49 



filled with a writhing mass of thousands of eels all in 

 the characteristic livery assumed when they are fully 

 adult and ready for their catadromic migration. The 

 boat lay in a little basin at one end of the heading room 

 wherein were a number of " headers " seated before 

 wooden blocks and each surrounded by several baskets. 

 The eels in the boat were scooped up by means of land- 

 ing nets, filled into baskets, and distributed among the 

 headers whose operations consisted in chopping off the 

 head of the still living fish and dividing the body at 

 intervals so as to give lengths of about a.¥ to each. 

 Only at alternate intervals was the body cut right 

 through ; at the other points it was merely nicked deeply. 

 This allows the halves of each double section to be 

 readily folded upon themselves at the joint made by the 

 deep nick at mid-length. As the men work they sort 

 the pieces as they go, flinging" them as cut into one or 

 other of the baskets disposed within their reach, accord- 

 ing to the size and quality of each section. Thus the stout 

 sections from the thick portion of the larger fish go into 

 one basket, the thin tail sections into another and 

 a third will take those of fish of inferior size. The heads 

 are considered as offal and are sold by the heap to the 

 workers and local people at a trifling price. 



As the baskets are filled with the severed sections, 

 they are carried to the roasting room, where they are 

 first spitted and then cooked before great fires laid in 

 open fire-places. This roasting room extends the full 

 width of the building ; the fires, eight in number, occupy 

 the whole of one side while along the side opposite are 

 the spitting tables. The floor-space between the fires 

 and the spitting tables is occupied with wooden racks on 

 which the filled spits rest before and after roasting. 



Fig. 9. — Eel-roasting spit showing method of charging with 

 double lengths of eel-sections. 



The spits upon which the double sections of fish are 

 transfixed are iron rods about 7 feet in length provided 



