THE CHATEAU-LIN FISHERIES. 47 



this arrangement, the willow rod would be broken by the 

 weight and struggles of the fish. 



Several thousand salmon are caught in a single day's 

 fishing. A traveller, who was present on one occasion, 

 asserts that he saw a salmon make a leap of nearly thirty 

 feet from the point where the water began to foam up to 

 the summit of the fall ! 



The fisheries of Chateaulin have been graphically de- 

 scribed by Deslandes. Chateaulin is situated in Low r er 

 Brittany. 



The fishing-station consists, he says, of a double row 

 of closely-planted poles, which cross the river from bank 

 to bank, and being sunk to an equal depth, afford a kind 

 of practicable causeway. To the left, down the river, is 

 a kind of grated reservoir, measuring fifteen feet square, 

 and so constructed that the river current flows into it 

 of its own impetus. In the midst of this reservoir, and 

 almost on a level with the water, may be seen an aper- 

 ture of eighteen to twenty inches in diameter, surrounded 

 by blades of tin slightly bent, which are shaped like 

 isosceles triangles, and open and shut easily. As a whole, 

 they are not unlike the mouths of those mouse-traps made 

 of iron wire. The salmon, guided by the current to- 

 wards the reservoir, enters it without difficulty by push- 

 ing aside the tin plates it meets on its way, and whose 

 bases are set round the hole. These plates, when drawn 

 in together, form a cone, but on opening out assume the 

 shape of a cylinder. On emerging from the reservoir the 

 salmon enters a basin, from which it is drawn by the 

 fishermen in a net attached for this purpose to the ex- 

 tremity of a pole. Their skill is so great that they never 



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