THE PERILS OF THE FISHERMEN.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume V, Issue 212, 18 May 1877, Page 13

THE PERILS OF THE FISHERMEN.

— — »+■- ■'■ One never forgets the scene if, in crossing from Europe in one of the great line steamers, he takes liis station forward some foggy night on the Banks of Newfoundland, feeling the gigantic m»'Bm »'B on which he stands quiver as it foams and wrestles with the waves, while all around the walls of mist seem to shut out the world when suddenly the faint stroke of a dull bell comes upon his ear, then a small light in a halo of mist dances fitfully under the lee bow, and in an instant almost he look 3 down from his lofty height on a little sloop or schooner riding with tremendous pitches on the waves, white a couple of faces under sou-wester hats g>ize up in the light from the s'earaer's port* holes, as the great black mass shoots above them, shaving off dnath by a spoke of the wheel. How many of these fishermea'a cockleshells, that ride the waves in the midst of the Atlantic hare been struck and swept down under great ships, making scarce a quiver from stem to stem, can never be known, but certainly many. How many have fouled each other by the parting of cables in some terrific storm, and crushed each other's sides like egg-shells, is equally unconji'cturable ; but out of almost every fleet that sails from Gloucester or the towns along Cape Cod. some never return by the casualties of even the most favorable se <son. Again, there are storms, as that of December, when waves are torn bodily off by the force of the wind. burring the little barks in an avalanche of water, under which they ar* whelmed like chips, and all that is known of their fate is, that after months of heart-sick waiting they do not come home. There have been disasters greater than that of last season, but twenty-eight vesse's and two hundred and twenty-one lived will cause many an ' mpty cupboard and de-date hearthstone on the windy coast of Cape Ana and Cape Cod. With such a perilous liveliho >d as this, in is no wonder that the suits of solemn black are the common wear in Gloucester, and that the widows and the fatherless number more than half the population. In the pathetic language of the old Scotch song, the fisher-wives may well think it's not the fish they ars selling, but tht? lives of the men. The heroic courage of these men, who take more than the risks of a battle for a bare subsistence was, generations ago, celebrated in the glowing language of Burke,' and that it still continues is a proof of the, undegeneraey of New Gugland blood. — Providence Journal.