The
Noblesse And Burgeois Sup On Sallad And Anchovies, Which Are
Eaten On All Their Meagre Days.
The fishermen and mariners all
along this coast have scarce any other food but dry bread, with a
few pickled anchovies; and when the fish is eaten, they rub their
crusts with the brine.
Nothing can be more delicious than fresh
anchovies fried in oil: I prefer them to the smelts of the
Thames. I need not mention, that the sardines and anchovies are
caught in nets; salted, barrelled, and exported into all the
different kingdoms and states of Europe. The sardines, however,
are largest and fattest in the month of September. A company of
adventurers have farmed the tunny-fishery of the king, for six
years; a monopoly, for which they pay about three thousand pounds
sterling. They are at a very considerable expence for nets,
boats, and attendance. Their nets are disposed in a very curious
manner across the small bay of St. Hospice, in this
neighbourhood, where the fish chiefly resort. They are never
removed, except in the winter, and when they want repair: but
there are avenues for the fish to enter, and pass, from one
inclosure to another. There is a man in a boat, who constantly
keeps watch. When he perceives they are fairly entered, he has a
method for shutting all the passes, and confining the fish to one
apartment of the net, which is lifted up into the boat, until the
prisoners are taken and secured. The tunny-fish generally runs
from fifty to one hundred weight; but some of them are much
larger. They are immediately gutted, boiled, and cut in slices.
The guts and head afford oil: the slices are partly dried, to be
eaten occasionally with oil and vinegar, or barrelled up in oil,
to be exported. It is counted a delicacy in Italy and Piedmont,
and tastes not unlike sturgeon. The famous pickle of the
ancients, called garum, was made of the gills and blood of the
tunny, or thynnus. There is a much more considerable fishery of
it in Sardinia, where it is said to employ four hundred persons;
but this belongs to the duc de St. Pierre. In the neighbourhood
of Villa Franca, there are people always employed in fishing for
coral and sponge, which grow adhering to the rocks under water.
Their methods do not favour much of ingenuity. For the coral,
they lower down a swab, composed of what is called spunyarn on
board our ships of war, hanging in distinct threads, and sunk by
means of a great weight, which, striking against the coral in its
descent, disengages it from the rocks; and some of the pieces
being intangled among the threads of the swab, are brought up
with it above water. The sponge is got by means of a cross-stick,
fitted with hooks, which being lowered down, fastens upon it, and
tears it from the rocks. In some parts of the Adriatic and
Archipelago, these substances are gathered by divers, who can
remain five minutes below water.
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