SOME BRITISH SEA FISHES AND FISHING 235 



to ask as much as before for herrings of rather 

 doubtful freshness. Truly the ways of fish-vendors 

 are past finding out ! 



Lowestoft has splendid facilities for its leading 

 industry in the shape of docks, quays, sheds, ice 

 warehouses, and railway sidings. On the principal 

 quay were piled newly-caught herrings in tens of 

 thousands. It is no exaggeration to say that they 

 formed a rampart 100 yards long by 9 feet or 10 feet 

 high and 20 feet wide at the base. How such a 

 mass of fish could be dealt with and sent off that 

 day to market centres puzzled me, until an army 

 of packers came on the scene, when train-loads of 

 boxes and barrels filled with herrings stowed in 

 broken ice were dispatched with the utmost pre- 

 cision, and the quay, save for innumerable scales 

 and other disjecta membra, was empty. 



Walking down a side street of the old town of 

 Lowestoft that afternoon, I came across the skipper 

 of one of the fishing-boats carrying a large string 

 of herrings, his perquisite. Impulsively I inter- 

 viewed him in a quaint Mariners' Rest, or some 

 such hostelry, and, his tongue being duly loosened, 

 he revealed about the herring fishery much that I 

 was ignorant of. It was arranged that I should go 

 out with him in his craft, the Mary Anne, to see 

 the process. 



