or Indian corn or sweet potatoes, with what shell-fish they get
themselves. They work for two, three, or six months, or even a year;
and on a good calm night an expert fishing-girl will fill what is
termed a _qui_ case and earn a shilling, occasionally two. Not bad
for a little thing twelve or thirteen years old. In some parts of
Fiji--Maenata, for instance--the natives get and smoke the dri
themselves, and sell it to you cured; you giving about twenty shillings
a bag for good cured fish. On dark nights, when there is no moon,
torches are used; but the tit-fish is got during the day-tides. Five
or six big tit-fish will fill a good-sized hand-basket. The labourers,
after fishing, can hardly keep awake, and sleep all over the boat in
every position.
Dri is an extraordinary sort of sea-slug; it moves very slowly, and
has hundreds of little suckers or legs. It seems to feed on the small
insects that live in the reef-sand, and very small fish. It has no
bone. It has the power of covering itself with sand, to hide its
whereabouts, and gives out a sort of gummy fluid, which makes the sand
stick to it. This is only correct with regard to the tit-fish. The
black-fish is not half the size of the other. The latter comes out only
in calm sunshiny weather. Let a shower come, or even dark clouds, and
hardly a slug will be got; it slips into holes in the rocks in no time.
It has one or two young ones at a time, and is very domestic; where you
find one, its mate is generally close by. Like many other favourite
delicacies, such as the oyster of Great Britain, the beche-de-mer has
been over-fished; and unless the government establish a close time the
employment of gathering it must cease to exist.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] Though in commerce the Beche-de-mer is called 'fish,' it belongs
to a family of invertebrate animals, and in consequence occupies a
comparatively low rank in the scale of life. This delicacy is also
termed trepang.
EDITORIAL NOTE.
Beginning another year, and again taking a short retrospect, we are
glad to announce to our readers that CHAMBERS'S JOURNAL continues to
increase in circulation, and is to all appearance more acceptable as
a Family Magazine than ever. This is encouraging. We feel satisfied
that the resolution to exclude wild sensational fiction from our
pages, however much that kind of literature may be in demand, has
met with very general approval. We shall accordingly, as in the past
twelve months, endeavour to sustain the reputation of the work on
the basis which secured for it a high meed of popular favour pretty
nearly half-a-century ago. We might be excused for indulging in
some exultation, that our small periodical, without adventitious
aid--without professing to lean upon great names, either as writers or
patrons--has so successfully kept its ground for so long a period of
time. But, while offering all proper acknowledgments for the esteem
in which the work is apparently held, content ourselves with saying
that now, as heretofore, no effort will be spared by the Editors of
CHAMBERS'S JOURNAL to maintain it as a weekly and monthly miscellany
of recreative and instructive literature--a literature as free from
political or sectarian bias as from aught that is morally objectionable.
* * * * *
Printed and Published by W. & R. CHAMBERS, 47 Paternoster Row, LONDON,
and 339 High Street, EDINBURGH.