ize the peril and the enterprise and
the industry connected with the herring trade, which employs some five
hundred boats, manned by seven to twelve men, who work the business on
the cooperative system, which, when the season is a good one, gives a
handsome remuneration to all concerned, and which drains the country of
young men for miles around. Each boat is furnished with some score of
nets, and each net extends more than thirty-two yards. The boat puts off
according to the tide, and if it gets a good haul, at once returns to the
harbour with its freight; if the catch is indifferent, the boat stays
out; the fish are salted as they are caught, and then the boat, generally
at a distance of about twenty miles from the shore, waits till a
sufficient number have been caught to complete the cargo. When that is
the case, the boat at once makes for Lowestoft, and the fish are unloaded
under a shed in heaps of about half a last (a last is professedly 10,000
herrings, but really much more). At nine a bell rings and the various
auctioneers commence operations. A crowd is formed, and in a very few
minutes a lot is sold off to traders who are well known, and who pay at
the end of the week. The auctioneer then proceeds to the next group,
which is disposed of in a similar way. Other auctioneers in various
parts of the enormous shed erected for their accommodation do the same,
and then, as more boats arrive, other cargoes are sold, the sailors
bringing a hundred as a sample from the boat. And thus all day long the
work of selling goes on, and as soon as a lot are sold they are packed up
with ice, if fresh, or with more salt, if already salted, and despatched
by train to various quarters of England, where, it is to be presumed,
they meet with a speedy and immediate sale. In this way as many as one
hundred and ninety-eight trucks are sometimes sent off in a single day.
But in London we are familiar with the kipper, the red herring, and the
Yarmouth bloater, and to see how they are prepared for consumption I
leave the market--always wet and fishy and slippery--and make my way to
the extensive premises on the beach belonging to Mr. Thomas Brown--the
only Brown whose name is familiar to the fish-dealer in every market in
England, and the extent of whose business may be best realized by the
reader when I state that Mr. Brown sends off from his factory as many as
forty lasts a week.

An intelligent foreman, after I have evaded the a