Walrus-hunting is not much followed nowadays by civilized seamen, though the animal is still of great value to the Eskimo and Siberians. It has become very scarce in easily accessible waters, but is occasionally taken by whalers, who find a market for the ivory of its tusks.
Sealing is an industry which still claims considerable attention from the Scandinavians and Scotchmen who go to the coasts and waters about Spitzbergen, Jan Mayen, and Greenland, as well as to nearer resorts, in pursuit of several species yielding oil and valuable hides; and in the North Pacific the pursuit of the fur seal still occupies many small vessels, but seems likely to come soon to an end. Antarctic seals are practically extinct.
The industry of fishing is probably one of the oldest in the world, and it remains among the most important, for the fisheries not only furnish a vast amount of nutritious and pleasant, yet remarkably cheap, food, but many other things useful to mankind. Hence it is not strange to find that in all the early reports of the discovery of new lands and waters that followed one another so rapidly from the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries, the fish and other sea-animals to be found were always given a prominent place in the list of valuable assets pertaining to each locality. Even the Spaniards and Portuguese, in their insane rush for gold and silver, to the neglect and ruin of everything else, had to pay some little attention to fishing and allied industries in both the East and West Indies; while in the case of the exploitations of new regions by the calmer, more prudent people of western Europe—the British, French, Dutch and Scandinavians,—the value of the harvest of the sea was really more in view, at first, than that of the land, at least when they began to visit and colonize North America. Take, as an example, the history of St. Pierre, Miquelon, and the others that form a group of islets in the Gulf of Newfoundland, half way between Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland. Mr. S. G. W. Benjamin, in whose “Cruise of the Alice May” you may find many interesting and picturesque materials for an account of them, tells us a French settlement was begun on St. Pierre as early as 1604, and that tradition says the islands were resorted to by the Basques two centuries before that, as is very likely true.
In 1713 the colony numbered three thousand souls, and had become a very important fishing port. In that very year St. Pierre was ceded to Great Britain, together with Newfoundland, the French being merely allowed permission to dry their fish on the adjacent shores. But when the victory of Wolfe resulted in the loss of Canada to France, she was once more awarded this little group of isles lying off Fortune Bay, to serve as a depot for her fishermen. The French now gave themselves in earnest to developing the cod-fisheries, determined, apparently, that what they had lost on land should be made up by the sea. In twelve years the average exportation of fish amounted to six thousand quintals, giving employment to over two hundred smacks, sailed by eight thousand seamen. The English recaptured the isles in 1778, destroyed all the stages and store-houses, and forced the inhabitants to go into exile. The peace of Versailles restored St. Pierre to France in 1783, and the fugitives returned to the island at the royal expense. The fisheries now became more prosperous than ever, when the war of ’93 once more brought the English fleets to St. Pierre. Again the inhabitants were forced to fly. By the peace of Amiens, in 1802, France regained possession of this singularly evanescent possession, and lost it the following year, when the town was destroyed. In 1816 St. Pierre and Miquelon were finally re-ceded to France, in whose power they have ever since remained.
CURING FISH AT ST. PIERRE.
As these islands were of no use to any one for any other purpose, all this struggle for their possession was in order to retain the privilege and naval control of fishing in those waters. The French government has carefully fostered this interest ever since, and now the islands not only have a settled population of several thousand, but at the height of the season sometimes as many as ten thousand strangers (sailors and fishermen) congregate at the principal port, St. Pierre, which is one of the most important centers in the world for the marketing, curing, and export of sea-caught fish.
Of all waters those of the North Atlantic seem to excel in useful fishes; from the oil-shark hand-lining off the coast of Lapland, or the sardine-catching of Spain, to Yankee sword-fishing, this ocean is alive with fish and fishermen, on both sides and at all seasons of the year.
The whole coast of Norway supports this industry, especially around the far northern Lafoden Islands. The North Sea, shallow and cold, is the home of many valuable species that are sought by extensive fleets from Denmark, Holland, and the north of France, while thousands of British sailors make a living along their own eastern coasts and among the islands north of Scotland; but the waters on all sides of the British Isles are fishing waters, especially the English and Irish channels and the western lochs of Scotland; the herring-catch alone is worth eight and a half millions of dollars a year, while Great Britain’s mackerel-catch amounts to two millions, and her share of the codfishery to another two millions. Nearly half of all the products of British fisheries are obtained by the use of the beam-trawl—a huge dredge-like bag-net, handled and towed by steamers in pretty deep water, which scoops in everything near the bottom, where the most desirable sea-fishes stay. Among the prizes are the turbot and sole—toothsome and valuable species not known along American shores.