ABUNDANCE OF CODFISH. 27 



During these spurts, the day's work just begins, in fact, after 

 the hard labor of rowing the heavy boats out, perhaps two miles, 

 to the trap, hauling, mending the net, loading and unloading the 

 fish — always a hard task and sometimes a very difficult one on 

 account of the heavy sea — has been repeated three or four times ; 

 for the number of fish is so great that the stage becomes over- 

 loaded by night, and the boat crews then have to turn to and 

 help take care of the catch and clear the stage for the next 

 day's operations. Till long after midnight the work goes mer- 

 rily on in the huts or shelters over the stages, for the hard work 

 then means no starvation next winter in the Newfoundland 

 homes, and the fish are split, cleaned, headed, salted and packed 

 with incredible rapidity. 



The tired crews get an hour or two of sleep just as they are ; 

 then, after a pot of black tea and a handful of bread, start out 

 to begin the next day's work, resting and eating during the hour 

 between the trips, and then going out again, and repeating the 

 some monotonous round over and over till we wondered how 

 they lived through it, and what was to be done with all the fish. 

 When there is a good breeze the boats are rigged and a large 

 part of the weary labor of rowing is escaped. How tired the 

 crews would look as the big twenty-four feet boats went dashing 

 by our vessel in the fog and rain, on the outward trip, and how 

 happy, though if possible more tired, as they came back three 

 or four hours later, loaded to the gunwale with cod, and think- 

 ing, perhaps, of the bags full that they had left buoyed near the 

 trap because the boat would not carry the whole catch. It is a 

 hard life, and no wonder the men are not much more than ani- 

 mals ; but they work with dogged persistence, for in a little 

 more than two months enough must be earned to support their 

 families for the year. When the " spurt " ends the crews get a 

 much needed rest, and attend to getting a supply of salt ashore 

 from the salt vessel from Cadiz, Spain, one of which we found 

 lying in nearly every fishing harbor, serving as a storehouse for 

 that article so necessary to the fishermen. 



As to the magnitude of the industry, it is estimated that there 

 are about 3,000 vessels and 20,000 men employed in it during 



