CHAP, ii.] THE EEL-BREEDERS OF COMACCHIO. 45 



sixteen hundred herring busses fished industriously in British 

 waters, while eight hundred larger vessels prosecuted the cod 

 and whale fisheries at remote distances. In the year 1603 

 we are informed that the Dutch sold herrings to the amount 

 of 4,759,000, besides what they themselves consumed. We 

 are also told that in 1618 they had twelve thousand vessels 

 engaged in this branch of the fishery, and that these ships 

 employed about two hundred thousand men. It must have 

 been a splendid sight, on every 24th of June, to witness the 

 departure of the great fleet from the Texel ; and as most of 

 the Dutch people were more or less interested in the prosper- 

 ity of the fishery, either as labourers or employers of labour, 

 there would be no lack of spectators on these occasions. The 

 Wick herring drave of twelve hundred boats is, as I will by 

 and by endeavour to show, an industrial sight of no common 

 kind, but it must give way before the picturesque fleet of 

 Holland, as it sailed away from the Texel about three hundred 

 years ago. 



Long before the organisation of the Dutch fisheries there 

 existed a quaint colony of Italian fisher people on the 

 borders of a more poetic water than the Zuyder Zee. I allude 

 to the eel-breeders of Comacchio on the Adriatic. This par- 

 ticular fishing industry is of very considerable antiquity, as 

 we have well-authenticated statistics of its produce, extending 

 back over three centuries. The lagoons of Comacchio afford a 

 curious example of what may be done by design and labour. 

 This place was at one time a great unproductive swamp, 

 about one hundred and forty miles in circumference, accessible 

 to the waves of the sea, where eels, leeches, and the other in- 

 habitants of such watery regions, sported about unmolested by 

 the hand of man ; and its inhabitants the descendants of 

 those who first populated its various islands isolated from 

 the surrounding civilisation, and devoid of ambition, have 

 long been contented with their obscure lot, and have even 



