Codfish

“ A man may successfully cope with the wild and fierce codfish in his native jungle, or beard the salt water clam in his den, and still signally fail as an Indian agent. The codfish is not treacherous. He may be bold, blood-thirsty and terrible, but he will never go back on a treaty. Who ever heard of a codfish going back on his word? Who ever heard of a codfish leaving the Reservation and spreading desolation over the land? No one. The expression on the face of a codfish shows that he is perfectly open and above board. ”

“ A great deal of codfish in these days is sent to the market without either skin or bone. Supposing we have the regulation dried codfish, we skin and bone it, then soak it over night in cold water, and next morning put it over the fire in more cold water, plenty of it, and put the kettle or pan containing the fish and the cold water on the back part of the stove, where it will heat very gradually. Do not let it boil at all, but keep it at a scalding heat. Do not more than let it simmer. The effect of the boiling on any salted fibre, whether it is fish or meat, is simply to harden it. ”

“ Yet, as great shoals of codfish frequent the cold waters of the north shore of the Gulf, just as soon as the frozen sea permits it in spring, swarms of fishing craft, of all sizes, from all the Newfoundland coasts, and even from as far south as Gloucester, push their way “down North” in pursuit of the finny harvest. ”

“ At Percé the two-wheel cart is a beach character. Sometimes “le cheval”, but just as often “le boeuf”, comes swinging along over the beach shingles and sand with the cart for codfish heads. Nowhere but among coastal folk is the codfish head either available or prized as garden fertilizer. Tradition says that our forefathers learned the value of the buried codfish as fertilizer from the Indians. The fish-guano of trade is ground into a powder. But old-timers of the seacoast let nature do her own pulverizing. ”

“ Perhaps it would not be deemed an insult by the majority of our readers, if we inform them that while codfish are generally taken with long lines armed with hundreds and sometimes with thousands of hooks, herrings are caught with nets suspended in the sea by bladders which drift along between the herring-boats. The open meshes are the herrings’ trap, in which those that are caught get hung by their gills. ”

“ The codfish has a great wealth of glad, unfettered smile. When he laughs at anything, he has that same wide waste of mirth and back teeth that Mr. Talmage has. The Wyoming codfish is generally dead. Death, in most cases, is the result of exposure and loss of appetite. No one can look at the codfish of commerce, and not shed a tear. Far from home, with his system filled with salt, while his internal economy is gone, there is an air of sadness and homesickness and briny hopelessness about him that no one can see unmoved. ”

“ The largest and best are caught on the “Banks” or in the deep waters off the Eastern coast. Some are sold whole and others are deprived of the back bone. Codfish is also prepared for market by being boned, skinned, trimmed, and even shredded. ”

“ These flakes are formed by rough supports made of fir poles covered with branches of fir-trees. Each codfish is split, salted and laid open on these flakes. It takes six weeks of exposure to cure the fish, and there is a good deal of labour involved. Each morning the cod must be laid out on the flake. Each evening it must be gathered in, stacked and covered with bark, to which stones are attached to keep it down. This fish is then exported to Roman Catholic countries like Spain, Brazil, Portugal, Austria and Italy, where it forms the staple of food for the poorer population on fast days. ”

“ But in talking of dried fish, we must not forget our old favorite, creamed codfish. As the boxed codfish is always so salty, it is necessary, after picking it carefully apart and removing the bones, to let it soak in cold water for half an hour, then drain. Put half a cupful of fish on in a stewpan, cover with cold water and let come to a boil. Pour this off immediately, cover with fresh boiling water, and let gently simmer for ten minutes. While it is cooking, our small maid should rub to a smooth paste one tablespoon of flour and one tablespoon of butter. ”

“ It is no uncommon thing to find five or six—nay, even ten or twelve—herrings in the stomach of a codfish, [10] and in 1863 we calculated that the whole take of the great Scotch herring-fisheries is less than the number of herrings which would in all probability have been consumed by the codfish captured in the same waters if they had been left in the sea. [11]
Man, in fact, is but one of a vast coöperative society of herring catchers, and, the larger the share he takes, the less there is for the rest of the company. ”

