THE FISH MARKET.
"Dragged through the mire, and bleeding from the hock," lay a continuous mass of slaughtered thunny, mouths wide open, bloody sockets, from which the eyes had been torn to make lamp-oil, gills ripped off to be eaten fresh, and roes in baskets by their sides. There was also a quantity of a fish of dirty white belly and dusky back, the alalonga, and two huge dolphins, with skins full of lamp-oil. This really ugly creature looks far better in the delphin title-pages, with his lamp and his "alere flammam" on clean paper, than on the stall; but his very best appearance is on a fine Sicilian coin, with Arion on his back. The snouts of four large sword-fish were also conspicuous; and there was thunny enough for all the world: some of the supply, however, was to be hawked about the streets, in order to which cords are placed under the belly of a thunny of fifteen cwt., and off he goes slung on a pole, with a drummer before and a drummer behind, to disturb every street and alley in Palermo till he is got rid of; not that the stationary market is quiet; for the noise made in selling the mutest of all animals is in all countries really remarkable; but who shall do justice to a Sicilian Billingsgate at mezzogiorno! "Trenta sei, trenta sei," bawls out the Padrone, cleaving a fish in twain with one stroke of an immense chopper kept for the purpose. "Trenta sei, trenta sei," repeat the two journeymen accomplices, one counting it on his fingers to secure accuracy and telegraph the information to distant purchasers, or such as cannot hear in the noise; another holds up a slice as a specimen; three fellows at our elbow are roaring "tutti vivi, tutta vivi," "a sedici, a sedici." The man of whitings, and even he of sardines, have a voice and a figure of their own. As you approach each stall, the noisy salesmen suspend their voices, and enquire, in gentler accents, if you intend to buy; if you do not, like the cicada their stunning sound returns as soon as you are past. We have hinted that the thunny, "Integer et cadavere toto," does not look handsome: vastly less attractive is he when mutilated. Big as an elephant's thigh, and with flesh like some black-blooded bullock of ocean breed, his unsavoury meat attracts a most repulsive assemblage, not only of customers, but of flies and wasps, which no flapping will keep off from his grumous liver. The sword-fish cuts up into large bloodless slices, which look on the stall like so many fillets of very white veal, and might pass for such, but that the head and shoulders are fixed upon a long lance, high above the stall, to inform the uninitiated that the delicate looking meat in question was fed in the pastures of the deep. The price of thunny, a staple commodity and object of extensive Sicilian commerce, varies considerably with the supply; as to the demand, it never ceases. During our stay in Palermo, a whole fish would fetch about eight scudi, and his retail price was about twopence per English pound. Think of paying three or four francs for less than half a pound sott 'olio in Paris. The supply seems very constant during the season, which, on the Palermo side of the island, is from May to July, and continues a month later along the Messina coast; after which, as the fish cease to be seen, it is presumed here that they have sailed to the African coast. The flesh of the spada fish is generally double in market price to that of the thunny, selling during the greater part of June at about fourpence a-pound. Every thunny is weighed upon landing, and a high tax paid upon it to the king, who, in consideration thereof, charges his Sicilian subjects no duty for gunpowder or salt. The fixed fisheries for thunny, round the Sicilian coast, are upwards of a dozen, the most famous being that of Messina. At Palermo, however, they sometimes take an immense strike of several hundred in one expedition. The average weight of a full grown thunny, is from 1000 to 1200 pounds; of course the men with poles who land him, can carry him but a little way, and he reaches the market by relays. Every bit of him is eaten, except his bones and his eyes, and even these yield a quantity of oil.
The spada, too, is pickled down to his bones—he is in great request for the hotels, and his eyes, duly salted, are considered a sort of luxury; in some places these are the perquisite of the fishermen, yielded by their employers, who farm the fisheries, and having satisfied the king, make what terms they can with the subject.