194 FISH CULTURE. 



St. Kilda, one of the outermost of the Hebrides or 

 Western Isles of Scotland, and it is distant 136 miles. 

 There is no harbour, shelter, or business carried on 

 in St. Kilda, but it is advisable for ships going to 

 Eockall to take their bearings from it, otherwise the 

 rock is not easily found, being so small an object ; it 

 appears, when only a few miles from it, as a barrel 

 floating in that boundless sea. 



" The method pursued by the smacksmen in fishing 

 at Eockall was the same as is usually practised by 

 them in the North Sea during summer. The smacks 

 were stout welled ships, of from forty to fifty 

 tons register, with a crew of five men and four 

 apprentices. They used hand-lines only, with a 

 leaden sinker and two hooks on each man's line. 

 Any offal did for bait ; the best was a piece of the 

 back fin of a tusk, cut to resemble a small fish. This 

 bait being tough, it lasted for days on the hook. 

 After the fish were caught they were gutted, split, 

 and the heads cut off, and the backbone taken out as 

 far down as the vent, then salted and laid in layers 

 one above another until the space in the ship was 

 filled up. They returned to Westray, and delivered 

 them to the merchants, who have long been the pur- 

 chasers of their fish in that state, by the ton or 

 score. Som.e of the smacks were out twelve days from 



