Canada and Newfoundland

by Frank G. Carpenter

Walk along with me the rest of the way down to the waterside. You must step carefully on the path that leads over and between the ridges of out-cropping rock. Behind us a troop of youngsters are proving themselves true citizens of the kingdom of boyhood by tooting the horn of our motor. I notice many children playing about, and I ask where they go to school. In reply two little frame buildings are pointed out on the hillsides, one the Church of England school, and the other maintained by the Catholics. The children we see look happy and well fed, and the little girls especially are neatly dressed and attractive.

But here is a fisherman, drying cod, who offers to show us about. With him we clamber down to the nearest stage, built out over the rocks, its far end resting in water that is deep enough for the boats. The stages are built of spruce poles and look like cliff-dwellers’ homes. At the end nearest the water is a little landing platform, with steps leading down to the motor dory moored alongside.

A boat has come in with a load of fish. They are speared one by one and tossed up to the landing stage, while one of the men starts cleaning them to show us how it is done. He first cuts the throat to the backbone, breaks off the head against the edge of the bench, and then rips open the belly. He tosses the liver to the table and the other organs to the floor, cuts out the greater part of the backbone, and throws the split, flattened-out cod into a tub at his feet. It is all done in a few seconds.

Outside there is now a great heap of cod. This fish has a gray-greenish back, a white belly, and a great gaping mouth lined with a broad band of teeth so fine that to the touch they feel like a file. One big fellow a yard long weighs, we are told, perhaps twenty-five pounds, but most of them will average but ten or twelve pounds.

These fish were caught in a net, or trap. When set in the water the cod trap measures about sixty feet square. It is moored in the sea near the shore. The fish swim into the enclosure, are caught within its walls, and cannot make their way out. The size of the meshes is limited by law, so that the young fish may escape. Three fourths of the Newfoundland cod are taken in this manner. Fish traps may cost from six hundred to one thousand dollars each, and making them is the chief winter job of the fishermen.

Sometimes the cod are caught with trawls, or lines, perhaps three or four thousand feet long, with short lines tied on at every six feet. The short lines carry hooks, which are baited one by one, and the whole is then set in the ocean with mooring buoys at each end. The trawls are hauled up every day to remove the fish that have been caught, and to bait up again.

I had thought a fisherman’s work done when he brought in his catch, but that is really only the beginning. The Newfoundland fisherman has nothing he can turn into money until his fish are salted and dried. The drying process may take a month or longer if the weather is bad. It is called “making” the fish. The flat split fish are spread out upon platforms called “flakes.” The sun works the salt down into the flesh, at the same time removing the moisture. Every evening each fish must be picked up and put in a pile under cover, and then re-spread on the flakes in the morning. The children are a great help in this part of the work.

Wherever there is a slight indentation on the high rock-faced coast you will find a fishing village with its landing stages and drying “flakes,” built of spruce poles and boughs, clinging to the steep shore.

It is in the perfection of the drying, rather than by size, that fish are graded for the market. At one of the fish packing wharves in St. John’s, I saw tons of dried cod stacked up like so much cord wood. They all looked alike to me, but the manager said: