THE OCEAN AS A SOURCE OF FOOD SUPPLY 193 



arid amiability of your splendid fish ! Everywhere I 

 have sailed or steamed around the shores of that 

 noble country, in or out of harbour, the story is the 

 same, the most marvellous assortment of fish easy to 

 be caught and of most delicious savour. But although 

 a meal of fresh fish is fairly easy to obtain in the 

 coast towns, I consider that Australia's fisheries are 

 unaccountably neglected, even when it is remembered 

 how plentiful, good, and cheap are all kinds of other 

 food. What fishing there is has fallen mostly into 

 the hands of industrious foreigners, as the lucrative 

 business of market gardening is almost entirely carried 

 on by the Chinese. Our kindred in Australia do not 

 care to engage in any work that requires long and 

 irregular hours and also precarious gains, or if driven 

 by any pressure of circumstances to engage in such 

 employment, they always relinquish it as soon as 

 possible. So the fisheries are not at all exploited 

 as they should be. Nature has been exceedingly 

 kind to Australia in many ways, but in none more 

 so, I think, than in the matter of food to be obtained 

 from the sea. I can only say that here, as in other 

 places I have noted, when the day comes that food 

 is scanty on shore there will always be found an 

 inexhaustible store awaiting the hungry ones, in 

 the sea. 



In one direction, however, the ocean's wealth is 

 exploited on a portion of the Australian coast, fiercely 

 and incessantly and by the aid of the very latest 

 scientific appliances, that is, in the pearl fisheries of 

 Western and Northern Australia. There is no lack 

 of energy here, and no lack of reward either for the 

 industrious, for although this pearl fishery cannot vie 



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