CHAP, vii.] WANT OF HARBOURS IN SCOTLAND. 321 



business : the very time that these animals come together to 

 perpetuate their species is the time chosen by man to kill 

 them. Of course if they are to be used as food, they must 

 be killed at some time, and the proper time to capture them 

 forms one of those fishing mysteries which we have not as 

 yet been able to solve. We protect the salmon with many 

 laws at the most interesting time of its life, and why we 

 should not be able to devise a close-time for the cod, tur- 

 bot, haddock, and sole of particular coasts for each portion 

 of the coast has its particular season is what I cannot under- 

 stand, and can only account for the anomaly on the ground of 

 salmon being private property. 



The labour of the Scottish fishermen is greatly augmented 

 by the want of good harbours for their boats. Time and op- 

 portunity serving, the men of the fisher class are really in- 

 dustrious, and this want of proper harbourage is a hardship 

 to them. It is curious to notice the little quarry-holes 

 that on some parts of the Moray Firth serve as a refuge for 

 the boats. There is the harbour of Whitehills, for instance : 

 it could not be of any possible use in the event of a stiff gale 

 arising, for in my opinion the boats would never get into it, 

 but would be dashed to pieces on the neighbouring rocks. I 

 have witnessed one or two storms on the north-east coast of 

 Scotland, and shall never forget the scenes of misery these 

 tumults of the great deep occasioned. Even lately (October 

 1864) there was a storm raging along these coasts that left 

 most impressive death-marks at nearly all the fishing places 

 on the Moray Firth. I was not an eye-witness of this last 

 gale, but I have gathered from various sources, oral and writ- 

 ten, one or two passages descriptive of its violence and the 

 loss of life it occasioned. 



At Portessie, one of the Moray Firth villages, a boat called 

 the Shamrock, containing a crew of nine men, was numbered 

 among the lost. It had sailed on a Wednesday morning in 



Y 



