PEESTONPAUS. 311 



dealers in a commodity of very fluctuating value, they cannot 

 perhaps be justly blamed for endeavouring to sell it to the best 

 advantage. 



At Prestonpans, and the neighbouring village of Oockenzie, 

 the modem system, as I may call it, for Scotland, of selling the 

 fish wholesale, may be seen in daily operation. When the boats 

 arrive at the boat-shore, the wives of those engaged in the fish- 

 ing are in readiness to obtain the fish, and carry them from the 

 boats to the place of sale. They are at once divided into lots, 

 and put up to auction, the skipper's wife acting as the George 

 Eobins of the company, and the price obtained being divided 

 among the crew, who are also, generally speaking, owners of the 

 boat. Buyers, or their agents, from Edinburgh, Glasgow, Liver- 

 pool, Manchester, etc., are always ready to purchase, and in a 

 few hours the scaly produce of the Firth of Forth is being 

 whisked along the railway at the rate of twenty miles an hour. 

 This system, which is certainly a great improvement on the old 

 creel-hawking plan, is a faint imitation of what is done in Eng- 

 land, where the owners of fishing-smacks consign their produce 

 to a wholesale agent at BUlingsgate, who sells it by auction in 

 lots to the retail dealers and costermongers. 



Farther along on the Scottish east coast is North Berwick, 

 now a bathing resort, and a fishing town as well ; and farther 

 east still is Dunbar, the seat of an important herrmg-fishery — 

 grown from a fishing village into a country town, in which a 

 mixture of agricultural and fishing interests gives the place a 

 somewhat heterogeneous aspect ; and between St. Abb's Head 

 and Berwick-on-Tweed is situated Eyemouth, a fiishing-village 

 pure and simple, with all that wonderful filth scattered about 

 which is a sanitary peculiarity of such towns. The population 

 of Eyemouth is in keeping with the outward appearance of the 

 place. As a whole, they are a rough uncultivated people, and 

 more drunken in their habits than the fishermen of the neigh- 

 bouring villages. Coldingham Shore, for instance, is only three 

 miles distant, and has a population of about one himdred fisher- 

 men, of a very respectable class, sober, well-dressed, and " well- 

 to-do." A year or two ago an outburst of what is called " re- 

 vivalism " took place at Eyemouth, and seemed greatly to aff'ect 

 it. The change produced for a time was unmistakable. These 

 rude unlettered fishermen ceased to visit the public-houses, 

 refrained from the use of oaths, and instead sang psalms and said 

 prayers. But this wave of revivalism, which passed over other 



