Haw-Ho-Noo; Or, Records of a TouristLanman, Charles
History
Haw-Ho-Noo; Or, Records of a Tourist
Lanman, Charles
Fishing -- North America; United States -- Description and travel
If we were called upon to classify the Accomacians, we would divide them
into the gentry, the miscellaneous fraternity, and the slave population.
The gentry are a comparatively small class, but the principal
landholders of the district. They come of good old English families, and
are highly intelligent and well educated. The houses they occupy are
homely in appearance, but well supplied with all the substantials that
can add to the pleasures of country life. They seem to think more of
comfort than display, and are distinguished for their hospitality to
strangers. The miscellaneous fraternity to which we have alluded is more
extensive. A very large proportion of them obtain their living from the
sea, annually bringing up from its bed an immense quantity of oysters
and clams, which they sell to the fishermen of Philadelphia and New
York; but these fishermen not only send to market large numbers of fish,
but during the winter and autumn months they make a good deal of money
by killing waterfowl, which abound on all the shores of the peninsula.
The more legitimate fishermen of Accomac, who number between thirty and
forty voters, reside on the neighboring islands of Chingoteague and
Assateague. They are an exceedingly hardy, rude, and simple-hearted
race, and a little more at home on the water than on the land. The
dangers to which they wilfully expose themselves are truly astonishing,
and almost lead one to suppose that they are web-footed. We have been
told of one individual who, for the want of a boat, once swam a distance
of three miles in midwinter merely for the purpose of examining the
wreck of a brig which had been abandoned by its owners; and we have
heard of others who had been upset at sea, a distance of ten miles from
shore, but who have regained their mother earth with the ease and
carelessness of wild geese. In the miscellaneous fraternity may also be
included the mechanics of the country, and all such people as
stage-drivers, dram-shop keepers, peddlers, and other kindred birds.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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