The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1897-12-29
ABOUT ICELAND.
A Peaceable and Law
Abiding People.
Fish and Live Sheep Principal Ex-
ports Will Soon Lose
Sheep Market.

sible. according 10 THE Pail Mall
Gazette" though through no fault of
her own. A large percentage of the
population have made their living for
the last twenty years by rearing sheep
for the English market. Sometimes
they have sent as many as seventy
thousand sheep in the course of one
season, and have received in return
ESQ, 900. Now in that part of the world,
it must be remembered $4,000 is re-
garded as huge sum of money; it
represents, indeed, the value of about
one-seventh of everything the island
exports in year. Little wonder, there
fore, there was CONSERVATION through
out the island when it became known
last year that the British Home Office
had decided to prohibit the entrance
of live sheep into England The re-
suit of this decree will be to reduce
hundreds of small Icelandic farmers
from comparatively easy circumstances
to poverty. They are left with their
sheep on their hands: for they have no
arrangements for transporting them
dead; and in this our day new markets
cannot be found at a moments notice.
The loss of the sheep trade is, how
ever, but small misfortune compared
with another with which the Iceland
ers are now threatened. Their one
real source of wealth, the only COM
modify they have on which they can
count to provide them with the means
Herewith to pay their way in the
world, has hitherto been fish. Sixty
two per cent. of the average value of
the exports of Iceland is the produce
of the fisheries" it is said in the re-
eign Office. Fishing and the sailing,
drying and packing Of fish, indeed, is
the chief work to which the islanders
devote themselves. They send large cod
to Spain, small cod to Italy, behring's to
Norway and cod, plaice, haddock and
halibut to England; for until within
quite recent days they have had prac-
tically a monopoly of the finest fisher
les in the world. But, unluckily for
them, this state of things is now
changing. Foreign smacks have begun
to hover about the shores of Iceland ;
and, what is still worse, foreign trawl-
ers-British for the most part-have
taken up their station here. Last year
FAKE Bay, the best fishery district of
all, was thronged with them ''This
threatens to be serious matter for
the native fishermen, as the fishing
no MI Of % DO to- -,
extent to afford room both for the
bOat-fishers and the trawlers; and the
former Icelanders fish in small
boats by means of handlines, long lines
and nets-"being the weaker, must
yield. When trawlers are constantly
steaming back and forward, dragging
their travis over the limited area of
the fishing banks, it is impossible for
the native fishers to set their lines or
nets on these banks without exposing
them to the inevitable fate of being
caught and torn away by the travis.
Trawlers and net-and-line fishermen
cannot work alongside one another and
as the greater part of the fishing banks
in FAKE Bay lie outside the three mile
limit, it is impossible for the native
fishermen to confine themselves within
territorial waters which the trawlers
may not enter. To do so would be the
same thing as to abandon fishing en-
tirely, and this would involve their
utter ruin and the depopulation of the
district Thus, look which way they
will. these luckless people see nothing
but misfortune before them
The Icelanders certainly merit better
treatment than they receive from the
fates. for they are a frugal, hardwork-
ing race. who strive hard to walk in
the narrow path and do their duty to
their neighbors. They are eminently
law-abiding. There are only two police
men in the whole country, and of these
the one is too old and delicate to be
able to go out in bad weather, while
the other finds time in which to write
novels. Their procedure for dealing
with criminals is quaint, to say the
least of it. Surprising a man is to be
arrested, instead of sending some one
to arrest him, Icelandic magistrates
dispatch to him little note calling
upon him to deliver himself up to
them at the prison door by a given
date. And, oddly enough, the man, as
rule, obeys the summons: although
sometimes, instead of doing so, he
writes, Or sends a messenger, to explain
that he really cannot go to prison just
then, as he has other work on hand
In this case, unless his crime be of an
startling nature, an arrange
ment is entered into between the mag
istrates and himself by which he is
allowed to go into seclusion at the time
that suits him best
The Icelanders pride themselves, and
with reason, on the humanity with
which they treat their poor. They
never send their old pauper folk-ex-
cepting the beridden and the insane
into warehouses or institutions of any
kind, but they receive them into their
own houses as visitors. Once a year
the authorities draw up a list Of the
inhabitants who are wealthy enough
to contribute to the support of the
poor; then, instead of calling upon
them to pay a poor rate, they allot to
them a certain number Of old men or
women, whom they must provide with
board and lodging. The amount of
wealth a man possesses determines
alike the number Of poor he must en-
terrain He need not necessarily
although he generally does, receive