United States or Italy ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Perhaps it will be well to give, in this place, some more vivid idea of our home, which, after all, like the shell of the sea-fish, most frequently shapes itself to fit the necessities and habits of its occupants. Very striking was the contrast between the rear and front and exterior and interior of "Monfort Hall," as it was universally called.
For their march was through an uncultivated country whose inhabitants fared hardly, possessing only a few sheep, and those of a wretched kind, whose flesh was rank and unsavory, by their continual feeding upon sea-fish.
I couldn't live away from the winds and the storms and the waves. I couldn't die away from them either. I'd be like a deep sea-fish washed clean ashore. How them landlubbers live with everything dead and dull around them, I don't see. I ain't been out of sight of deep water since I shipped as cabin boy in the 'Lady Jane' nigh onto sixty years ago.
I will therefore call it Caspian, although it is not in Hyrcania. There are depths in this lake from which the salty waters pour forth and are absorbed in the mountains. These caverns are supposed to be so vast and so deep that even the largest sea-fish pass through them into the lake. Amongst these fish is the shark, which cuts a man in two with one bite and swallows him.
The rent of the landlord is in proportion, not to what the farmer can make by the land, but to what he can make both by the land and the water. It is partly paid in sea-fish; and one of the very few instances in which rent makes a part of the price of that commodity, is to be found in that country.
Fish also are plentiful, such as fresh cod, plaice, flounders, soles, whitings, smelts, sturgeon, oysters, lobsters, crabs, shrimps, mackerel, and herrings in the season; but it must be confessed that salmon, turbot, and some other sea-fish are dear, as well as fresh-water fish. Wine is imported from foreign countries, and is dear.
The result was that there were abundant supplies for the British army the whole time, thanks to the fleet. But Montcalm was in a very different plight. Since the previous autumn, when Wolfe and Hardy had laid waste the coast of Gaspe, the supply of sea-fish had almost failed.
Brodbelt, on the air contained in the natatory bladder of the sword-fish, had led some naturalists to think, that within the tropics, in sea-fish, that organ must be filled with pure oxygen gas. Full of this idea, I was surprised at finding in the air-bladder of the flying-fish only 0.04 of oxygen to 0.94 of azote and 0.02 of carbonic acid.
Sea-fish of different species, seals, the young walrus, and even at times the young of the great whale itself, become his prevail of which he hunts and captures with a skill and cunning, that appears more the result of a reasoning process than a mere instinct.
I am, however, afraid that the railroad schemes for opening the country to the south of this tract will for some time prevent a profitable steamboat speculation, although vast quantities of very superior fish are caught and cured now on the shores of Huron, such as salmon-trout and white fish, which, when properly salted or dried, are equal to any salt sea-fish whatever.
Word Of The Day