rings, sceptres, jewels, gold and silver coin, and plate, &c. The greater part of the booty was, however, afterwards recovered, and the monks tried and found guilty. The depositions at their trial still exist amongst our ancient records, but the actual punishment inflicted on the thieves is not recorded; some significant evidence, however, still remains of what was probably their fate, inasmuch as an old door on the north side of the chamber, opening into the passage to the chapter-house, has portions of a human skin still fastened to it! It would appear that, in consequence of this robbery, the approach to the chamber on the north side was walled off, and the room was reduced in size by one-third. After the Restoration, the regalia and other similar treasures of the sovereign were removed to the Tower, and the chamber was then known as the 'Treasury of Leagues,' the original parchment documents of commercial leagues with foreign states being deposited there. Several large oak presses are still in existence in which these leagues were kept; some of them are furnished with drawers, and bear inscriptions on parchment or merely in chalk, indicating the nature of their former contents. There are also several large ancient coffers or chests still remaining in the chamber, in one of which the Standard trial-plates of gold and silver for trials of the pyx were formerly kept, whence the chamber became known as the 'Pyx Chapel.' At the present time, no official documents or articles of any value are kept in the Pyx Chamber, and its interior has been allowed to get into a very dirty and decayed state; indeed, Mr Chisholm goes so far as to aver that nothing has been done to it during his period of public service, now more than fifty-one years!

THE COMMERCIAL TRAVELLERS' SCHOOLS

A wish has been expressed, in reference to our article 'The Commercial Traveller,'2 for a brief notice of the admirable schools belonging to that praiseworthy body of men at Pinner, near Harrow.

The Institution was founded about thirty years ago; but the present building dates from 1855, when the ceremonial opening was conducted by the late Prince Consort. Wings were added afterwards; and in its present form the establishment accommodates about three hundred boys and girls – say two hundred of the former and one hundred of the latter. The Institution clothes, maintains, and educates the destitute orphans of deceased commercial travellers, and fatherless children of the necessitous members of the craft. No favouritism would suffice for the admission of children other than those belonging to this category. As the Institution is wholly supported by donations and subscriptions, the donors have rightfully a voting power for the admission of children. Governors, managers, trustees, &c. are appointed in the manner usual in analogous institutions. Children are admitted by ballot-voting twice a year; they begin at various ages, but all quit the Institution at the age of fifteen, when they are assisted with an outfit and aid in obtaining suitable situations. The education given is really excellent, comprising (for boys) reading, writing, arithmetic, algebra, geometry, geography, map-drawing, grammar, English composition, Latin, French, English history, class-singing, and instrumental music; and for girls, most of the above branches, with needlework and domestic duties. A juvenile band is maintained by the boys, under a professional bandmaster. Diet and clothing are good and plentiful. A project has recently been started for an enlargement of the building by adding a new wing, with fifty-two additional beds, a laundry, swimming-bath, and infirmary, at an estimated cost of eighteen thousand pounds.

In our former article we spoke of the onerous duties that press upon many commercial travellers, and of the necessity for probity, energy, and intelligence on their part. It is well to know what is thought on these points by those who have the best means of knowing. At the last anniversary of the Institution, a partner in one of the great City firms said: 'I spent some of the happiest days of my life among commercial travellers. They are a worthy, industrious, painstaking body of men. They are subject to temptations to which hardly any other class is subject; often leaving home very young, very inexperienced, with frequently a large command of money, thrown upon their own resources, without that best safeguard against temptation – home influence. They must work in all weathers, their energies strained to the utmost against a great force of competition. Their sea of life is never smooth, their work never done, a fresh struggle and battle with the world every half-hour. Sometimes with sickness at home, and the head of the family away, dreading misfortune which he might have prevented or alleviated. A traveller, to be successful, should be sickness-proof, accident-proof, bad-debt proof; and he should be a most wise and temperate man, moderate in all his ways.' If the 'commercial' approaches anything near this picture, he must indeed be an excellent fellow. The Commercial Travellers' Benevolent Institution, to aid aged and necessitous members of the body, is another praiseworthy offshoot.

TO THE COMING FLOWERS

Awake, dear sleepers, from your wintry tombs;The sun has turned the point of Capricorn,And 'gins to pluck from Winter's wings the plumesOf darkness, and to wind his silver hornFor your return. Come to your homes, forlornIn absence of your odours and your faces;Like Rachel weeps for you the reaved morn,As often as she views your empty places,Erewhile the daily scene of her and your embraces.Come, pensile snowdrop, like the earliest starThat twinkles on the brow of dusky Night;Come, like the child that peeps from door ajar,With pallid cheek, upon a wasteful sight:And shouldst thou rise when all around is white,The more thou'lt demonstrate the power of GodTo shield the weak against the arms of might,To strengthen feeble shoulders for their load,And sinking hearts 'mid ills they could not full forebode.Come, crocus cup, the cup where early beesSip the first nectar of the liberal year,Come and illume our green, as similesLight up the poet's song. And O ye dearMarch violets, come near, come breathing near!You too, fair primroses, in darksome woodsShine forth, like heaven's constellations clear;And come, ye daisies, throng in multitudes,And whiten hills and meadows with your saintly hoods.Come with thy lilies, May; thy roses, June;Come with your richer hues, Autumnal hours;O tell your mellowing sun, your regal moon,Your dewy drops, your soft refreshing showers,To lift their blessing hands in Flora's bowers,Nor e'en to scorn the bindweed's flossy gold,Nor foxglove's banner hung with purple flowers,Nor solitary heath that cheers the wold,Nor the last daisy shivering in November's cold!

1

Peg-top and marbles.

2

Chambers's Journal, Dec. 16, 1876.