Chapter 7

In the Street of Tombs the monuments are lying or standing as they were found; each year shows many changes in Athens, a tomb last year in the Ceramicus may be this year in a museum. There is a great similarity in all these tombstones; no doubt they were made beforehand, as they seldom suggest the idea of a portrait. They generally represent an almost heroic leave-taking. The friends standing in the act of saying farewell are receiving presents from the dead; often in the corner is a crouching slave, and frequently a dog.

Beyond the river Kephiesus, the hill of Colonus, and the groves of the Academy, is the Pass of Daphne, which was the road to Eleusis, and along which passed the annual sacred processions in the days of the Mysteries. Cut there in the rock are the niches for the votive offerings. This dark Daphne Pass seems still to possess an air of mystery which is truly in keeping with the rites which were once observed there.

From several points in Athens, on very clear days, may be seen the great rock fort Acrocorinthus, which is directly above the site of ancient Corinth. It is now a deserted fort; the Turkish drawbridge and gate stand open and unused. There are on it remains of a Turkish town; at one time it was one of the strongest and most important citadels in Greece. In the middle of the almost deserted, wretched, straggling village of Old Corinth stand seven enormous massive columns. These are all that remain of the Temple, and indeed of ancient Corinth. The pillars, of the Doric order, are of a brown limestone, not of the country. The Turks and earthquakes have destroyed Old Corinth, and driven the inhabitants to New Corinth, about one hour and a half's drive from the Gulf.--_London Graphic_.

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SPANISH FISHERIES.

The Spanish Court at the late Fisheries Exhibition was large and well furnished, there being several characteristic models of vessels. No certain figures can be obtained of the results of the whole fishing industry of Spain. It is, however, estimated that 14,202 boats, with a tonnage of 51,397 tons, were employed during the year 1882. They gave occupation to 59,974 men, and took about 78,000 tons of fish. The Government interfere in the fishing industry only to the extent of collecting and distributing information to the fishermen on subjects that are most likely to be of use to them in their calling. In consequence, principally no doubt of this wise policy, we find in Spain a vigorous and self-reliant class of men engaged in the fisheries. Some of the most interesting features in the Spanish Court were the contributions sent by the different fishermen's associations, and although the Naval Museum of Madrid supplied a collection of articles that would have formed a good basis in itself for an exhibition, yet in no other foreign court was the fishing industry of the nation better illustrated by private enterprise than in that of Spain. The fishing associations referred to are half benefit societies and half trading communities. That of Lequeito has issued a small pamphlet, from which we learn that this body consists of 600 members divided into three classes, viz., owners of vessels, patrons or men in charge, and ordinary fishermen. A board of directors, consisting of 22 owners, and 24 masters of boats or ordinary fishermen, has the sole control of the affairs of the society. The meetings are presided over by a majordomo elected triennially, and who must be the owner of a boat over 40 ft. long. This functionary receives a stipend of 8,000 reales a year, a sum which sounds more modest when expressed as 80_l_. He has two clerks, who are on the permanent staff, to help him. His duties are to keep the books with the assistance of the two clerks, to take charge of the sales of all fish, recover moneys, and make necessary payments. In stormy weather he gets up in a watch tower and guides boats entering the harbor. The _atalayero_ is an official of the society, whose duty it is to station himself on the heights and signal by means of smoke, to the boats at sea, the movements of schools of sardines and anchovies or probable changes of weather. It is also the duty of this officer to weigh all the bream caught from the 1st November to the 31st of March, for which he receives a "gratuity" of 100 pesetas, or say 4_l._, sterling. Two other señeros, or signalmen, are told off to keep all boats in port during bad weather, and to call together the crews when circumstances appear favorable for sailing. Should there be a difference of opinion between these experts as to the meteorological probabilities, the patrons, or skippers of the fishing-boats, are summoned in council and their opinion taken by "secret vote with black and white balls." The decision so arrived at is irrevocable, and all are bound to sail should it be so decided; those who do not do so paying a fine to the funds of the association. The boats carrying the señeros fly a color by means of which they signal orders for sailing to the other vessels. These señeros appear to be the Spanish equivalent to the English admiral of a trawling fleet.

