SOCIAL LIFE ON THE COAST 201 



" French City," which, in 1536, first of all French 

 ports, fitted out a vessel named the Catherine for the 

 Newfoundland banks, and later on sent out three-masted 

 whaling vessels. In the course of the sixteenth and 

 seventeenth centuries numbers of Newfoundlanders sailed 

 from Havre every spring ; then the commercial extension 

 of the port drove them to Fecamp, and the whaling 

 fishery was abandoned. To-day Havre is exclusively a 

 commercial port. Except in winter, when it exports 

 herring, the products of the local fishery are consumed 

 by the city. While the new docks were being built on 

 the ancient site of Leure, the fishing boats took refuge in 

 the ancient Crique de Grace, now converted into a dock ; 

 and since the construction of the two great breakwaters 

 the small fishers of Chef de Caux, now Sainte-Adresse, 

 have landed their fish in the outer harbour. 



II 



It would seem that there is an antagonism between the 

 commercial port, which is a port of circulation, and a 

 fishing port, which is a headquarters port ; that is a conse- 

 quence of the cecumene. In considering the cecumene 

 more closely in the course of this work, I shall often have 

 occasion to make the same remark. 



The men of Roscoff do little fishing ; they are occupied 

 principally in transporting onions, artichokes, and pota- 

 toes of their own cultivation to England. In the island 

 of Java and in parts of Borneo and Sumatra, writes 

 M. Vallaux, " the towns and villages are conspicuously 

 gathered at the mouths of the rivers which provide them 

 with convenient harbours. The towns are obviously 

 before all centres of trade, but the villages are inhabited 

 by fishermen, and this method of grouping has lent to 

 the Malay or Chinese vessels their generic names : they 



