CHAP, vi.] SCENE ON THE QUAY. 269 



hand there are countless basketfuls being carried from the 

 three or four hundred boats which are ranged on that parti- 

 cular side of the harbour ; and behind the troughs more 

 basketfuls are being carried to the packers. The very infants 

 are seen studying the " gentle art ;" and countless rows of the 

 breechless gamins de Wick are busy hooking up the silly 

 " poddlies." All around the atmosphere is humid ; the sailors 

 are dripping, the herring-gutters and packers are dripping, 

 and every thing and person appears wet and comfortless ; 

 and as you pace along you are nearly ankle-deep in brine. 

 Meantime the herrings are being shovelled about in the large 

 shallow troughs with immense wooden spades, and with very 

 little ceremony. Brawny men pour them from the baskets 

 on their shoulders into the aforesaid troughs, and other 

 brawny men dash them about with more wooden spades, and 

 then sprinkle salt over each new parcel as it is poured in, till 

 there is a sufficient quantity to warrant the commencement 

 of the important operation of gutting and packing. Men are 

 rushing wildly about with note-books, making mysterious- 

 looking entries. Carts are being filled with dripping nets 

 ready to hurry them off to the fields to dry. The screeching of 

 saws among billet-wood, and the plashing of the neighbouring 

 water-wheel, add to the great babel of sound that deafens 

 you on every side. Flying about, blood-bespattered and 

 hideously picturesque, we observe the gutters ; and on all 

 hands we may note thousands of herring-barrels, and piles of 

 billet-wood ready to convert into staves. At first sight every 

 person looks mad some appear so from their costume, others 

 from their manner and the confusion seems inextricable ; but 

 there is method in their madness, and even out of the chaos of 

 Wick harbour comes regularity, as I have endeavoured to show. 

 So soon as a sufficient quantity of fish has been brought 

 from the boats and emptied into the gutting-troughs, another 

 of the great scenes commences viz. the process of eviscera- 



