The Milan exchange. (Milan, Gibson County, Tenn.) 1874-1978, 1877-06-14

49, WIN particular care, DuJ
also makes the fishitself strike and an
nounee that it is ready to be pulled omit
With bodies blackened by the s,n 10
the color of the seaweed, the Janansso
fishermen are incommoded by ne;,hor
the rain nor the winds. Like the fish
ermen of all lands, their restless ewes
were wandering from the sea to the
heavens. With no guides but the stars
by night and the blue edge of the land
by day, there WAS need for keen eye
sight and watchfulness. In all the
Eastern seas there is no more adyentur-
ons race than these men.
We could see the floats of burnt wood
which buoyed the ends of our fisher
mems lines, and to the nearest of these
we were sculled. A kind of wood light
and buOyant, and with some resem-
blance to cork, is used for such floats.
1t grows in the forests Whereabouts, and,
after being shaped and charred to pre-
vent decay, lasts, without further
trouble, for longer time than bladders
or skins. With some Impotence the
black buoy and the line attached are
brought on board. Like an inverted bell
shapedflower-potcOm the first earthen-
ware jar, hardly the size of a child's
head, attached to the line. Mouth down.
ward. the jar is pulled up from the bot
tom, and when all the water has been
poured out, the fishermen give a look
inside. No occupant being found, the
jar is once more lowered into the sea by
the attached string, which is overrun
till the next jar is pulled up, brought on
board and similarly examined. When
six or seven are examined, and no occu-
pant found in any of these, the fisher
men show no impotence. But present
ly from jar an octopus is jerked upon
the floor of the boat, and with some sat
isfaction the Japanese watch its tenta-
eles wriggle all about the planks and
cling round their legs. Changing its
hues, the disgusting eephalopOd loses its
redder blotches for paler patches, and
eventually crawls into a darker corner
to coil itself away. Pouring the water
more carefully from the inverted pots,
the fishermen secure few more of these
animals, which crawl and Irvine about
with snakelike contortions. The long
string of pots took time to overhaul, but
the spoils were reckoned reward for the
trouble. When the fishing was COM
pleted, and the black floats were again
left to mark the spot, our boat was scull-
ed somewhat further down the land.
We had then time to learn some
thing more of this fishing for tako, as
the octopus is named by the Japanese
fishermen. Through our friends, we
learn that the tako needs no bait to en-
tice it to enter the earthen jars used by
the fishermen to entrap it; but crawling
abouy on the bottom, or shooting itself
through the sea by the expulsion of
water, it finds in the dark earthen jar
a COiLAOllbblC ilOuoC3 dilu 81 OOCu-
pies it until the fisherman finds it and
captures it. The tako is largely eaten
in Japan, where all the products of the
sea are accounted equally wholesome
with those of the land; and beneath an
ugly skin the flesh of this speckled
monster is thought very good, cooked
in several ways, and eaten with or with
out soy or vinegar. Nevertheless, as if
to vindicate the dread its constantly
changing hues excite, the eating of the
octopus is not unattended with danger.
Through some poisonous faint, either
occasionally or always present, but
modified by the process of cooking, peo-
pie sometimes die from eating this ami
NAL. And yet the knowledge of this in
terferes but to a trifling extent with the
use of food having such a questionable
reputatiOn-indeed, at certain seasons,
it is largely used by the japanese, when
the cutie fish are far more plentiful and
also more wholesome. Caught by
trolling small wooden fish barbed with
hooks, they make good sport, chiefly to
the older fishermen, who are not active
enough to 90 off to sea.-Cham6ers's
Journal.