CHAPTER III 

 THE OLDEST OF FISHERMEN 



•■ O born beneath the Fishes' sign, 

 Of constellations happiest! 



— Lowell. 



ONG before St. Peter walked on the Lake of 

 Tiberias, long before he and his associates made 

 a miraculous draught of fishes, long before the 

 days of Simon and Andrew and Jonah and 

 Noah, lived the first of all fishermen. He was old when 

 time was young, and he lived before the reign of the first 

 Mikado, and that is more than twenty-five centuries ago. 



There were gods in those days and demigods and block- 

 heads and Japanese, and the first fisherman was all of these. 

 His name was Ebisu (pronounced Aybees, the u being just 

 as nearly silent as you can make it, just like the final e in the 

 French word quelque). The father of Ebisu was a demigod 

 named Ganamuchi, and he lived by the mighty sea, while 

 outside was a solitary island with its mountain top hidden 

 in the mists. Maybe this island was Oshima, in which case 

 I could point you the very spot where Ebisu was born. 



But Ebisu was not only a demigod, at least a quarter god, 

 but he was a blockhead. A barbarian perhaps is a more 

 exact statement, for the name Ebisu indicates an outsider, 

 and it is spelled in Chinese ideographs by a sign of a bow 

 and arrow, so blockhead may have meant woodsman or one 

 possessing the craft of outdoor things. 



In any event, Ebisu was banished to Oshima or some 

 other mist-covered island, that he might die of starvation. 

 He went fishing instead, and wandered barefoot all day long 



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