FISH AND FISHERMEN 



foreigners, and " odd hands." In a new country one does 

 not expect to see a fishing race, sprung from untold 

 generations of sea-going folk, such as Britain, France or 

 Denmark can show ; and but for the immigration of 

 European fishing families, one might seek in vain for 

 anything like a hereditary fleet. But when English and 

 French, Swedes and Portuguese settled along the east 

 coast of North America in the sixteenth and seventeenth 

 centuries, attracted by the tales of their sailors as to the 

 prevalence of the cod, they went a long way towards 

 endowing the new country with such a fleet as they had 

 been accustomed to see at home. On Cape Cod, for 

 instance, there is, to this day, a complete colony of 

 Portuguese fishermen who still retain their own language 

 and customs. All these different settlers, then, with 

 Lascars, Coolies, and an occasional Chinaman, make up 

 the " foreigners " ; while the " odd hands " are landsmen 

 labourers, negroes, etc., or their descendants, who have 

 drifted towards the coast in search of work, and are 

 looked upon with a certain amount of contempt by the 

 more blue-blooded fisher-folk. 



Such of these men as are not engaged on the Banks 

 fishery, may be found during March and April fishing 

 for mackerel ; in the late autumn and winter for herring ; 

 then, till mackerel-fishing begins again, for mullet. Their 

 ground may be said to lie anywhere between the coast 

 and a line parallel to it, fifty miles distant ; and, length- 

 wise, between the Gulf of Mexico and the Bay of Fundy. 

 Further north they dare not go except for mackerel the 

 only fish which they are allowed to take from British 



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