If a market should be found for this description of fish from North America, they could be furnished to an unlimited extent. My friend and correspondent, Mr. Perley, says, ‘In the calm and dark nights during August and September, the largest eels are taken in great numbers by the Micmac Indians and Acadian French, in the estuaries and lagoons, by torch-light, with the Indian spear. This mode of taking eels requires great quickness and dexterity, and a sharp eye. It is pursued with much spirit, as, besides the value of the eel, the mode of fishing is very exciting.
‘In winter, eels bury themselves in the muddy parts of rivers, and their haunts, which are generally well known, are called eel grounds. The mud is thoroughly probed with a five pronged iron spear, affixed to a long handle, and used through a hole in the ice. When the eels are all taken out of that part within reach of the spear, a fresh hole is cut, and the fishing goes on again upon new ground.’
It was by a mistake that the Jews abstained from eating eels. The prohibition is as follows:—‘All that have not fins and scales, &c., ye shall have in abomination.’—Lev. xi., 10, 11. The Siluridæ, which have no scales, were held in abomination by the Egyptians. In describing one of them (the Schall) which he had found in the Nile, M. Sonnini, says—‘A fish without scales, with soft flesh, and living at the bottom of a muddy river, could not have been admitted into the dietetic system of the ancient Egyptians, whose priests were so scrupulously rigid in proscribing every aliment of unwholesome quality. Accordingly, all the different species of Siluri found in the Nile were forbidden.’ This then was probably one of the forbidden kinds, and this fact supports the opinion before ventured as to the origin of the custom. The rest of the prohibition was probably levelled against aquatic reptiles, which were generally looked upon as possessing poisonous qualities.
It has been well observed by a recent popular writer, that any Cockney, with two shillings and sixpence in his pocket, may regale himself at Billingsgate, at Blackwall, or Richmond, on delicacies to which the senate and people of Rome were utter strangers. Indeed, it is no inconsiderable set off against the disadvantages of living so far from the sun, that the supplies of northern fish markets are incontestably and greatly superior to those of any Italian or Sicilian pascheria: superior, 1st, because in those kinds which are common to our great ocean, and their ‘great sea,’ our own are better flavoured; because, 2ndly, even the finer sorts, which belong exclusively to the Mediterranean, are for the most part poor; and 3rdly, and above all, because there is an almost total want in its waters of species which we consider, and advisedly, as our best. Were superiority to be determined by mere beauty and variety of colouring, the market of Billingsgate could not enter into competition for a moment with the smallest fishing town in the south, where the fish are for the most part coasters, and derive their gorgeous hues from the same buccina and coquillage whence the Tyrians got their superb dyes. But as the gayest plumage is by no means indicative of the bird best adapted for the table, so brilliancy of scales affords no criterion by which to judge of the culinary excellence of fish, the beauty of whose skin, in this instance, contrasts singularly with the quality of the fish, which is generally poor and insipid, and sometimes unwholesome and even deleterious. The Mediterranean pelagians (or open sea-fish) have neither brilliancy of colour nor delicacy of flesh to atone for the want of it; so that no Englishman will repine to leave tunny beef to the Sicilian ichthyophagist, whilst he has the genuine pasture-fed article at home in place of it. Nor though, to such coarse feeders as the ancient Greeks, sword-fish might be held equal to veal, will his better instructed palate assent to such a libel upon wholesome butcher’s meat. Mullet must indeed be admitted on all hands to be good fish; but one good thing only in a hundred does not satisfy omnivorous man, and toujours Triglia is not better than toujours Perdrix, as every one who has passed a winter at Naples knows to his cost. Sardines are only palatable in oil; au naturel they are exceedingly poor and dry: and for that other small clupean, the anchovy (the latent virtues of which are only elicited by the process which metamorphoses the fish into sauce), British whitebait is far more than an equivalent.—But if the Mediterranean has but few alumni to be proud of, the poverty of its waters is certainly more conspicuous in its deficiencies than in its supplies; indeed, the instinct of all first-rate fish seems to be to turn their tails upon this sea. Thus among the Salmonidæ, salmon and smelt are alike unknown; of the Gadian family, all the finest species, as cod, haddock, whiting, ling, and coal fish are wanting; and to quote but one other example—
‘Whilst migrant herrings steer their myriad bands
From seas of ice to visit warmer strands,’
as we read in the Apocrypha of Dr. Darwin, not one ever entered the Bay of Naples, unless salted in a barrel from England.[23]
The Finnon, Buckie, and Bervie smoked haddock is largely vended in London and other large towns, being esteemed an excellent relish. They are split, cleaned, and steeped in strong pickle about three hours, and then smoked for fifteen or sixteen hours. After a kiln full is smoked and cooled, the fish are packed in dry barrels the same as pickled mackerel, excepting that every two tiers are packed face to face, so that the back of one fish does not come in contact with the split side of another fish. The increase in the timber trade of late years, and the establishment of saw-mills, have rendered sawdust abundant, and the Scotch fisherwives have made the discovery that haddocks can be smoked with sawdust to look nearly as well as when smoked with peat; while they have not the wisdom to anticipate the loss of custom which must unavoidably ensue as soon as the deficiency of flavour is discovered.
Fresh herrings come in in enormous quantities to our metropolitan markets, and, from the consumption of several millions of them, must be esteemed a dainty by some. Pickled or cured herrings,—of which 580,814 barrels were salted in 1857, at the British Fisheries,—are chiefly consumed abroad; the shipments to the Continent last year having been 219,000 barrels, and 58,534 barrels went to Ireland. In 1855, out of a cure of 766,703 barrels, the Continental export reached 344,029 barrels. Last year (1857), 128,600 barrels went to Stettin.
Scotch herrings go to Russia quite as much as St. Petersburgh tallow comes to London, 60,000 or 70,000 barrels passing the Sound, or going via Konigsberg and Dantzic. One great inducement to the Russian population to purchase the herrings is, it is said, the quantity of undissolved salt the barrels are found to contain.