The dangers that are to be encountered, and the laborious efforts
that must be made for subsistence at home, train the Frieslander of
the marshes and islands for the perils of the deep, which we find
him encountering with a brave and dogged resolution. The islanders,
especially, are constantly engaged in the whale and other fisheries.
In the islands visited by Mr Kohl, the greater number of the men
were far away on the seas, and their wives and daughters conducting
the business of their several callings; some tending cattle, some
spinning, others manufacturing gloves. Seals abound upon the coast,
and are caught by sundry ingenious devices. A fisher disguises
himself in a seal-skin, and travels up to a troop of these sea
monsters, imitating, as far as he is able, their singular movements
and contortions. When, fairly amongst them, he lifts the gun which
has been concealed beneath his body, and shoots amongst the herd.
If discovered asleep a seal is sure to be caught, for his slumbers
are sound. Conscious of his weakness, _Phoca_ stations a patrol at
some little distance from his couch, and an alarm is given as soon
as any man appears. At certain seasons of the year vast flocks of
ducks light upon the islands, and are caught chiefly by the aid of
tame decoy-birds, who mislead the others into extensive nets spread
for the visitors. One duck-decoyer will catch twenty thousand birds
in the course of a summer; the soft down obtained from the breast of
one species is the _eider down_. The season begins in September and
lasts till Christmas. Hamburg beef is due to the localities we speak
of. One of the large meadow districts already mentioned, is said
to fatten eight thousand head of oxen yearly, who, at their death,
bequeath to the world the far-famed dainty.
The islands visited by our author are those lying in that part
of the North Sea which the Danes call _Vesterhafet_, or the
western harbour, and which extends close to the shores from the
mouth of the Elbe to Jutland. Of these the most noted are Syltoe,
Foehr, Amrum, Romoe, and Pelvorn. Around them lie many excellent
oyster-beds--royal property, and yielding an annual income of twenty
thousand dollars. The people inhabiting these islands are said to be
of Friesic origin: they certainly were colonists from Holland, and
they still exhibit many peculiarities of the ancient Friesic stock.
They are clean, neat, simple, honest, and moral. Few establishments
for the punishment of culprits are to be found either in the islands
or on the marshes. As late as the fifteenth and sixteenth century,
in cases of homicide the accused was doomed to walk over twelve
burning ploughshares. Great crimes seem unknown to-day; and the
practice of leaving house-doors unbarred and unlocked upon the wide
and desolate marshes, testifies not a little to the general honesty
of the people.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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