348 THE HISTORY OF DUTCH SEA FISHERIES. 



advantage of the early market, fast-sailing vessels, called 

 " ventjagers " or " sale-hunters," used to accompany the 

 herring-fleet, buy up the first herring caught and cured, and 

 carry it home with the utmost speed, leaving the busses to 

 fish on at leisure. This trade, if not attended to, might of 

 course have afforded ample facilities to elude the prohibi- 

 tion against selling herring elsewhere than in the Dutch 

 emporiums, and " sale-hunting " was therefore, soon after 

 the fishing laws before quoted came into vigour, an object 

 of the legislator's peculiar supervision and solicitude. 



From the fact that no particular legislation on the subject 

 existed before, it appears that the custom of sale-hunters 

 following the busses did not come into use before the 

 beginning of the seventeenth century. " Ventjagers " are 

 indeed mentioned as early as the year 1556, but from a 

 placard of January nth of that year * it is evident that 

 at that time they did not go beyond the rivers' mouths, and 

 the wording of the first law relative to sale-hunting at sea, 

 (dated 1604), plainly shows the practice to have been then 

 very recently adopted. The first enactments on the subject 

 are chiefly calculated to prevent the laws on catching, 

 curing, landing, and branding herring to be eluded by 



rejoicing. Even to the present time, when herring brought home by 

 the first "hunter" is prosaically sent inland by rail, some of the 

 traditional festivities are kept up. Dealers in fish sport bunting from 

 their house-tops ; " New Herring " is cried through every city, and an 

 old-fashioned one-horse chaise on immense wheels, decked with the 

 national colours, may be seen to race to the King's palace at the 

 Hague, in order to supply the royal table with the very first barrel of 

 herring. The whole of this pageantry , however, is now little more than 

 a remembrance of the time when " New Herring " actually meant an 

 influx of millions into the country, and a shower of gold upon 

 thousands of its inhabitants. 



* Vierde MemoriaalboeK's Hofs van Hollant, van Mr. J. van 

 Dam, fol. 37 ; Vijfde, ibid. fol. 201. 