“ Connoisseurs pronounce this cod remarkably fine, firm, and white, and as neither hake nor haddock are ever found there, the Killisnoo codfish is not open to the same suspicions as rest on so many Eastern fish. They average in weight from three to five pounds, and the Indians are provided with boats 248and paid two cents apiece for every codfish caught. A difficulty in the way of drying in the open air in this moist climate has been solved by building a drying-house, where the process is accomplished artificially. ”

“ The Codfish.—While most fishes produce eggs in great numbers, the cod is especially remarkable in this respect, a single female depositing annually eight or nine millions. The liability of destruction of the ova and young is perhaps at its maximum here, there being many natural enemies and very slight means of defense. ”

“ As a rule, nests or nurseries are unknown in the world of fishes. They lay their eggs and leave them; and the young ones have to fight their own battles, in a sea full of fierce and hungry enemies. Indeed, it often happens that a parent fish is eager to make a meal of its own children!
The Codfish lays about nine million eggs! You would hardly expect the female Codfish to make a nursery for such a family! She would be much worse off than the "old woman who lived in a shoe." As a matter of fact, the eggs are laid in the open sea ”

“ Stiffness in a cod, or in any other fish, is a sure sign of freshness, though not always of quality. Sometimes codfish, though exhibiting signs of rough usage, will eat much better than those with red gills, so strongly recommended by many cookery-books. This appearance is generally caused by the fish having been knocked about at sea, in the well-boats, in which they are conveyed from the fishing-grounds to market. ”

“ Before opening the campaign in Canada, let us, for a moment, step ashore in what our author styles the fishiest of modern capitals, St John's, Newfoundland. Here codfish are the one thing universal; acres of sheds roofed with cod, laid out to dry, boats fishing for cod, ships loading with it, fields manured with it, and, best of all, fortunes made by it. The accomplishments of the daughter, the education of the son, the finery of the mother, the comforts of the father, [465] all are paid for with this profitable fish. The population subsist upon it ”

“ As both codfish and herrings seek the shores in spawning time, it is more than likely that we catch them at the very time when we ought to leave them busily engaged in reproduction. The common assumption under which the fishery is at present conducted seems to be that there always were and always will be “as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it.” In future we must act with greater wisdom than this. It is not fair to lay all the blame upon the poor trawlers. They only follow the general opinion, that everything is fair in fishing. ”

“ Take a nice live codfish of about six pounds, cut the head off and remove all the bones, then cut the fish into square pieces, place them in a bowl, and add half a pinch of salt and a pint of cold water so as to have the flesh firm. Take the head and bones, place them in a saucepan with two quarts of white broth (No. 99) on the stove, and as soon as it comes to a boil, skim it well. ”

“ There by great good luck he ran into the Doctor, who had come from St. Anthony in his little steamer the Strathcona.
"You can catch codfish with a hook and line," explained the Doctor, "but it would take too long for the fishermen who have to get their living from the sea.
"Most of the time they use a great big net, called a 'cod-trap.'
"It's like a room of network without a roof. It has a door, and the cod are steered in at the door by another net which reaches from the cod-trap to the rocks." ”

“ It is not always equally good, however, because much of the "live cod" is really live hake, which is far inferior in Flavor. The substitution of haddock for cod is less objectionable. Much of the salted and dried fish which goes into the typically American codfish balls, is also cod in name only. Dealers who use benzoate of soda or other chemicals to preserve it, give elaborate directions for soaking them out. ”

“ It is a compound of oxygen, nitrogen and fish, mostly very ripe fish. One has to breathe cod, and eat it, and quintals are the only subjects of conversation. Codfish of assorted sizes flop up in one's dreams. Last night one of them, about the length of a whale, apparently mistook me for a squid, or some such horrid thing, and was in the very act of swallowing me when I awoke. I'm afraid, Daddy dear, that the fresh air of Sweetapple Cove is a dreadful fiction. ”

