CONCARNEAU
This little town, with its high gray walls, is very important. In
olden days its possession was disputed by many a valiant captain. The
fortress called the 'Ville Close' has been sacrificed since then to
military usage. The walls of granite, which are very thick, are
pierced by three gates, doubled by bastions and flanked by
machicolated towers. At each high tide the sea surrounds the fortress.
Tradition tells us that on one occasion at the Fête Dieu the floods
retired to make way for a religious procession of children and clergy,
with golden banners and crosses, in order that they might make the
complete tour of the ramparts. This fortress, a little city in itself,
is joined to Concarneau by a bridge, and it is on the farther side
that industry and animation are to be found. There is a fair-sized
port, where hundreds of sardine-boats are moored, their red and gray
nets hanging on their masts.
The activity of the port is due to the sardines, and its prosperity is
dependent on the abundance of the fish. Towards the month of June the
sardines arrive in great shoals on the coast of Brittany. For some
time no one knew whence they came or whither they went. An approximate
idea of their journeyings has now been gained. Their route, it seems,
is invariable. During March and April the sardines appear on the
coasts of the Adriatic and the Mediterranean; they pass through the
Straits of Gibraltar, skirting Spain and Portugal; they reach France
in May. In June they are to be found on the coast of Morbihan and
Concarneau, in August in the Bay of Douarnénez, in September by the
Isle de Batz, and later in England or in Scotland.
[Illustration: CONCARNEAU HARBOUR]
It is to be hoped that the fish will always abound about the coast of
Concarneau. The women population is engaged in industries connected
with sardines. The making and mending of the nets and the preparation
and packing of the fish are in themselves a labour employing many
women. When the sardines have been unloaded from the ships, they are
brought to the large warehouses on the quay and submitted to the
various processes of cleaning and drying. Rows of women sit at
long deal tables cutting off the heads of the fish, and singing at
their work. The fish are then cleaned of the salt which the fishermen
threw on them, and dried in the open air on iron grills. During this
time other workmen are employed in boiling oil in iron basins. The
sardines, once dried, are plunged into the oil for about two minutes,
sufficient to cook them, and are afterwards dried in the sun. They are
then placed in small tin boxes, half-filled with oil, which are taken
to be soldered. The solderers, armed with irons at white heat,
hermetically close the boxes, which are then ready to be delivered to
the trade. This simple process is quite modern; it was instituted at
the end of the last century. The nets, which cost the fishermen thirty
francs, take thirty days to make. The machine-made nets are less
expensive; but it is said that they are not sufficiently elastic, and
the meshes enlarged by the weight of fish do not readily close up
again.
Each sardine-boat is manned by four or five men armed with an
assortment of nets. The bait consists of the intestines of a certain
kind of fish. The fishermen plunge their arms up to the elbow in the
loathsome mixture, seizing handfuls to throw into the water. If the
sardines take to the bait, one soon sees the water on either side of
the vessel white and gray with the scales of the fish. Then the men
begin to draw in the nets. Two of them seize the ends and pull
horizontally through the water; the others unfasten the heads of the
fish caught in the meshes. The sardines are tumbled into the bottom of
the boat, and sprinkled with salt.
The sardines, delicate creatures, die in the air in a few seconds. In
dying they make a noise very like the cry of a mouse.
After the first haul the fishermen have some idea of the dimensions of
the fish, and adjust the mesh of their nets,--for the sardines vary in
size from one day to another according to the shoals on which the
fishermen chance.
[Illustration: THE SARDINE FLEET, CONCARNEAU]
[Illustration: WATCHING FOR THE FISHING FLEET, CONCARNEAU]