CHAPTER VI 

 THE FISHING NATIONS AND THE GREAT FISHERIES 



I. Scotland and England Germany Denmark, Holland and 

 Belgium Norway, Spain, and Portugal Italy and Russia 

 Canada and Japan France. II. The French cod fisheries 

 Steam-trawling off Newfoundland. III. The sardine fishery 

 of Brittany ; fishermen, bait-sellers, manufacturers. IV. The 

 herring fishery ; the mackerel fishery ; the tunny fishery. 



THE progress of the French ocean fisheries is slow ; 

 for one step taken by the French the English take fifty 

 and the Germans a hundred. All the nations of Northern 

 Europe are strenuous exploiters of the sea. Norway, 

 poor and infertile, has been forced from remotest 

 antiquity to replace the plough by the net ; and fishing 

 has with her become the one great national industry. 

 The miners of Wales and the Ruhr, the English cord- 

 makers, and the German metallurgists are the real 

 makers of Hull, Grimsby, and Geestmunde ; and who 

 knows but the neighbourhood of the coal-mines of 

 Pas-de-Calais and Flanders has contributed to make 

 the prosperity of Boulogne ? The activity of the fisheries 

 seems to be bound up with the general industrial activity 

 of the country. For instance, although the Spaniards, 

 who are not an industrial people, eat largely of cod, 

 they are obliged to import it, and confine themselves 

 to the simple and easy capture of sardines. 



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