BULLETIN OF THE UNITED .STATES FISH COMMISSION. 13 



small piles (backs up) at night or in rainy weather. About two good 

 warm days will dry them sufficiently, when they are thrown and packed 

 into a large round pile with the tails in, the center of the circle being 

 filled up with the small lots too irregular or diminutive to pile, and then 

 covered w r ith bark, upon which are placed stones to hold it down. The 

 dimensions of such a pile are usually 5 to 7 feet in diameter and 4 high. 

 Often the ground is cleared and a frame- w<ork of stones made for its 

 support, which becomes a matter of ornament when the iish are removed, 

 and serves, to make the ground look nicely and reflect the taste of its 

 owner. Often very pretty stones are arranged inside the outer rocky 

 frame-work, and shells play no inconspicuous part when they can be 

 obtained. The men, too, take pleasure in saving any choice-shaped 

 colored piece of coral for this " fish garden," as they call it. 



The process of weighing now alone remains to be attended to. All 

 fish are reckoned as so many " quintals." The true quintal is a French 

 weight signifying 220 pounds ; how its signification became diverted 

 to that now employed it is hard to tell. All along the coast the term 

 means 110 pounds, or, as the merchants claim, 2 pounds extra on each 

 similar lot for full weight, or, since some of the fish may not be quite 

 dry, 112 pounds. It is usually weighed in lots of 2 quiutals each, or the 

 original weight of 220 pounds plus the 4 additional pounds for full 

 measure. Such a weight is called a draft. Strange as it may appear, 

 a draft of 224 pounds of fi>h just caught will very nearly equal a quin- 

 tal of 112 pounds of dry fish, the shrinkage being about one-half from 

 wet to dry. The fishermen know how many quintals their boats carry, 

 how much each partition holds, the quantity when loaded up to her 

 thwarts, and also to her gunwale. They know how many small fish will 

 make a quintal and how many large ones ; how many can be cleaned 

 and salted in an hour; and, strange to say, can tell as far off as they 

 can see whether the men in the boats are catching fish, and about how 

 many fish from the set and position of the boat she has already. I have 

 seen this told quite accurately time and again when the men were out 

 on the fishing-ground, about hauling anchor to return home, and I could 

 hardly perceive the boats themselves as they danced up and down upon 

 the waves at all, yet I am far from being near-sighted. The people here 

 have wonderful eyesight. They can distinguish accurately objects at 

 an immense distance, and judge correctly in many instances where ordi- 

 nary people, unaccustomed to being obliged to do so, would utterly fail 

 often of even seeing the object at all. 



Such, then, is the nature of the work that occupies the attention of 

 the people along the coast during the summer months. Though statis- 

 tics are dry and unsatisfactory at best, a few just here may be of inter- 

 est. In the whole province of Quebec, in 1878, about 300,000 quintals 

 of codfish were sent into the market, valued, in the aggregate, at nearly 

 $1,500,000. The northeastern division, that part from Manicouagan to 

 Blanc Sablon, furnished 100,500 quintals nearly ; but further, over 100,000 



