tively
recent origin, others are quite new, and a few--a very few--are old; but
none have any architectural pretensions or any claims to
picturesqueness, and only a few have the neat and respectable look one
is accustomed to expect after seeing Robin Hood's Bay.

Staithes had filled me with so much pleasant expectancy that my first
walk down this street of dirty, ugly houses had brought me into a
querulous frame of mind, and I wondered irritably why the women should
all wear lilac-coloured bonnets, when a choice of colour is not
difficult as far as calico is concerned. Those women who were in
mourning had dyed theirs black, and these assorted well with the colour
of the stone of many of the houses.

I hurried down on to the little fish-wharf--a wooden structure facing
the sea--hoping to find something more cheering in the view of the
little bay, with its bold cliffs, and the busy scene where the cobles
were drawn up on the shingle. Here my spirits revived, and I began to
find excuses for the painters. The little wharf, in a bad state of
repair, like most things in the place, was occupied by groups of
stalwart fisher-folk, men and women.

The men were for the most part watching their women-folk at work. They
were also to an astonishing extent mere spectators in the arduous work
of hauling the cobles one by one on to the steep bank of shingle. A
tackle hooked to one of the baulks of timber forming the staith was
being hauled at by five women and two men! Two others were in a listless
fashion leaning their shoulders against the boat itself. With the last
'Heave-ho!' at the shortened tackle the women laid hold of the nets, and
with casual male assistance laid them out on the shingle, removed any
fragments of fish, and generally prepared them for stowing in the
boat again.

It is evidently an accepted state of things at Staithes that the work of
putting out to sea and the actual catching of the fish is sufficient for
the men-folk, for the feminine population do their arduous tasks with a
methodical matter-of-factness which surprises only the stranger. I was
particularly struck on one occasion with the sight of a good-looking and
very neatly dressed young fishwife who was engaged in that very
necessary but exceedingly unpleasant task of cutting open fish and
removing the perishable portions. With unerring precision the sharp
knife was plunged into each cod or haddock, and the fish was in its
marketable condition in short