THE FISHERIES OF THE FAR EAST 



Yet another way, the most primitive of all, is by catch- 

 ing the fish with the hands a practice easily possible in 

 shallow streams and pools that are literally alive with 

 fish. The operator wades in hip-deep, and this at once 

 stirs up the fish that are on the bottom, which is just the 

 reverse of what the wader wants ; and, as a counterblast, 

 he slaps and splashes the water till they go down again 

 and hide in the mud ; whereupon, using his feet as feelers, 

 he coolly stoops and picks the fish out of it, filling the 

 bag that hangs on his shoulder in a very few minutes. 



There are few specially noteworthy features of the 

 Chinese salt-water fisheries. All the way down the coast 

 of the Yellow and China Seas, fleets of junks manned by 

 Coolies, Chinamen, and Lascars, are to be seen daily ; 

 they do not go far from land, partly because there is 

 little need, partly through centuries of habit of giving a 

 wide berth to Japanese and Malay pirates. 



The junk, without doubt the oldest-fashioned craft in 

 the world, is a not unpicturesque, flat-bottomed vessel with 

 one sail, similar to our lug-sail in shape, but ribbed all the 

 way down with parallel cane yards, which apparently can 

 be used for reefing. Some of the more go-ahead boat- 

 builders have during the past century attempted to im- 

 prove on the junk by the construction of the lorcha, a 

 boat made after the European model, though still rigged 

 like the older vessel. 



At and round Macao, on the Canton River, is a colony 

 of Portuguese, founded as far back as 1586, and similar 

 to that mentioned in Chapter X, in so far as many of its 



1 86 



