SCOMBEEIDiE. 203 



empty, was let down again for new victims, while we 

 followed the cargo just shipped to the landing-place; 

 thence, preceded by two drummers, off we went in a 

 procession to the Mercato Reale, where we found many 

 great eyeless thunny (the produce of a still earlier haul) 

 already piled up in bloody heaps on the flags.* Besides 

 these, there were alalongas, whose long pectorals had 

 been draggled in the mire, with many other large and 

 curious fish, and the formidably armed heads of two or 

 three sword-fish, fixed on end in the upper part of the 

 woodwork of the same staUs, where their huge bodies 

 were exposed for sale below, cut up into bloodless white 

 masses, like so many coarse fillets of veal; while whole 

 hampers of labridse attracted the least attentive eye by 

 their lovely variegated and ever- varying tints. 



The noise employed in ■ selling the mutest of all ani- 

 mals, loud in every country, was perfectly stunning here ; 

 nor can those who have not witnessed the scene form 

 any idea of what a Sicilian Billingsgate at market hour 

 really is, when a hundred stentors are all bawling in uni- 

 son, and each striving to drown his neighbour's noise in 

 his own. ' Trenta sei ! trenta sei ! ' cries out the padrone 



Arion did the dolphin, several times round the inner enclosure, 

 patting and taming him before he is stabbed like his smaller com- 

 panions. 



* The eyes, being a perquisite of the crew, are torn out the 

 first thing, to make oil for their lamps : the gills also and the roes, 

 which are eaten fresh, are commonly ripped out and deposited in 

 baskets by themselves. These various mutilations of the thunny 

 render its appearance in the markets at all times unsightly and 

 uninviting. In some cases, however, the fish are transferred in 

 the first instance into an inner shed or shamble, where a whole 

 troop of them is speedily cut to pieces, and the sections (each of 

 which has a name and a market price of its own) are then ex- 

 posed for sale. The young thunnies do not appear in public at aU 

 till they have been first carefully boiled in sea- water, and become 

 tkcm marmS. 



