240 MAKITIME PISCICULTURE. 



each other like wood piled in a timber-yard. When 

 this stack of flesh has attained the required dimensions, 

 it is covered with a last layer of salt, and surmounted 

 by a weighted plank, which presses the rows closer, 

 and hinders their being penetrated by the air. In 

 about a fortnight, when the eels are saturated with 

 salt, the basto is said to be ripe, and the stack is taken 

 down, in order that the eels may be put into the dif- 

 ferent-sized barrels. 



This process is mostly resorted to during seasons of 

 great mortality. In fact, when, either from excess of 

 heat or of cold, the fish are seen rising to the surface 

 of the lagoon, they are immediately gathered in heaps, 

 and subjected to this operation, as the most expeditious 

 and the least expensive. 



The third mode of preparation is that of " desicca- 

 tion," which always begins with an operation termed 

 salamoja. The salting, which is to be followed by dry- 

 ing, is effected by immersion in the salamova that is, 

 the liquor exuded from the basto, and the baskets in 

 which mullets are salted. The fish are plunged into a 

 basin of this concentrated liquor, where the larger of 

 them remain from eight to twelve days, and the smaller 

 from four to six. An immersion of five or six hours is 

 sufficient for the aquadelles, which are then dried in the 

 sun. Thus dried, they become food for the people, who 

 prepare them in a very simple way : they first roast 

 them on the hearth-stone, and then finish the cooking 

 under the hot cinders. The mullets, soles, and dories 

 become so hard when dried, that they cannot be eaten 

 unless steeped for a whole night in soft lukewarm water. 



The best as well as the secondary eels may also be 

 treated in this way, but they must be thrown into the 

 basin alive ! for here, as at the spit, this species is sub- 

 jected to prolonged agony. "It is pitiful," observes 

 M. Coste, " to see them swallowing and rejecting the 

 boiling liquor, exhausting themselves in fruitless efforts 

 to escape, and writhing on the surface, as if suspended 

 over the gulf; the length of their suffering in which 



