It lives for
herring, and a strange sight it is to see (of an afternoon) the
heights of Pulteney blackened by seaward-looking fishers, as when a
city crowds to a review - or, as when bees have swarmed, the ground
is horrible with lumps and clusters; and a strange sight, and a
beautiful, to see the fleet put silently out against a rising moon,
the sea-line rough as a wood with sails, and ever and again and one
after another, a boat flitting swiftly by the silver disk. This
mass of fishers, this great fleet of boats, is out of all
proportion to the town itself; and the oars are manned and the nets
hauled by immigrants from the Long Island (as we call the outer
Hebrides), who come for that season only, and depart again, if "the
take" be poor, leaving debts behind them. In a bad year, the end
of the herring fishery is therefore an exciting time; fights are
common, riots often possible; an apple knocked from a child's hand
was once the signal for something like a war; and even when I was
there, a gunboat lay in the bay to assist the authorities. To
contrary interests, it should be observed, the curse of Babel is
here added; the Lews men are Gaelic speakers. Caithness has
adopted English; an odd circumstance, if you reflect that both must
be largely Norsemen by descent. I remember seeing one of the
strongest instances of this division: a thing like a Punch-and-
Judy box erected on the flat grave-stones of the churchyard; from
the hutch or proscenium - I know not what to call it - an eldritch-
looking preacher laying down the law in Gaelic about some one of
the name of POWL, whom I at last divined to be the apostle to the
Gentiles; a large congregation of the Lews men very devoutly
listening; and on the outskirts of the crowd, some of the town's
children (to whom the whole affair was Greek and Hebrew) profanely
playing tigg.
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