194 DIVISION I. VERTEBRAL ANIMALS.—CLASS IV. PISCES. 
seas from Ireland to Gibraltar, but appears most abundantly on the eastern 
side of the American Continent, and among its numerous islands from 40° 
up to 66° north latitude, where it may be said to hold dominion from the 
outer edge of the great banks of Newfoundland, which are more than three 
hundred miles from land, to the verge of every creek and cove of the bound- 
To support such a mass of living beines, the ocean sends forth 
5 
ing coast. 
its periodical masses of other living beings. At one season, the Cod is ac- 
companied by countless myriads of the Capelin (Sudmo «lreticus) , and, at 
another, by equal hosts of a molluscous animal, the Cuttle-fish (Sepia 
loligo), called by the fishermen, Squid. The three animals are migratory ; 
and man, who stations himself on the shore for their combined destruction, 
conducts his movements according to their migrations, capturing millions 
upon millions of capelins and squids to serve as a bait for the capture of 
millions of cods. In the United Kingdom alone, this fish, in the catching, 
the curing, and sale, supplies employment, food, and profit to: thousands of 
the human race; but the banks of Newfoundland are the chicf scene of its 
destruction. As soon as spring appears, England sends forth two thousand 
ships, with thirty thousand men, across the Atlantic, towards those teeming 
shallows; France about one half the number; and the Americans as many 
as both together. On an average, each vessel is reckoned to eatch from 
thirty thousand to forty thousand fishes; and we may form some idea of the 
voracity, as well as of the numbers, of the cod, when we hear that, in the 
course of a single day, a good fisherman is able to haul up four hundred, 
one after another, with his line, which is no easy task, considering that a 
single cod often attains a length of from two to three feet, and a weight of 
from twenty to sixty pounds. On the Grand Banks, I have frequently been 
obliged to pause for breath when drawing a huge specimen of forty or fifty 
pounds. 
The waters along our coasts furnish the markets abundantly with fresh 
cod at all seasons of the year; but the salted and dried fish, of which there 
is such an immense consumption throughout the country, are caught chiefly 
on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. The. vessels employed by Ameri- 
cans in this business are strongly built sea-boats, generally of from fifty to 
seventy tons burthen; the French and English, for obvious reasons, employ 
a much larger class. I cannot, perhaps, convey a clearer idea of the method 
of prosecuting this valuable industry on the Banks, than by giving a brief 
descriptlon of an actual voyage thither, and of the proceedings which are 
In 1834, I visited these cele- 
brated fishing-grounds with Captain Philip Cook, in the Powhattan, a 
usually adopted in taking and curing the cod. 
t=) 
tela =) 
schooner of about sixty tons, belonging to Provincetown, Mass., and 
manned by a crew of nine persons. We arrived on the Banks a little 
