In the pre-railway era, most of the fishermen along the east coast of Fife (at Buckhaven, Cellardyke, St. Monance, and Pittenweem), as also the fishermen along the south coast (North Bewick, Dunbar, Eyemouth, and Burnmouth), used to carry their catchings of white fish to villages up the Firth of Forth, and dispose of them to cadgers and creel-hawkers, who had the retail trade of Edinburgh and Leith in their own hands. These persons distributed themselves over the country in order to dispose of their fish, and some of them would return with farm-produce in its place. The profits realised from thus retailing the produce of fishermen belonging to distant villages enabled those who resided on firths bordering the large towns and cities quietly to lie on their oars. Railways having given facilities to the east coast of Fife fishers, as well as those on the opposite coast, to send their produce to market from their own respective villages, and a new class of traders having arisen—viz. fishmongers having retail shops—the creel-hawking trade is now fast declining, and as a following result so also must be the material wealth of the villages that were in a great measure dependent upon it. In fact, railways have quite revolutionised the fish trade. There are a few females, formerly creel-hawkers, who continue still to act as retailers of fish. But many of them have taken shops, and others stalls in retail markets, and attend the wholesale market regularly to purchase their supplies. These retail dealers in fish do remarkably well; but those who still continue to hawk about a few haddocks or whitings when they can be procured find that creel-hawking is but a precarious trade. I will now carry the reader with me to a very quaint place indeed, the scene of Sir Walter Scott’s novel of _The Antiquary_—Auchmithie; and then on to Fittie, at Aberdeen—another fishing quarter of great originality: we will go in the steamer. Steamboat travelling has been in some degree superseded by the railway carriage; but to tourists going to Inverness or Thurso the steamer has its attractions. It is preferable to the railroad when the time occupied in the journey is not an object. On board a fine steamboat one has opportunities to study character, and there are always a few characters on board a coasting steam-vessel. And going north from Edinburgh the coast is interesting. The steamer may pass the Anster or Dunbar herring-fleet. “Up the waters steerin’, The boats are thick and thrang; Aboon the Bass they’re bearin’, They’ll shoot their nets ere lang. “The morn, like siller glancin’, They’ll haul them han’ to han’; Syne doon the water dancin’, Come hame wi’ sixty cran.”