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Fish
It is the whales that drive the small
fish into the fiords.
I have seen forty or fifty of them in the water at one time.
I have been in a little boat when the water was boiling on all sides of
us from them swimming underneath.
The noise of the herring can be heard nearly a mile.
So thick in the water, they are, you can't dip the oars in. All silver!
And all those millions of fish must be taken, each one, by hand.
The women and children pull out a little piece under the throat with their
fingers so that the brine gets inside.
I have seen thousands of barrels packed with the fish on the shore.
In winter they set the gill-nets for the cod.
Hundreds of them are caught each night.
In the morning the men pull in the nets and fish altogether in the boats.
Cod so big--I have seen-- that when a man held one up above his head the
tail swept the ground.
Sardines, mackerel, anchovies all of these.
And in the rivers trout and salmon.
I have seen a net set at the foot of a falls and in the morning sixty
trout in it.
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