developed, besides the dry-salted cod, greater quantities of green-salted 

 cod were landed at Bordeaux. In the 18th century, the Dutch, Danish and 

 English, with the French, came to sell their fish caught in Iceland and the 

 North Sea. At the dawn of the Revolution, Bordeaux, without attaining the 

 importance of Nantes, was the great regional market of the southwest for 

 cod. 



Green cod was shipped by river boats to the upstream villages; part of 

 the dried cod was exported to the colonies, notably the West Indies. 



In the second half of the 18th century, the abundance of green cod 

 imported to France resulted in the appearance of a drying industry. Dun- 

 kerque, Dieppe, Fecamp, La Rochelle, Bordeaux and Sete built their dry- 

 ing facilities almost at the same time. But Bordeaux had the advantage, 

 over the northern ports, of a more favorable climate. Its drying places 

 were erected in the suburbs of Begles, above the stone bridge marking the 

 head of navigation on marsh land of little value. 



Since then cod traffic has not ceased to grow. The birth and develop- 

 ment of a railroad, in the 19th century, gave a new impulse to this com- 

 merce, permitting Bordeaux to export cod from Begles to all parts of France, 

 then to Spain and Italy. About 1880, the position of greatest exporter in 

 France was established. It was increased in the following years by the pro- 

 gressive decline of drying at Newfoundland which disappeared completely 

 with the abolition of the privilege of the French Shore in 1904. In 1907, 

 Bordeaux received 70 percent of the production of the French fisheries and 

 its commerce in cod was uncontested. 



At this time, of 37 French drying places, Bordeaux had 30. But, later, 

 modernization of the cod industry has diminished this supremacy. In the 

 period between the two wars, Fecamp, the great northern cod port which 

 had substituted the ancient sailing vessels for the modern trawlers, built 

 modern plants with great capacities in air-conditioned driers. Bordeaux 

 thus lost the advantage of its climate favorable for open-air drying. 



At the same time, its supremacy was broken by the acceleration of 

 truck transport which permitted distribution, in good condition, to every 

 part of France, in consequence, a greater fraction of the cod going to these 



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