i8o MODERN SEA FISHING 



CHAPTER VI 



FROM LAND AND PIER 



MANY centuries ago, before even what is occasionally termed 

 the ' dim and misty past,' some such scene as this took place : 

 A barbaric personage, carelessly wrapped in bear or deer skin, 

 might have been seen standing on a ledge of rocks, casting out 

 a line made of strips of untanned leather and weighted with a 

 stone. For hooks he had carved pieces of hard wood with 

 the points well sharpened, or perhaps fishbones, or the more 

 primitive but still not disused thorn or straight piece of wood 

 which was plunged into the bait and, when the line tightened, 

 came athwart the throat of the unfortunate fish. 



The ledge on which the man stood sloped gently into the 

 sea and was covered with mussels and seaweed. Each time 

 that he hauled in his line some projecting rocky edge or sharp- 

 shelled mussel would catch it. Three times were his thongs 

 of deer-skin cut. With each succeeding accident his face 

 flushed with anger and became red as the unkempt, straggling, 

 knotty beard which reached almost to his waist. 



Then an inspiration seized him. Quickly ascending the 

 cliff, he entered the forest, tore down a sapling ash, stripped it 

 of leaves and small branches, and to the lissom end of it 

 affixed his line. And now did the wild man cease to appeal to 

 strange gods, asking what sin he had committed that his lines 

 should be broken by the sharp-shelled mussels. For, regain- 

 ing his position, he cast his thong into the heaving sea, and, 



