58 FISHING INDUSTRY IN FRANCE. [CHAP. n. 



older pieces of wood or leather, sails mended here and there, 

 till it is difficult to distinguish the original portion from those 

 that have been added to it ; nets torn and darned till they are 

 scarce able to hold a fish ; and yet that boat and that crippled 

 machinery are the stock in trade of perhaps two or three 

 generations of a family, and the concern may have been 

 founded half a century ago by the grandfather, who now sees 

 around him a legion of hungry gamins that it would take a 

 fleet of boats to keep in food and raiment. The moment the 

 tide flows back, the foreshore is at once overrun with an 

 army of hungry people, who are eager to clutch whatever 

 fishy debris the receding water may have left ; the little pools 

 are eagerly, nay hungrily, explored, and their contents grabbed 

 with an anxiety that pertains only to poverty. At some places 

 of the coast, however, a happier life is dawning on the people 

 the discovery of pisciculture has led to a traffic in oysters 

 that, as I will by and by show, is surprising ; indeed a new 

 life has in consequence dawned on some districts, and where 

 at one time there was poverty arid its attendant squalor, there 

 is now wealth and its handmaid prosperity. 



On some parts of the French coasts, and it is proper to 

 mention this, the fishery is not of importance, although the 

 fish are plentiful enough. At Cancale, for instance, the fisher- 

 men have imposed on themselves the restriction of only fishing 

 twice a week. In Brittany, at some of the fishing places, the 

 people seem very poor and miserable, and their boats look 

 to be almost valueless, reminding one of the state of matters 

 at Fittie in the outskirts of Aberdeen. At the isle of Groix, 

 however, there is to be found a tolerably well-off maritime 

 and fishing community ; at this place, where the men take to 

 the sea at an early age, there are about one hundred and 

 thirty fishing boats of from twenty to thirty tons each, of which 

 the people i.e. the practical fishermen are themselves the 

 owners. At the Sands of Olomic there is a most extensive sar- 