“ Codfish balls. Soak one pound of salt codfish in cold water over night. Then boil in fresh water for ten minutes. Boil two potatoes in salt water and strain through colander or sieve. Shred the codfish very fine and mix with the potato and the yolks of three eggs working well together. Allow to become cool, form into balls, roll in flour and fry in melted butter until nice and golden yellow. Serve on napkins with quartered lemons and parsley in branches. ”

“ It is deeply to be regretted that this noble river should exist at such a distance from the capital as to be unavailable. During our stay on the Pondebadgery Plain, the men caught a number of codfish, as they are generally termed, but which are, in reality, a species of perch. ”

“ We have on many occasions seen as much as half a ton weight of fish drawn from Murray lagoons at one haul, consisting of cod, perch (golden and silver) , cat-fish, black fish, and turtle. It is quite a sight to see them all tumbling and jumping about on the grass. Codfish from fifty pounds down to two, and perch from ten pounds down to the same minimum, the large mesh of the net precluding the landing of lesser fish, unless on very rare occasions ”

“ Heat two ounces of butter in a sauté pan; add two slices of fresh codfish cut about one and one-half inches thick, and one sliced onion. Season with salt and pepper, and simmer until the fish is done. Then remove the fish to a platter; sprinkle a spoonful of flour in the pan, heat through, add one-half glass of white wine, and boil for a few minutes. Then add one cup of hot milk and one-half cup of fish broth, and boil for ten minutes. Season with salt and pepper, add a little chopped parsley and a chopped hard-boiled egg and the juice of a lemon, and pour over the fish. Serve hot. ”

“ There seemed to be no idlers about, to reprove; the occasional lounger on the skeleton wharves was in his Sunday clothes, and therefore within the statute. No one, probably, would have thought of rowing out beyond the island to fish for cod,—although, as that fish is ready to bite, and his associations are more or less sacred, there might be excuses for angling for him on Sunday, when it would be wicked to throw a line for another sort of fish. My earliest recollections are of the codfish on the meeting-house spires in New England,—his sacred tail pointing the way the wind went. ”

“ It is stated that there are more animals in the milt of a single codfish than there are men in the world; and that one grain of sand is larger than four millions of these animals! each of which must be possessed of life germs of an equal amount, which would grow up as it grew to maturity. ”

“ In summer they get the eggs and the fresh meat of the young birds, which they also salt for the winter. The feathers form their chief article of export, besides dried and salted codfish, and with these they procure their few necessaries and luxuries, consisting principally of clothing, tobacco and snuff, spirits, fish-hooks and lines, and salt. As there is no peat on these islands, nor dried fish-bones in sufficient quantity, they also make use of the tough old sea-birds as fuel. ”

“ One might think the seals would be wiped out by such methods, but the herd does not decrease and remains at about one million from year to year. The seals live largely on codfish, each one eating an average of four every day. The estimated consumption of cod by the seals is fourteen times greater than the number caught by the fishermen. ”

“ Made a drawing of the Arctic Tern, of which a great number breed here. I am of Temminck's opinion that the upper plumage of this species is much darker than that of S. hirundo. The young men, who are always ready for sport, caught a hundred codfish in half an hour, and somewhere secured three fine salmon, one of which we sent to the "Gulnare" with some cod. Our harbor is called "American Harbor," and also "Little Natasquan;" it is in latitude 50° 12' north, longitude 23° east of Quebec and 61° 53 west of Greenwich. ”

“ Codfish, flounders, crabs, clams and mussels, and dog fish in such great numbers that 5,000 have recently been caught with hooks by four men within twenty-four hours for the Skidegate Oil Company. The natives have extracted their oil for many years by throwing heated stones into hollowed logs, filled with dog fish livers. ”