246 PREPARATIONS FOR " THE FISHING." [CHAV. vi. 



closed lochs of the Western Highlands have each a fishery ; 

 while at some of the more important fishing-stations there are 

 very large fleets assembled as at Wick, Dunbar, Ardrishaig, 

 Stornoway, Peterhead, and Anstmther. The chief curers have 

 places of business in these towns, where they keep a large 

 store of curing materials and a competent staff of coopers and 

 others to aid them in their business. Such boats as do not 

 carry on a local fishery proceed from the smaller fishing-villages 

 to one or other of the centres of the herring trade. In fact, 

 wherever an enterprising curer sets up his stand, there the 

 boats will gather round him ; and beside him will collect a 

 mob of all kinds of miscellaneous people dealers in salt, sellers 

 of barrel-staves, vendors of " cutch," Prussian herring-buyers, 

 comely girls from the inland districts to gut, and men from the 

 Highlands anxious to officiate as "hired hands." Itinerant 

 ministers and revivalists also come on the scene and preach 

 occasional sermons to the hundreds of devout Scotch people 

 who are assembled ; and thus arises many a prosperous little 

 town, or at least towns that might be prosperous were the 

 finny treasures of the sea always plentiful. As the chief her- 

 ing season comes on a kind of madness seizes on all engaged, 

 ever so remotely, in the trade ; as for those more immediately 

 concerned, they seem to go completely " daft," especially the 

 younger hands. The old men, too, come outside to view the 

 annual preparations, and talk, with revived enthusiasm, to 

 their sons and grandsons about what they did twenty years 

 agone ; the young men spread out the shoulder-of-mutton sails 

 of their boats to view and repair defects ; and the wives and 

 sweethearts, by patching and darning, contrive to make old 

 nets "look amaist as weel as new ;" boilers bubble with the 

 brown catechu, locally called " cutch," which is used as a 

 preservative for the nets and sails ; while all along the coasts 

 old boats are being cobbled up and new ones are being built 

 and launched. 



