Opposite the island is the faubourg Sainte Croix, which is more populous than the Ville Close, and where all the business of the place is carried on. The sardine fishery, from June to November, occupies two-thirds of the population. From three to four hundred vessels are employed with five men to each boat. Calm weather is most favourable for fishing. The sardines are taken in large seine nets, one side floating with corks on the surface of the water, the other falling vertically. The sardines, attracted by the bait, try to force themselves through the meshes of the net, and are caught by their gills. The bait used is called "rogue:" the best is composed of the roe of the cod-fish, pounded and steeped in salt water for several days; sometimes the roe and flesh of the mackerel is used. Rogue is made in Norway and Denmark, but principally at Drontheim, and is very expensive, costing about sixpence the lb.; hence an inferior bait is substituted, composed of shrimps and other small crustacea, with fish salted, and the heads of anchovies, all pounded and putrified together. But this kind of decomposed bait is forbidden by the fishery laws. The employment of it [pg 145] accounts for the rareness of good sardines, as the remaining of such a substance in the body of the animal cannot fail of corrupting it. It is a pretty sight to behold the little fleet employed in the sardine fishery return in the evening, laden with the results of the day's work. The fish, when landed, are counted out into baskets, shaken in the water, and taken up to one of the curing-houses: of these there are about sixty in Concarneau. In the first shed we saw above fifty women employed in taking off their heads—"detêter" it is called—an operation they effect with great dexterity. With one cut at the back of the neck the head is separated and the fish "éventré" at the same time.
The sardines are next placed in little wire trays, with divisions like a double gridiron, and fried or dipped in boiling oil, an operation principally performed by the women of Pont l'Abbé, who are supposed, like the Germans of our baking and sugar-refining houses, to be peculiarly constituted to resist heat. The gridirons are then hung up to drain. The sardines are next packed in tin boxes, cold oil poured over them, and the boxes soldered down. From 800 to 900 boxes are placed in a boiler and boiled for half an hour to test the boxes, and those which leak are put aside. They are of English tin, and the making of them is the winter's occupation. Finally, the boxes are stamped with [pg 146] the name of the establishment, and packed in deal cases for exportation. The sardine is a very delicate fish, and easily decays. It is only taken out of the net with a rake (raquette); in summer, numbers are spoiled from being heaped in the boats, and at whatever hour the boats come in the fish go through the whole process of curing, as they will not keep till the next day. Concarneau exports from 15,000 to 20,000 barrels of sardines annually. [pg 147] Only a part are "anchoitée," that is, preserved like the anchovies of the Mediterranean, the others are salted in casks; and quantities, only slightly salted, are packed in baskets, to be sent to the provincial markets. It is estimated that twelve hundred million fish have been caught this year. The sardine fishery extends along the whole western coast of Brittany from Douarnenez to the Loire.
One of the curiosities of Concarneau is its aquarium, under the direction of M. Guillon. It consists of six cisterns, made by the blasting of the solid rock, and comprising an area of large extent, within a walled enclosure. In these cisterns the water is renewed at each turn of the tide through narrow openings in the wall. Three of these reservoirs are reserved for fish, the others for crustacea—lobsters and langoustes. Of these they keep from 10,000 to 15,000 at a time, and send them off daily, when fattened, to Paris and the principal markets of France. It was curious to see the dread shown by the common lobster to the langouste. They all were adhering to the sides of the reservoirs as if afraid to encounter their more powerful companions. Quantities of turbot, also reared for sale, were in one of the cisterns, darting with the greatest rapidity in the water when the keeper threw in pieces of sardines for them to eat. At the end of these cisterns is a building, with every arrangement for [pg 148] the culture of fishes—rows of little troughs, and other vessels, to contain them. Many of the fish are so tame, they came immediately to the keeper on his making a noise in the water with his fingers. Here are fish of every description, and naturalists have every facility of studying their habits. Among others, we saw the graceful little sea-horse or hippocampus, a native of the seas of Brittany as well as of the Mediterranean.
30. Dolmen. Trégunc.
From Concarneau to Quimperlé is a distance of above eighteen miles. The road runs near the sea, [pg 149] over a large tract of land covered with furze (ajonc), which, in Brittany, grows from five to six feet high, forming a solid impenetrable mass. Huge blocks of granite are scattered about in every direction, jutting out from among the furze—menhirs, cromlechs, and dolmens—a perfect wilderness of Celtic remains. We drove over an extent of several miles of furze-covered hills and heathy land. Before we reached the village of Trégunc we stopped to see a large dolmen on the side of the road, and further to the right a rocking-stone, twelve feet long and nine feet thick, standing about fifteen feet from the ground, the second largest in Brittany. It is poised by a little projection, like an inverted cone, upon another rock lying half-buried in the ground. The upper block can easily be set in motion by the hand. It is called by the country people "La pierre aux maris trompés," and was formerly consulted by husbands to test the fidelity of their wives. Even now the partner of a faithless wife is said to be incapable of giving to the stone the rocking motion it so easily receives from another.
31. Rocking Stone. Trégunc.
On the left we passed the majestic ruins of the castle of Rustéphan, i. e. Run, mound, of Stephen, having been built by Stephen Count of Penthièvre at the beginning of the twelfth century. It belonged in the thirteenth to Blanche of Castile, the mother of St. Louis. The present edifice dates from the [pg 150] fifteenth. One of the sides remaining has a cylindrical tower with pinnacled doorway, and the windows have stone mullions.
