their cry became audible, a small bell began
to tinkle from the steeple; the men, crying
"Matanza!" before they had fairly risen
from their knees, got up and hurried to
the shore; the women ran out of the church,
and the priest stopping in the middle of
his mass, advanced in his clerical robes to
the church door, looked abroad upon the
glossy surface of the sea, and exclaimed aloud
with great complacency, "Verily, a great
Matanza!" Whereupon he returned to the
altar, gabbled the rest of his mass rapidly to
empty benches, and then followed his
congregation to the beach.

Upon the beach the roar and bustle of
the people was enormous. A roomy bark
with high bulwarks—much larger than the
usual fisher-barks—was filling rapidly with
an excited crew, and in a few minutes was
rowed swiftly out of the harbour into the
bay. A little navy of small boats loaded
with people followed it. There was a stout,
sunburnt man at work upon the shore, who
held in his hand an iron pole strung with
counters, one of which he gave to each
fisherman as he embarked. Utterly ignorant
of the meaning of the hubbub, I shouted
"Matanza!" lustily with all the rest, and
jumped on board one of the boats.

"But," said I to a fisherman, as we were
skimming through the harbour, "who is
Matanza?"

The fisherman thought that I was half-
witted to be forty years old and not to know
what the Matanza was.

"Do you see yonder bark?"

"The fisher-boat with the little red flag at
the top; yes."

"The little red flag, sir, is the whole thing.
That is all we see. That is the watch-boat of
the Mandrague."

"But I do not know what the Mandrague
is."

The fisherman looked contemptuously at
me, and explained that it was the great
Tunny fish-net, spread in the bay.

"That must be a very great net," I
observed, "if we have all set out to haul it."
In reply I was informed by the fishermen
that their Mandrague was more than a mile
square, made of strong ropes, and fastened
by anchors. There was only one other like
it on the Ligurian coast, and that had been
set up near Albergo. On the coasts of
Sardinia and Sicily, where there is much tunny
caught, there are many Mandragues. They
are costly things. That of St. Hospice,
towards which we were rowing, is fastened
to the rocky bottom of the sea by nineteen
heavy ship anchors, nevertheless violent
under-currents or storms often rend off large
pieces of the net, or so entangle it that it
requires the hard labour of weeks to restore
it into proper trim. A rate amounting to
several thousand francs is paid to Government
for the privilege of erecting such a net,
while the repairs and refittings cost thousands
of francs, and even the cost of setting in and
hauling out entails an annual expense of some
few thousands of francs more. The little
fleet of boats with all their implements has
to be kept in order; watchmen have to be
paid, and there is a salary due to the head
fisherman by whom all the operations are
directed, who is generalissimo and commander
of the forces in the war of extermination
waged upon the fishes in those seas. The
establishment of a Mandrague, therefore, is a
financial speculation of considerable
magnitude, the result of which is very much in
the nature of a lottery. In one year rich prizes
fall into the net, in another year there is a run
of blanks. I quite believe that the Italians of
the coast might acquire some means of
prognosticating the movements of the fish; but,
except the general observation that the fish
come more to the coast in those years which
are remarkable also for the abounding of
cockchafers, they have taken no pains to
think at all upon the subject. When they
starve for want of fish, they live upon the
philosophical reflection—Patience! Perhaps
we shall have better luck next time.

If I may be allowed to wander for a minute
from the subject of the tunny fishery, I
should like to observe, that in the course of
my travelling through Italy, I acquired a
complete hatred of that word patience, as it
is there eternally abused into a pious mask
for laziness of mind. In the neighbourhood
of St. Hospice, near Beaulieu, the olive trees
had been affected for twelve years with "the
black disease," and during all that time had
borne no fruit. The trunks of trees so
diseased look as though they had been bestrewn
with charcoal powder, the branches seem to
be drenched in soot, and the under surface
of each leaf is covered with a smooth
powder that causes it to resemble a leaf cut
out of black velvet. The disease is, of course,
caused by the spreading of a parasitic
fungus; and, in that instance, must have been
doubly a disaster to the people, inasmuch as
the olive was, in that district, the only useful
product of the soil. "Have you not
attempted any cure?" I asked of a proprietor
who had been ruined by this blight. "What
if you were to besmear the trees thickly with
quick-lime, to break down all the rotten
boughs, and burn the diseased leaves?" "Ah,
Signor," said the poor man, poor in heart as
in pocket, "that would cost much labour.
We must have patience; better days may
come. We must be patient, Signor."

I was taken one day into the garden of a
neighbour, and shown the millions of
caterpillars that were eating his artichokes—they
were the caterpillars of The Painted Lady—
and the field was separated only by a dry
ditch from another, still healthy and in full
growth. "My friend," I said to the careworn
proprietor, "I would advise you to prevent
this plague from spreading. You should lose
no time in pumping the ditch full of water;