133 



erM by the same means, and, not content with her own limited fishing 

 grounds, landertook the conquest of others: usurping the fisheries 6i 

 the regions of the Bosphorus, she captured and for a while awed into 

 submission their rightful owners.* Amsterdam, from a village of her- 

 ring-catchers, cabhis, fmdcMring-sheds, rose, by the skill of the inmates 

 of these frail structures, by the fame of their commodities in foreign 

 countries, Emd by the immense consumption of them at home, to unex- 

 ampletl affluence and grandeur; and the sayings everywhere current 

 two centuries ago, that "Amsterdam is fiiunded on herring-bones," and 

 that " Dutchmen's bodies are built of pickled herrings," were hardly 

 more than quaint expressioas of historic truth. 



The islands and portions of continent separated from each other by 

 deep and boisterous channels, which compose the kingdom of Denmark, 

 compelled the Danes to communicate with different parts of their coun- 

 try by sea, and their barren soil as imperatively obliged them to resort 

 to fishing for support. Extending their voyages at length from their 

 own coasts to Greenland and Iceland, the skill and wealth thus acquired, 

 enabled them to add the ports of Copenhagen, Altona, and Kiel, to the 



flicted the tis«, and, as a monument of their triumph, they afterwards placed ia the church of 

 Bta. AgEese a, picbsre represeQtmgtJie ceremony." 



Monceujgo, who died iu 1423, was well versed in the commercial and maritime aifaii's of his 

 <!Ountry ; and he advanced both to unexampled prosperity. A census taten while he was ia 

 supreme autTiority fixed the population of the capital at 190,000 souls. 



Eariy in the sixteenth century, tbe French ambassador, Loais Helian; pronounced a speech, 

 in which he uttered the most violent invectives against tlio Venetians, who he declared had 

 " abandoned the cuuse of Heaven, and deserved to be execrated by God and man — to be 

 hunted down by sea and land — and to be exterminated by fire and sword." Referring to their 

 wars and conqui3Sti5, he said, that " not a century has eSapsed sinee these fishermen emerged 

 from their bogs ; and no socmer had they placed foot on terra firma than they acquired greater 

 3ominion by pertidy than Rome won by arms in the long course of two hundred years ; and 

 they had already concerted plans to bridge the Doai, the ffliine, the Seine, the Rhone, the 

 Tagus, and the Ebro, and to establish their rnle in every province of Europe." 



Her power, however, was soon weakened. Her salt works, iu which from her veiy birth 

 eSie had refused all partnership aad defied all competition, v;ere shared by compulaon with 

 fee Holy See witliin a few years after the naaSedictiems of the French minister. Her decline 

 snd fall need not be here related. In modem times Venice is hardly known for her fisheries. 

 Her exports of tlie products of the sea in 1839 were of the value of abont twenty-five thou- 

 sand dollars, while her imports amounted to nearly a quarter of a million of dollars. " The 

 fishing boats of Venice," says McCuHoch, in 1832, " are not of a size to be rated as vessels of 

 tonnage. About sixtseu thousand of the population subsist fey fishing near the port aad over 

 the lagoou." 



* "At the close of the thirteenth eentuiy," says a historian of Venice, "Genoa, by her con- 

 nexion with the Gredis, had acquired great strength in the East. She was mistress of Scio;' 

 she pcssessecl many establishments on the shores of the Black sea, and among them the im- 

 portant town of CafTii, which commands the entrance of the sea of Azoph. Above all, she 

 held, a.s a fief of the empire, Pera, the suburb of Constantinople ; and by its occupation she 

 ■iirtually retained the keys of that great capitai She cMatroUed its fisheries and its customs. 

 Without her permission, not a bark could navigate its harbor; and, as she closed or threw open 

 feer granaries, faialno or abundance waited on her pleasure." , 



Gibbon, in his Decline and Fall, speaking of Genoa, and referring to the year 1348, remarka 

 that she " supplied the Greeks with fish and corn— two articles of food almost equally im- 

 poitant to a superstitious people." "They proceeded," he continues, " <o usurp tie customs, 

 the fishery, mid even tlie toll of the Bosphorus, from which tliey derived a revenue of tico hundred 

 tiwusMd pieces of gold. A Byzantine vessel which presumed to fish at the mouth of the liarbor 

 was sunk by tliese audacious strangers, and the fishermen were murdered. Instead of suing for 

 pardon, the Genoese demanded satisfaction ; required in a haughty strain that the Greeks 

 «hoijld renounce the exercise of navigation, and >encountored with reguiar arms the fii'st .sallies 

 ^- the |ioi)ular iadigiwtion." 



