238 MARITIME PISCICULTURE. 



heat and sometimes excessive cold, to the effects of 

 which the lagoon is exposed owing to its being only a 

 few feet deep. Such a calamity occurred in 1825, 

 when, in order to escape such a plague as decimated 

 them in 1671, the colony was obliged to dig immense 

 trenches, in which they buried these masses of flesh, 

 and burned them with quicklime. 



The disposal of such immense masses of a perishable 

 species of food is effected by selling the fish fresh, or 

 prepared for the market. The preparation is of three 

 kinds, carried on simultaneously in the same workshops, 

 but each forming a special department of labour, arid 

 requiring a special class, as it were, of manipulations. 

 The first method is termed by M. Coste that of " cook- 

 ing and acetic salting." 



The kitchen, the active centre of the manufacture, is 

 an immense place, with several chimneys like those 

 met with in buildings of the middle ages, and in which 

 were burnt trunks of trees. In front of the chimneys 

 are six or seven spits, like the cross-bars of a window, 

 and below these is a little canal for receiving the oil, 

 exuding from the roasted eels, which is preserved for 

 other processes. The poor eels are treated with the 

 most dexterous manipulation. A workman, seated be- 

 fore a block, with a hatchet in his hand, seizes them 

 one by one in a basket on his left, and having with 

 astonishing quickness chopped off the head and tail, 

 which are the perquisites of the poor, he makes of the 

 body one or two pieces of equal size, which he throws 

 into an empty basket on his right. 



Each of these pieces receives a slight trimming, in 

 order to facilitate the operations of other workmen, 

 who, with equal celerity, transfer them to the spits. 

 Only the larger eels are thus decapitated and truncated, 

 their size rendering it difficult to spit them living ; but 

 the smaller are devoted to this torture after one or two 

 trimmings, to facilitate their being entwined round the 

 spits. This mode of cooking eels on the spit, either 



