CHAPTER IX 



FISH 



The chief NEWFOUNDLANDERS are men of one idea, and that idea 



pursuit is [^ figjj^ Their lives are devoted to the sea and its produce, 

 cod-nshtng, , , . , . , . ,. , , , . r 



and their language mirrors their lives ; thus the chief streets 



in their chief towns are named Water Street, guides are 

 called pilots, and visits cruises. Conversely, land-words have 

 sea meanings, and ' a planter ', which meant in the eighteenth 

 century a fishing settler as opposed to a fishing visitor, meant 

 in the nineteenth century — when fishing visitors ceased to 

 come from England — a shipowner or skipper. The very 

 animals catch the infection, and dogs, cows, and bears eat fish. 

 Fish manures the fields. Fish, too, is the mainspring of the 

 history of Newfoundland, and split and dried fish, or what was 

 called in the fifteenth century stock-fish, has always been its 

 staple. And in Newfoundland fish means cod. 

 and cod- Newfoundland is as rich in coves, where cod-ships or boats 



curing; j^^y shelter, as it is poor in beaches where cod can be split 

 and dried, and their place is supplied by * stages ', or small 

 wooden piers on wooden piles and with wooden roofs. The 

 cod-fish are brought by boats to the piers, and are split 

 and temporarily cured under the roofs upon the piers ; as 

 may be seen on the fiords of Norway. The final process of 

 drying cod in the sun takes place in wooden erections called 

 flakes, which resemble the pergole of southern Europe, but on 

 whose roof instead of roses the hardly less odorous dead and 

 split cod basks. A few years before this period began, most 

 streets were flakes, beneath whose shadows young men and 

 women walked, 



Whispering murmurs of love at even. 

 Sir Richard Keats purged the north shore of St. John's 

 Harbour, but sixty years ago the south shore of St. John's 



