Morning journal and courier., 1891-03-14
MIR. wAKEMAN's JOURNEYINGs.
At Yarmouth, England-How Hts Fishermen Compa c With Those of other PIaces-Methods of Fishing Haunts and Resorts of the Quaint old Town-Extent of the Yarmouth Fleet
YARMOUTH, England, Feb.

YARMOUTH, England, Feb. 19.
 To the Editor of the JOURNAL AND COURIER:
 Pilgriming in many lands, l have been much among their waterside folk-with the fishermen of Algiers, who are con glomerate race of Greeks, Italians. Span iards and Arabs; with the fishermen of Sicily, gloomy and voiceless as gipsy dogs; with those of Barcelona, the giants of the south of Spain; with Biscayan, Breton and Cornish fsherhmen, superstitious and sodden above all others; with the brave, kind men of Claddagh, at Galway, and those along the wondrous Kerry coast; with the lazy fishermen of the dreamy coasts, prove the most valuable recruits to our east-shore fishing fleets; with the cap and -tasseled pescadores of Cuba, brigands all in looks and ways; with the squatty Eskimos of the Labrador coast, satisfied with any fruitage of the deep which will barely sustain life; with the crofter fisher of the North Scottish and Shetland coasts; and with our own brave Gloucester men who risk their lives upon the Grand Banks, and the 'Quoddy fishermen whose chief quarry is the herring, all along the grand Maine coast to the mist-wreathed crags of wild Msnan;-and have been continually impressed with the almost indefnable and wholly indescribable sadness that seems to brood over and among all this class of peo- pie.
 Sc ip thair co1,ina and hnunaly- social | life. It is in their voices and looks. In repose it sets on their faces pitifully. Reused into some great activity, in storm, in taking fish, or in saving lives, they have | grand, earnest, faces, these fishermen. But in the quiet hours there is something hunted, wearied, worried, dreading and dreadful, to be read in the lines of their | faces, in the tremulousness of their voices. | and in the light which shines from their | eyes, that all their brave and hearty ways cannot hide or disguise. It is as if the sea, from which they live, had whispered | in secret to each consciousness some say age threat of reprisal as if over every
 little comfort, home joy, or well-earned
 content, hung the spectre-hand of fate, | coming closer to the inner vision every
 time the fisherman's heart grows glad. IT
 whatever degree this is universal, it seems
 to me to be more marked among the fisher | men of Yarmouth than have ever found
 it elsewhere revealed. I believe Dickens
 saw and felt this here at this old fishing
 port, when he created out of his great anc
 tender heart the pathetic characters of th'
 Peggottys;- simple, tender, true; scornins
 baseness; resolute in all manly attributes
 majestic in suffering and forgiveness: anC
 through and over all, the pathetic threat
 of sadness, quivering like and endles
 plaint in a melodious though mournfu
 song.
 It is surely here among all these thou
 sands of Yarmouth fishermen, wives ant
 bairns The upward, far look in thei
 eyes, has come as heritage of centurie
 of dolor and loss. The set, stern shut
 ting of the jaws and lips, tells better thal
 history can of the endless fisher-fgh
 against the elements and poverty. Flo
 that matter, all old Yarmouth folk hay the resolute, half-defiant expression tha tells as plainly as book can: "This i Yarmouth, as you sec it, because we hay
 battled with the sea thousand years!"
 And so they have. A desperate and uI ceasing struggle against the clements wa } necessary on the part of Yarmouth folI , past end present, to retain their very exi:
 tence, as we'll as their trade in herringi r The history of the Dutch in their battle for the preservation of their dykes againi l the gnawing of the sea cannot surpass th record of Yarmouth folk in their stru, t gles to preserve their port. For hundred
 of years it was the overcoming victil a of destructive tempests and shifting sand r Seven different hsrbors were excavated b : tween the middle of the fourteenth cent ] " and the time of Elizabeth While u @ storms and the sands were destroying or D harbor after another, war, rebellion, pest 0 fence and famine assailed the brave Va e mouth folk ashore. In the old books or a can read how they sold their church plat D bells and vestments for funds to preserN l. the harbor. Again you can find whel 8 every inhabitant, save the shipwrights [ d work on herring boats, were compelled l, labor three days of every week, on Sul @ day. Monday and Tuesday, at the excav' a tions. They worked first and worshipe 2 afterwards, in East Anglia, in those rigo d ous old days. At another time, when u t, danger was most imminent, the preciol e store of the towns gunpowder was SO Ie for means with which to save the DOT 1T And again, when the sea had almost bu # jed the wharves and town In sand, the e