The boats used by these fishermen are fine craft; one or two models of them were shown in the Exhibition. A first-class boat will be of about the following dimensions: Length over all, 45 ft. to 50 ft.; breadth (extreme), 9 ft. to 10 ft. 3 in.; depth (inside), 3 ft. 10 in. to 4 ft. The keel is of oak 6 in. by 3½ in. The stem and stern posts are also of oak. The planking is generally of oak or walnut--the latter preferred--and is 3 in. thick, the width of the planks being 4½ in. Many boats are now constructed of hard wood to the water line and Norway pine above.

The fastenings are galvanized nails 4½ in. long. The mast-partners and all the thwarts are of oak 1½ in. thick and 8 in. wide; the latter are fastened in with iron knees. Lee-board and rudder are of oak, walnut, or chestnut; the rudder extends 3½ ft. to 4 ft. below the keel, and, in giving lateral resistance, balances the lee-board, which is thrust down forward under the lee-bow. The rig consists of two lags, the smaller one forward right in the eyes of the boat; the mainmast being amidships. The lug sails are set on long yards, the fair-weather rig consisting of a fore lug with 120 square yards, and a main lug of 200 square yards. There are six shifts of sail, the main being substituted for the fore lug in turn as the weather increases, in a manner similar to that in which our own Mounts Bay boats reduce canvas. The fair weather rig requires two masts 42 ft. and 36 ft. long, and yards 28 ft. and 30 ft. long, respectively. The oars are 16 ft. long, and are pulled double-banked. Such a boat will cost 90_l._ to 100_l._ fitted for sea, of which sum the hull will represent rather more than half. These vessels generally remain at sea for twelve hours, from about three to four in the morning until the same time in the evening. Tunny, merluza (a species of cod), and bream are the principal fish taken. The first-named are caught by hook and line operated by means of poles rigged out from the boat much in the same way, apparently, as we drail for mackerel on the southwest coast. A filament of maize straw is used for bait. The boat sails to a distance of about 90 miles off the land and run back before the prevailing wind, until they are about nine miles from the shore or until they lose the fish. When the fisherman gets a bite the wind is spilled out of the sail so as to deaden the boat's way. The fish is then got alongside, promptly gaffed, and got on board. Tunny sells for about three halfpence a pound in Lequeito. The season extends from June to November. Bream are taken in the winter and spring, 9 to 12 miles off the coast. They are caught by hook and line in two ways. The first is worth describing. A line 50 fathoms long has bent to it snoods with hooks attached, 16 in. apart. Each man handles three lines. On reaching the fishing ground the line, to the end of which a stone is attached, is gradually paid out until soundings are taken; then another stone is attached and the operation repeated. If a bite is felt the line is slacked away freely, and this goes on until about 500 fathoms are overboard. When, by the lively and continuous jerking of the line, the fisherman concludes that he has a good number of fish on the hooks, he will haul aboard and then prepare to shoot again.

The second method of taking the bream is by long lining; fifty of the lines we have just described being bent together and duly anchored and buoyed. Spaniards do not much care for this way of fishing, as it is costly in bait and the gear is often lost in bad weather. Bream sells at about 3½d. a pound. Cod are taken during the first six months of the year, about 9 miles off shore, by hand lines. Sold fresh the price is about 6_d._ per lb. A small quantity is preserved in tins. Anchovy or cuttlefish is the bait used; sometimes the two are placed on one hook.

