202 SEA FISHERIES 



are balangay and sampans." Along the hot coasts, 

 where fish quickly putrefies, the sea-board cecumene is 

 commercial. Sardine Bay, " Ancon de las Sardinas," on 

 the coast of Ecuador, which is swarming with fish owing 

 to the cool waters of the Humboldt current, is unex- 

 ploited. The coast waters of Venezuela are rich in edible 

 species, but there are no fisheries there. On the other 

 hand, certain natives of Celebes, the Orang-Badjo, are 

 unfitted for any employment other than fishing, and pass 

 their entire lives in their boats. These " sea-gipsies," 

 living on board their primitive praus, are continually 

 wandering along the bays and promontories. The 

 fishers of the Philippines are a little higher in the 

 social scale ; during the north-eastern monsoon they 

 work the south-western coast, and change their ground 

 when the wind changes. 



Let us go further up the ladder. The inhabitants of 

 such islands as Groix, Sein, the Lofodens, the Orkneys, 

 and the Shetlands have no occupation but fishery. For 

 three centuries, from 1500 to 1825, Newfoundland re- 

 mained unexplored ; all the life of the island was on the 

 coast. To-day one quarter of the islanders (52,500 out 

 of 202,000) are occupied in catching and salting cod, and 

 the interests of most of the rest depend indirectly upon 

 the fisheries. In Nova Scotia the land is not cultivated ; 

 in Norway the face of the mountainous coast is peopled 

 with fishers. There, as in Newfoundland, the social 

 organism is restricted to the professional group. Man is 

 scarce and the fishing-grounds enormous, so that there is 

 no coalescence of social groups. There are no villages : 

 each fisherman inhabits an isolated house ; collectivity 

 does not extend beyond the family. The solitary fishing 

 vessel corresponds with the solitary house, the Nor- 

 wegian gaard, painted with bright, crude colours yellow, 



