326 The Commercial Products of the Sea. 



and transparent, and costs £2 the picul of 133 lbs. ; the 

 second quality is only about half this price. The product 

 obtained in Cu-lao-Khai is very inferior. 



Seaweeds enter also into the food products of the 

 Cochin Chinese. They whet the appetite with them when 

 highly seasoned with garlic, mixed with fish water ; and 

 they form the celebrated sauce " Noachman," of a strong 

 and repulsive odour, which is exported to all parts of the 

 far East. 



China, with its immense seacoast, estimated to be not 

 less than 800 leagues in length, is very favourable for the 

 collection of seaweed, which grows in great abundance in 

 the sea ; but the enormous demand for so numerous a 

 population requires that the fishing should be carried on 

 daily and without ceasing. This naturally tends to 

 diminish the quantity obtained. 



The collection or fishery is carried on in small boats 

 with sails of platted reeds. It is prosecuted from the island 

 of Hainan up to the Gulf of Petcheli, as well as the islands 

 of Formosa, Chusan, Lieou Keou, etc. These little boats, 

 manned frequently by an entire family, occupy themselves 

 not only in the fishing of seaweed, which they detach from 

 the rocks, but in the intervals obtain fish by large bait sus- 

 pended from a bamboo pole, maintained perpendicularly 

 by a line below. The continued movement of the bait by 

 the waves renders the fishing very successful. 



The second quality of algas is obtained in a less 

 tedious and difficult manner, by means of hurdles formed 

 of branches of bamboo ; they are the kind of fascines 

 which the navigator notices in the creeks of rivers and 

 islands, on the beaches and in the roadsteads, as well as the 

 embouchures of all the great rivers where the tides reach a 

 certain elevation. The seaweeds, borne by the passing 



