156 RAMBLES OF A NATURALIST. 



of view.* The fishermen, who pursue the tunny to 

 a distance of from sixty to ninety miles off the shore, 

 use long handlines baited with a piece of canvas 

 roughly painted so as to resemble a sardine. It 

 requires all the proverbial intrepidity of the Basque 

 sailor to venture out to such great distances in small 

 undecked boats, and that upon a sea which is sur- 

 rounded on every side by this formidable iron-bound 

 coast, which is certain destruction to every ship that 

 strikes upon it; but when the fishing is good the 

 profits are very considerable. I have seen one of 

 these boats return to Guettary loaded with more than 

 eighty tunnies, weighing on an average more than 

 thirty pounds each. In their cruise of two days, the 

 crew, consisting of five men and a boy, had gained 

 more than 1,000 francs. The Newfoundland trade 

 together with the Tunny and Sardine fisheries (the 

 latter of which is more especially practised by the 

 fishermen of the Socoa) is quite sufficient to diffuse 

 plenty, and even riches, among the population of this 

 coast. My landlord at Guettary was a striking 

 instance of what may be done here by order and 

 economy. At the age of twenty, Cazavan was a 

 common sailor, poor, and with no prospect of ad- 

 vancement. He thgn married a woman as poor as 

 himself, and immediately afterwards sailed for New- 



* This difference in the length of the fins joined to several 

 other characteristics has led to the separation into two distinct 

 genera of these two fishes, which we have designated in the text by 

 their ordinary appellation. That which is caught in the Mediter- 

 ranean is the only true Tunny, the Thynnus Mediterraneus of 

 naturalists. The other is the Orcynus da longa. 



