Free Negros
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SEPTEMBER 28, 1861.] HARPER'S WEEKLY. 621 A NIGHT HAUL.(Previous Page) and the labor during an active season of six weeks or two months is equal to that of a brisk military campaign in face of an enemy. Yet the free negroes of Chowan and the neighboring counties engage in it in preference to any other business ; and although utterly indolent and worthless for other occupations, resort to the fishing beach as to an annual festival. The season on the Albemarle Sound lasts from about the 15th of March to the middle of May ; and during that time the public mind is occupied with the subject to the exclusion even of politics. It costs from five to ten thousand dollars to establish a fishery, and formerly the investment would often return cent. per cent., without counting the incidental advantages of salt-fish provision for an estate, and the enrichment of the land from the offal at the beaches. It was not uncommon to take a hundred thousand herrings, and sometimes as many as half a million, at a haul ; at present a few hundred shad and five thousand herring are considered a good average. Thirty thousand was the largest number I saw taken at once. Among the refuse fish the most common are sturgeon, rock-cats, trout, perch, mullet, gar, gizzard, shad, bug fish, hog-choke (or flounder), lampreys, and common eels. The four first-mentioned species are good for the table ; the rest fit for nothing but manure. The rock-fish (striped bass) taken here are very fine and very numerous. It is not uncommon to see them of over a hundred pounds' weight ; and I was credibly informed that, some years ago, a fishery near Edenton took twenty thousand rock, of large average size, at a single haul. It was impossible to land such a mass at once; but after (Next Page) HEADING HERRING. |
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