714 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



cabins are relatively quite comfortable, and the food, fresh fish and liver, 

 with coffee, is comparatively good. Several crews are often established 

 in the same cabin. The air is not always very pure, but fishermen are 

 not hard to please. 



The trawls as well as the nets are thrown over board in the afternoon ; 

 a\\ the apparatus at one fishery being set simultaneously to prevent 

 it from becoming tangled, though sometimes this is unavoidable, owing 

 to the tempests and tides. 



The next day, at dawn, if the bad weather does not make it impossi- 

 ble, all go back again, at a given signal, to raise the apparatus. The 

 trawl-fishermen take the fish off the hooks at once, but those having 

 nets wait to empty and clean them until they have retrained the land, 

 except in Sondmore, where the nets are immediately dropped again in 

 the water. The fish are never killed on the spot, but as soon as the en- 

 gines are taken from the water the fishermen return to the land and 

 the fish are dressed, the catcher reserving for his own use the liver and 

 roe. The cod is sold to the boats of speculators, of which there are 

 always several in each fishery, and which transform it into Mipjisck, or 

 salt fish {morue plate), or else the fishermen cure them on their own ac- 

 count, to make stockfish or dried fish {niorue en baton). The entrails are 

 thrown away, and the heads are sold to fish-guano manufacturers, or 

 reserved as food for the domestic animals. The tongues and bladders 

 are sometimes taken out and salted for sale. The fish cleaned and hung 

 up, the fishermen arrange their implements for a new cast, proceed to> 

 the proper point and throw over the trawls and nets. Their day's work 

 is then finished. 



The hand-line fisherman remains on the water all day; in the evening 

 he dresses his fish and sells it, generally fresh, to the salters. 



This work is, unfortunately, too frequently interrupted ; sometimes 

 the storm hinders the fisherman from putting his implements in the 

 water, and his time is then lost ; and sometimes during several days it 

 may prevent him from raising them, and expose him to the danger of 

 losing at the same time his apparatus and catch of fish. The misfor- 

 tunes, however, sometimes become frightful, and hundreds of lives be- 

 come destroyed when one of those sudden storms comes up which seem 

 to be the lot of such regions. Those who get off with the loss of their 

 machinery esteem themselves happy if, after having been tossed about 

 on the deep and undergoing incredible fatigue, they arrive finally on land 

 alive, but famished and paralyzed with cold. It is not rare that in such a 

 storm boats have been thrown from one coast to the other of the Vestf- 

 jord. Cases ore mentioned where inhabitants of Sondmore have been 

 driven in this way to Scotland. The annals of the country speak of many 

 winters when a multitude of fishermen have lost their lives. To mention 

 one year only out of each of the last three centuries: in 1G34, the year 

 when the island of Nordstrand, in Slesvig, disapi)eared, and when the 

 church of Rost was blown over by the tempest ; in 1743, when Sond- 