A smaller description of boat, called traineras, is built especially for taking sardine and anchovy, although in fine weather they often engage in the same fishery as the larger boats. The traineras are light and shapely vessels, with a graceful sheer and curved stem and stern posts. The keel is much cambered, and the bottom is flat and has considerable hollow. The usual dimensions vary between: Length, 38 feet to 42 feet; beam, 7 feet to 7 feet 6 inches; depth, 2 feet 6 inches to 2 feet 10 inches. The sails and gear are much the same as in the larger boats, excepting that there are only four shifts in place of six. The largest main lug has an area of about 90 square yards and the fore lug about 50 square yards. The other sails for heavier weather are naturally smaller. The largest masts for fine weather are respectively 36 feet and 22 feet, long. The average cost of one of these boats and gear is about £122, made up as follows: Hull, £32; sails, gear, and oars, £30; nets and gear attached, £60. The season for anchovy fishing commences on the 1st of March and ends 30th of June; it begins again on the 15th of September, and continues until the end of the year. Most fish are taken at a distance of about 9 miles from the land, although they often come in much closer. Anchovies are sold fresh, or are salted to be sent away, some are used for bait, and in times of great plenty quantities are put on the land for manure. The greater part are, however, preserved in barrels or tins, and are exported to France or England.

The net used in the capture of anchovies is called _traina_ or _copo_. It is in principle like the celebrated purse seine of the United States, but in place of being 200 fathoms long, as are many of the nets, which, in American waters, will inclose a whole school of mackerel, it is but 32 to 40 fathoms long. The depth is 7 to 10 fathoms, and the mesh ¾ inch. Sardine fishing commences on the 1st of July and lasts until December. The principal ground is 2 to 10 miles off shore. The price of sardines on the coast is about 2½d. per pound. When the sardines appear in shoals they are taken with the traina in the same way as anchovies, a net of ½-inch mesh being used. Sardines are also taken by gill nets about 200 feet long and 18 feet wide. When used in the daytime the fish are tolled up by a bait consisting of the liver of cod. When the sardines have been attracted to the neighborhood of the net, bait is thrown on the other side of it. The fish in their rush for the bait become entangled in the mesh. These nets are sometimes anchored out all night, in which case no bait is used.

A third class of boats of much the same character are of about the following dimensions: Length, 28 feet to 35 feet; beam, 7 feet 6 inches to 8 feet; depth, 2 feet 6 inches to 2 feet 8 inches. The two lugs will contain 16 and 30 square yards of canvas respectively. They are used for sardine catching, when they will carry a crew of four men, or for taking conger and cod, in which case they will be manned by eight hands.

Their cost will average approximately as follows: Hull, £15; gear and sail, £10; nets and lines, £13; about £40. The conger season extends from March to June, and from October to November. The fish are taken by hook and line; sardine and fish known as berdel (which in turn is taken by a hook covered with a feather) are used as bait.

There are other smaller fishing boats, among which may be noticed the _bateler_, a powerful little vessel, 13 feet to 16 ft. long, about 5½ ft. wide, and 2 ft. deep. They are sailed by one man, set a good spread of canvas, and are fast and handy. They are used for taking a species of cuttlefish which supplies a bait, and is caught by hook and line, the fishes being attracted by colored threads, at which they rush, when the hook will catch in their tentacles. There is a small well in the middle of the boat for keeping the fish alive. None of the boats on the northern coast of Spain carry ballast. They have flat hollow floors, and set a large area of of canvas on a shallow draught. Lobster fishing is pursued in much the same manner as in England, but often four or five miles from land, and in very deep water.

One of the most noticeable objects in the Spanish court was a full-sized boat about 25 ft. long, which had a square hole cut in the bottom amidships. Through this hole was let down a glass frame in which was placed a powerful paraffine lamp. The object of this was to attract the fish. It is said that tunny will be drawn from a distance of over a hundred yards, and will follow the boat so that they may be enticed into the nets. Sardines and other fish will follow the light in shoals. It is claimed that the boat will be useful in diving operations, for pearl or coral fishing, or for ascertaining the direction of submarine currents, which can be seen at night by a lamp to a depth to 25 to 30 fathoms.--_Engineering_.

