BLACKS AS FISHERMEN 181 



ledge of the cruel little barb that the resourceful white 

 fisherman finds essential to sport, and had neither neat 

 tackle, nor reels, nor creels; though they were denied 

 the solace of tobacco, and every other accessory, they 

 were adepts at fishing. They had at command a stock 

 of accumulated lore so graphically transmitted that 

 the babe and suckling must have seemed to acquire 

 it almost intuitively. They knew much of the habits 

 of fish. Their methods of laying under tribute the 

 harvest of the sea were so varied and unconventional 

 that when one expedient failed, others, equally free 

 from the ethics of sport, were available at the shortest 

 notice. Fishing was not a pastime, but a serious 

 occupation in which nearly everyone was proficient. 



Times are changing; but still the mouths of smaller 

 creeks are sometimes dammed, save for certain sluices 

 and by- washes where puzzling pockets are set. Weirs 

 formed by stakes driven into the sand and interwoven 

 with twigs guide incoming fish into ingenious traps, 

 whence they are scooped up in dilly-bags. Occasionally 

 the whole camp, dogs and piccaninnies included, take 

 part in a raid upon the sea. Men in deeper water, 

 women and boys and girls forming wings at right angles 

 to the beach, enclose a prescribed area in the ever- 

 shifting, mobile fence. Certain of the men have huge 

 dilly-bags made of strips of lawyer-cane, and shaped 

 like a ninepin with a funnel for a head. The tactics of 

 the party combine to drive the fish towards the silent 

 men having charge of the dilly-bags, who manipulate 

 what certainly has the appearance of being a very 

 awkward utensil in the water with great skill and alert- 

 ness. Hurried to frenzy by the shouting and splashing 

 of the crowd, and the flurrying of the surface with 

 bushes, the fish dart hither and thither until most of 

 them have found their way into the bags, at the only 



