He was a dark complexioned, foreign looking man, with gold rings in
his ears, which he said enabled him to look through the wind "ohn
his een watered." Unlike most of his fellows, he was a sober and
indeed thoughtful man, ready to listen to the voice of reason from
any quarter; they were, in general, men of hardihood and courage,
encountering as a mere matter of course such perilous weather as
the fishers on a great part of our coasts would have declined to
meet, and during the fishing season were diligent in their calling,
and made a good deal of money; but when the weather was such that
they could not go to sea, when their nets were in order, and nothing
special requiring to be done, they would have bouts of hard drinking,
and spend a great portion of what ought to have been their provision
for the winter.
Their women were in general coarse in manners and rude in speech;
often of great strength and courage, and of strongly marked
character. They were almost invariably the daughters of fishermen,
for a wife taken from among the rural population would have been
all but useless in regard of the peculiar duties required of her.
If these were less dangerous than those of their husbands, they
were quite as laborious, and less interesting. The most severe
consisted in carrying the fish into the country for sale, in
a huge creel or basket, which when full was sometimes more than a
man could lift to place on the woman's back. With this burden, kept
in its place by a band across her chest, she would walk as many as
twenty miles, arriving at some inland town early in the forenoon,
in time to dispose of her fish for the requirements of the day.
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