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DUCK SHOOTING AT MONTAUK.

Montauk Point, Long Island, is the most isolated and desolate spot imaginable during this weather. The frigid monotony of winter has settled down upon that region, and now it is haunted only by sea fowl. The bleak, barren promontory whereon stands the light is swept clean of its summer dust by the violent raking of cold hurricanes across it, and coated with ice from the wind-dashed spume of the great breakers hurled against the narrow sand spit which makes the eastern terminus of the island. The tall, white towered light and its black lantern, now writhing in frosty northern blizzards, and again shivering in easterly gales, now glistening with ice from the tempest tossed seas all about it, and now varnished with wreaths of fog, is the only habitation worthy of the name for many miles around. Keeper Clark and his family and assistants are almost perpetually fenced in from the outside world by the cold weather, and have to hug closely the roaring fires that protect them in that desolation.

But for ducks and the duck hunter the lighthouse family would die of inanition. With the cold weather comes the ducks, and they continue to come till the warmer blasts of spring drive them to the northward. Montauk Point is a favorite haunt for this sort of wild fowl. It is a good feeding ground, is isolated, and there is nearly always a weather shore for the flocks to gather under. But year by year the point is being more and more frequented by sportsmen, and the reports of their successes increase the applicants for lodgings at the light. Some 20 gunners were out there last week with the most improved paraphernalia for the sport, and did telling work. Flight shooting is the favorite method of taking them. The light stands very near the end of the point, about a sixteenth of a mile to the west, and all migratory birds in passing south seem to have it down in their log-book that they must not only sight this structure, but must also fly over it as nearly as possible. Hence the variety and extent of the flocks which are continually passing is a matter of interest and wonder to a student of natural history as well as to the sportsman. Coots, whistlers, soft bills, old squaws, black ducks, cranes, belated wild geese, and, in fact, all sorts of northern birds make up this long and strange procession, and the air is frequently so densely packed with them as to be actually darkened, while the keen, whistling music of their whizzing wings makes a melody that comparatively few landsmen ever hear. Millions of the birds never hesitate at this point in their flight, although thousands of them do. These latter make the neighboring waters their home for the rest of the winter. Great flocks of ducks are continually sailing about the rugged shores, and the frozen cranberry marshes of Fort Pond Bay, lying to the westward, are their favorite feeding-grounds. The birds are always as fat as butter when making their flight, and their piquant, spicy flavor leads to their being barbecued by the wholesale at the seat of shooting operations. One of the gunner's cabins has nailed up in it the heads of 345 ducks that have been roasted on the Point this winter.

Early morning is the favorite time for shooting. At daybreak the flights are heavy, and from that time until seven o'clock in the morning they increase until it seems as though all the flocks which had spent the night in the caves and ponds on the Connecticut shore were on the wing and away for the south. By ten o'clock in the forenoon the flights grow rarer, and the rest of the day only stragglers come along. A good gunner can take five dozen of these birds easily in a morning's work, provided he can and will withstand the inclemency of the weather.

Keeper Clark never shoots ducks. Scarcely a morning has dawned for two months but that several of the poor birds have been picked up at the foot of the light house tower with the broken necks which have mutely told the story of death, reached by plunging headlong against the crystal walls of the dazzling lantern overhead the night before. There is a tendency with such migratory birds as are on the wing at night to fly very high. But the great, glaring, piercing, single eye of Montauk light seems to draw into it by dozens, as a loadstone pulls a magnet, its feathered victims, and they swerve in their course and make straight for it. As they flash nearer and nearer, the light, of course, grows brighter and brighter, and at length they dash into what appears a sea of fire, to be crushed lifeless by the heavy glass, and they fall to the ground below, ready to be plucked for the oven. Inside the lantern the thud made by these birds when they strike is readily felt. Although they are comparatively small, yet so great is their velocity that the impact creates a perceptible jar, and the lantern is disfigured with plashes of their blood. Upon stormy and foggy nights the destruction of birds is found to be greatest. When the weather is clear and fair many smaller birds, like robins, sparrows, doves, cuckoos, rail, snipe, etc., will circle about the light all night long, leaving only when the light is extinguished in the morning. Large cranes show themselves to be almost dangerous visitors. Recently one of these weighing 40 pounds struck the wrought iron guard railing about the lantern with such force as to bend the iron slats and to completely sever his long neck from his body.--_N.Y. Times_.

