The Journal of a Sporting Nomad 



vacuum set up in cooling. You can hear them 

 popping all around you by the dozen, yet the 

 eagle-eye of John Chinaman sees a can the top 

 of which remains convex instead of concave ; 

 this is put in the retort again until it performs its 

 part satisfactorily. After the cans have cooled 

 they are taken to a man in a long shed, who puts 

 on the labels I was going to say automatically, 

 for he was almost more than human, the rate 

 at which he pasted and stuck on the printed 

 matter being extraordinary. He was surrounded 

 by stacks of unlabelled cans. The pile by his side 

 grew so rapidly that I think he astonished me 

 by his activity more than all the rest of the 

 processes put together, for he pasted labels at 

 the rate of seventeen a minute, whilst I, unknown 

 to him, timed him by my watch. There only 

 remains to put the cans into cases for the opera- 

 tion to be complete. At Snug Harbour there lay 

 a full-rigged sailing ship, which at the end of the 

 short season was laden full up with the result of 

 the catch. In this instance the cargo consisted 

 of 36,500 cases ; there were four dozen cans in 

 a case, and each can contained one pound of 

 salmon, or, roughly speaking, 1,752,000 pounds 

 of fish altogether. This was the output of one 

 cannery only ; there were plenty more giving 

 similar results. I could not help wondering if 

 the fecundity of these salmon, enormous as it is, 

 was sufficient to withstand this gigantic strain. 



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