IV 

 POLLACK AND PILCHARDS 



The Charm of Mevagissey The Realm of the Pilchard 

 Hard Work of the Fishermen Our Bag in 1894 A Burning 

 Village The Late Matthias Dunn Other Cornish Resorts 

 A Day's Pollack-fishing at Mevagissey Catching a Shark 

 A Lost Anchor and a Dead Calm Mixed Fishing nearer Shore 

 Catching Squid A Night's Congering Harold Frederic. 



TEN years ago there was not between Rye and 

 Penzance a quainter fishing village than Meva- 

 gissey. As I first knew it in 1894, it was a little 

 world of itself apart ; but ten years have brought 

 it new admirers, and a little of the primitive 

 simplicity is worn off by contact with these town- 

 mice. Yet even to-day, its isolation from the 

 railroad, with a great screen of hills intervening, 

 and the inadequacy of the picturesque little har- 

 bour to shelter anything much larger than a mac- 

 kerel-boat still cut it off by land and sea from any 

 concerted invasion by the crowd, so that this 

 little village, where folks are busy, either fishing 

 or supplying the wants of those who do, remains 

 an ideal spot, in which to rest a little while from 

 the hisses of " the long-necked geese of the world." 

 Coming to it that summer from the crowded scenes 

 of Bournemouth and Richmond, I was caught in 



87 