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[THE GARDEN.]

THE HORNBEAMS.

The genus Carpinis is widely distributed throughout the temperate regions of the northern hemisphere. There are nine species known to botanists, most of them being middle-sized trees. In addition to those mentioned below, figures of which are herewith given, there are four species from Japan and one from the Himalayan region which do not yet seem to have found their way to this country; these five are therefore omitted. All are deciduous trees, and every one is thoroughly deserving of cultivation. The origin of the English name is quaintly explained by Gerard in his "Herbal" as follows: "The wood," he says, "in time, waxeth so hard, that the toughness and hardness of it may be rather compared to horn than unto wood, and therefore it was called horne-beam or hardbeam."

_Carpinus Betulus_,[1] the common hornbeam, as is the case with so many of our native or widely cultivated trees, exhibits considerable variation in habit, and also in foliage characters. Some of the more striking of these, those which have received names in nurseries, etc., and are propagated on account of their distinctive peculiarities, are described below. In a wild state C. Betulus occurs in Europe from Gothland southward, and extends also into West Asia. Although apparently an undoubted native in the southern counties of England, it appears to have no claim to be considered indigenous as far as the northern counties are concerned; it has also been planted wherever it occurs in Ireland.

[Footnote 1: IDENTIFICATION.--Carpinus Betulus, L., Loudon, "Arboretum et Fruticetum Britannicum," vol. iii., p. 2004; Encycl. of Trees and Shrubs, 917. Boswell Syme, "English Botany," vol. viii., p. 176, tab. 1293; Koch, "Dendrologie," zweit. theil. zweit. abtheil., p. 2: Hooker, "Student's Flora of the British Islands," ed. 2, p. 365. C. Carpinizza, Host., "Flora Austriaca," ii., p. 626. C. intermedia. Wierbitzsky in Reichb Ic. fl. Germ. et Helvet., xxii. fig. 1297.]

Few trees bear cutting so well as the hornbeam, and for this reason, during the reign of the topiarist, it was held in high repute for the formation of the "close alleys," "covert alleys," or the "thick-pleached alleys," frequently mentioned in Shakespeare and in the works of other authors about three centuries ago. In the sixteenth century the topiary art had reached its highest point of development, and was looked upon as the perfection of gardening; the hornbeam--and indeed almost every other tree--was cut and tortured into every imaginable shape. The "picturesque style," however, soon drove the topiarist and his art out of the field, yet even now places still remain in England where the old and once much-belauded fashion still exists on a large scale--a fact by no means to be deplored from an archæological point of view. Dense, quaintly-shaped hornbeam hedges are not unfrequent in the gardens of many old English mansions, and in some old country farmhouses the sixteenth century craze is still perpetuated on a smaller scale.

Sir J.E. Smith, in his "English Flora," after enumerating the virtues of the hornbeam as a hedge plant, gives it as his opinion that "when standing by itself and allowed to take its natural form, the hornbeam makes a much more handsome tree than most people are aware of." Those who are familiar with the fine specimens which exist at Studley Park and elsewhere will have no hesitation in confirming Sir J.E. Smith's statement. The Hornbeam Walk in Richmond Park, from Pembroke Lodge toward the Ham Gate, will recur to many Southerners as a good instance of the fitness of the hornbeam for avenues. In the walk in question there are many fine trees, which afford a thorough and agreeable shade during the summer months.