CHAP, ii.] THE GREATEST FISHERS IN THE WORLD. 43 



thoroughly indicative of their peculiar way of doing business, 

 which is always the same, whether the scene be laid in ancient 

 Holland or in modern Billingsgate. Next comes a picture of 

 the various buyers of the commodity on their way home, of 

 course by the side of a canal, with their purchases of deep- 

 sea, shore, state, and red herrings. The next scene of the 

 series is a smoking-house, partially obscured by wreaths of 

 smoke, where the herrings are being red-ed ; and the series is 

 appropriately wound up with a tableau representing the im- 

 portant process of repairing the damaged nets the whole con- 

 veying a really graphic, although not very artistic, delineation 

 of this highly characteristic Dutch industry. A few plates 

 illustrative of the whale-fisheries of Holland are appended to 

 the series I have been describing for whale-fishing in the 

 seas of Greenland was also in those days one of the industries 

 of the hardworking Dutch. 



The old saying that Amsterdam was built on herring bones 

 frequently used to symbolise the fishing power of Holland. 

 It is thought that the industry of the Dutch people was first 

 drawn to the value of the sea fisheries by the settlement of 

 some Scottish fishermen in their country. I cannot vouch for 

 the truth of this statement as to the Scottish emigration, but 

 I believe it was a Fleming who first discovered the virtues of 

 pickled herrings, and it is also known that the capture of the 

 herring was a chief industry on the sea-board of all the Low 

 Countries, and it is likewise instructive to learn that at a time 

 when our own fisheries were very much undeveloped the 

 Dutch people found our seas to be a mine of gold, so pro- 

 ductive were they in fish, and so famous did the Dutch cure 

 of herrings become. We are not called on, however, to credit 

 all the stories of miraculous draughts taken, and store of 

 wealth garnered up, by the plodding Hollanders. We must 

 bear in mind that when the Dutch began to fish the seas as 

 a field of industry were nearly virgin, and that that people 



