To the great majority of people, Carrigeen, under the more familiar
name of Irish Moss, is known chiefly as the basis of a pleasant and
wholesome drink for the sick room, or as an article of use in the
preparation of delicacies for the table. Comparatively few are aware
of its wide and varied use in the arts, or that the thousands of
barrels of it employed annually by our manufacturers of paper, cloth,
felt, and straw hats, etc., and by brewers, is not an Irish, but an
American product, and, speaking strictly, is not a moss but a seaweed.
Carrigeen (_chondrus crispus_) is to be found more or less abundantly
all along our northern coast, ranging between the low water line
and the depth of forty feet, or so; but as a rule its fronds, which
correspond to the leaves of air plants, are so numerously inhabited by
small mollusca that they are spoiled for other use. The clean-growing
article seems to be limited almost wholly to certain ledges in the
neighborhood of Scituate, Mass.--a section of coast guarded by the
celebrated Minot Ledge Lighthouse, and famous for its danger to
shipping. Here, where the waves of the Atlantic dash with full force
upon the rocky coast, the carrigeen grows to perfection; and wherever
it escapes the spawn of mussels and other shellfish, is gathered
during the summer season in vast quantities.
The harvest begins in May and ends about the first of September. The
gathering is made in two ways--by hand-picking during exceptionally
low tides, and by means of long-handled iron-toothed rakes at ordinary
tides. Of course the work cannot be carried on except during fair
weather. Hand-pulling is possible only during the bi-monthly periods
of spring tides, that is, when the moon is full and again at new moon.
At such times high tide occurs about midday and midnight, and the
ledges are exposed for moss gathering morning and evening. The
mossers' boats are rowed to the rocks where the finest grades abound,
and the gatherers select with great care the growths that are freest
from minute shells and other foreign matter. This portion of the crop,
if properly handled afterwards, generally goes to the apothecary and
fetches a price two or three times that of the common grade.
As the tide rises the pickers are driven to their boats, and proceed
to the outer moss-bearing rocks where the rake is used, as it also is
during ordinary low tides. Moss taken in this way is not so clean as
the hand-picked, and is always mixed with tape grass, which must be
removed during the process of curing and packing.
The curing of the moss is the most critical part of this peculiar
farming. On being brought to the shore the moss is black and
unsightly; it must be bleached as well as dried. The bleaching is
effected by repeated wetting and drying in the sun; and as the moss
is readily soluble in fresh water the bleaching beds are situated
near the banks of the salt creeks that abound along the shore. After
drying, the moss is packed in tubs and rolled to the water, where it
is thoroughly washed, then rolled back to the bleaching bed, to
be dried again in the sun. Five or six such exposures are usually
sufficient. On the bleaching ground, the moss is carefully spread
and turned, and watchfully guarded against wetting by rain. In this
process it turns from black to red, then to the yellowish-white of the
perfected article. When properly cured the moss is stored in bulk,
in shanties; where, as time permits, it is picked over and packed in
barrels. The crop averages about half a million pounds a year; and
thanks to the brighter and more abundant sunshine of our coast, the
moss has a brighter color and is of finer quality than the Irish
product.
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