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Show COO fISHER EVER CALM : J . " , C 5 f - ' .. : :: 'V rXANCZS KA&80R, LABRADOR 'T.N the condltlona surrounding tho industry of cod fishing there Is a fascination for the inlander that li takea him back year after year. And most interesting of all is the fisherman himself. 1 am not certain, writes W. Lacey Amy in the Toronto Globe, but It really seems to be lil3 Bupreme indifference to everything but the fish that makes him so attractive. attract-ive. 1 have wandered In and out among them where they do not see a visitor in a month; I have seen them empty a boatload of shiny cod that equaled a fortnight's ordinary catch; I have watched them lift a large horse Into a tiny Bklff where nothing save prayer appeared to offer any hope of Its reaching its destination; 1 have helped them carry Into the steamer's hospital men sick unto death, and have bade "good luck" to a patient returning from the hospital legless and helpless In life's fight; I have handed out food to the starving from the Eteamer's stores, and have heard them refuse to accept well paid work until the cod ran again. But I have never seen a cod fisherman excited. The nature of the fisherman's life is strenuous enough, to relieve him of the necessity of overexertion to prevent pre-vent falling asleep at inopportune moments. mo-ments. Although It requires but a small cloud and a tiny clap of thunder thun-der to keep him from the fishing grounds, scarcely a week passes that he is not forced to meet the terrible machinations of storm and wave to compass his destruction. In his dlz-rily dlz-rily bobbing little boat he fights the sea, the most apathetic of men against the most relentless of nature's forces. Open Water In June. The fact that he cannot swim seems not to throw into his struggle any sign of fear; so long as a plank holds between him and water he can weather weath-er anything that blows. In the early Bpring, long before the cod begin to run, he risks his life a thousand times across the treacherous Ice floes in chase of the seal. In May, while the winds are still Icy, he makes a few extra cents in herring off the Magda-lens. Magda-lens. A month later the Labrador fisherman may succeed In catching a few salmon if the Ice Is open. But when the cod run there is nothing but cod, except of late years, when the Magdaleners have taken a liking for mackerel, however scarce they be. Around the Magdalen Islands and at Gaspe there Is an Interval of lobster catching that means money, but along the Labrador coast there is nothing from July until the Ice forms again in October but cod, or, as they call it, "fish." The Magdalener is a motley fisherman herring, cod, mackerel, haddock but the Labrador fisherman lives, sleeps and smells of cod. His home is in Newfoundland, the many quaint towns of the east coast sending out almost all their men to the north country just as soon as the Ice opens a little in June. Early in that month the fishing schooners start on their long run down the coast, dodging through the Ice fleldB, running run-ning Into port in face of a storm or a threatening Ice floe, and trusting more to Providence than to aught els for their Bafety. It is a fearsome run, that first trek northward, staking wooden bottom against grinding, inexorable Ice, and many a Newoundland home is empty from a losing risk. But the seemingly seeming-ly indolent, passive fisherman Is willing wil-ling to take the chances to secure an early choice of fishing ground. All summer through he spends his dayi on the water, his evenings splitting the day's catch, and his nights in the makeshift shacks that are deemed sufficient suf-ficient covering for the three or four months season in that northland. As few women now venture north, the fishermen muBt perform all their own work in the treatment of the fish. They are unable to leave the fishing to stteud to the drying, with the result that many of them tempt the fate of a winter sail along an Inhospitable, deserted coast by remaining north until the middle of November, spending spend-ing the last few weeks In carefully utilizing every ray of sunshine to make the best sale for their wares. And then the fight back through the ever thickening ice and Increasing storms Is worse than the spring run. Oddities of Fishing Villages. A fishing village Is the quaintest, raggedest spot on earth. City planning plan-ning does not even reach the location of the house or the road rights. In the Magdalen Islands, where the land is more level and there is soil enough to make It a consideration, the fish houses are placed with some common regard for a roadway. The bait and tackle and other odoriferous material are kept In the lower story, and the family sleeps, dines and sits In the single room above. In Labrador there Is no such thing as a road to consider. There has never been a horse nor an ox to use it, nor has a traveler attempted to make one settlement from another by any other method of transportation than a boat There Is practically no soil, the bare, uneven, mountainous rock sinking abruptly Into deep water. The fish houses are built wherever a ledge of rock offers a foothold, and a staging of rough poles projects from the water by a rickety ladder work of poles, perhaps ten, perhaps forty feet high. In Newfoundland the fishing villages are clustered so closely to the water's edge that the village is built upward Instead of horizontally. A fisherman could spend his whole life at his work without touching ground. Up the side of the cliff the stagings, fish houses, paths, cod flakes and houses will run, occupying, as at the battery adjoining adjoin-ing St. John's, not more than forty or fifty feet or horizontal surface for a large village. Land residence Is an unfortunate necessity that is simplified simpli-fied to its limit. |