Alongside the big piles of fish, men dressed in wide trousers and overalls of leather were busy preparing the codfish. Some were cutting the heads off and throwing them into a pile, while others were opening the fish, cleaning them, and then, after flattening them, throwing them to other men, who salted them. After this operation they were carried to the warehouses and were ready for drying.
By some of the piles men opened and cleaned the fish and tied them together by twos. After this they were hung on frames or poles. In other places the men divided the cod in halves, taking their spines out, but kept them connected by their gills. These were also hung on the poles. When dry the fish is as hard as wood.
The eggs or ova were put into barrels and salted, and Captain Ole Petersen, who was with me, said to me: "Each barrel contains the ova of three hundred cod. They are sent to Italy and France and used in the sardine fisheries of those countries." Other men were busy putting the livers into barrels, two barrels of fat liver yielding about one barrel of brown oil. The tongues of the cod were taken out of the heads, put into barrels and salted.
I visited the warehouses, built partly on piles projecting into the sea. Along some of these were brigs and schooners loading.
What a sight was the inside of these warehouses! They were filled with long deep rows of freshly salted codfish, piled higher than a man and about the same width. These fish were to be put on board ships and landed upon rocks, there to stay until they were dried and ready to be shipped to foreign countries. The cod is the gold of the people living on this desolate land.
The country around was covered with frames upon which fish were hanging. Nets and lines were seen in every direction on the rocks, left to dry or ready to be mended. Wherever I turned the place was saturated with the blood of fish and offal. The sea was covered with offal; thousands of gulls were flying in every direction and feeding upon it, while great numbers of eider ducks, as tame as farm ducks, were swimming everywhere and feeding. They were not afraid, for no one is allowed to shoot them. The bare rocks were black with hundreds of thousands of heads of cod that had been put there to dry.
These heads, with the bones of fish, are turned into a fertilizer, or used to feed cattle. The heads are boiled before they are given to the animals. "Cattle and sheep feeding on dried fish heads!" I exclaimed with astonishment to my companion, "I never heard of this before."
I asked one of the merchants how he could live in such a place. "The atmosphere that brings money," he replied, "never smells bad. Where there is no smell there is no business and no money with us."
Goodness gracious! what a smell there was in this fishing settlement. It was far from pleasant, especially when compared with the pure air of the land over which I had travelled.
Several nice houses belonged to the merchants of the place. These were painted white and were very comfortable.