This little town, with its high gray walls, is very important. In olden days its possession was disputed by many a valiant captain. The fortress called the 'Ville Close' has been sacrificed since then to military usage. The walls of granite, which are very thick, are pierced by three gates, doubled by bastions and flanked by machicolated towers. At each high tide the sea surrounds the fortress. Tradition tells us that on one occasion at the FÊte Dieu the floods retired to make way for a religious procession of children and clergy, with golden banners and crosses, in order that they might make the complete tour of the ramparts. This fortress, a little city in itself, is joined to Concarneau by a bridge, and it is on the farther side that industry and animation are to be found. There is a fair-sized port, where hundreds of sardine-boats are moored, their red and gray nets hanging on their masts.

The activity of the port is due to the sardines, and its prosperity is dependent on the abundance of the fish. Towards the month of June the sardines arrive in great shoals on the coast of Brittany. For some time no one knew whence they came or whither they went. An approximate idea of their journeyings has now been gained. Their route, it seems, is invariable. During March and April the sardines appear on the coasts of the Adriatic and the Mediterranean; they pass through the Straits of Gibraltar, skirting Spain and Portugal; they reach France in May. In June they are to be found on the coast of Morbihan and Concarneau, in August in the Bay of DouarnÉnez, in September by the Isle de Batz, and later in England or in Scotland.

It is to be hoped that the fish will always abound about the coast of Concarneau. The women population is engaged in industries connected with sardines. The making and mending of the nets and the preparation and packing of the fish are in themselves a labour employing many women. When the sardines have been unloaded from the ships, they are brought to the large warehouses on the quay and submitted to the various processes of cleaning and drying. Rows of women sit at long deal tables cutting off the heads of the fish, and singing at their work. The fish are then cleaned of the salt which the fishermen threw on them, and dried in the open air on iron grills. During this time other workmen are employed in boiling oil in iron basins. The sardines, once dried, are plunged into the oil for about two minutes, sufficient to cook them, and are afterwards dried in the sun. They are then placed in small tin boxes, half-filled with oil, which are taken to be soldered. The solderers, armed with irons at white heat, hermetically close the boxes, which are then ready to be delivered to the trade. This simple process is quite modern; it was instituted at the end of the last century. The nets, which cost the fishermen thirty francs, take thirty days to make. The machine-made nets are less expensive; but it is said that they are not sufficiently elastic, and the meshes enlarged by the weight of fish do not readily close up again.

Each sardine-boat is manned by four or five men armed with an assortment of nets. The bait consists of the intestines of a certain kind of fish. The fishermen plunge their arms up to the elbow in the loathsome mixture, seizing handfuls to throw into the water. If the sardines take to the bait, one soon sees the water on either side of the vessel white and gray with the scales of the fish. Then the men begin to draw in the nets. Two of them seize the ends and pull horizontally through the water; the others unfasten the heads of the fish caught in the meshes. The sardines are tumbled into the bottom of the boat, and sprinkled with salt.

The sardines, delicate creatures, die in the air in a few seconds. In dying they make a noise very like the cry of a mouse.

After the first haul the fishermen have some idea of the dimensions of the fish, and adjust the mesh of their nets,—for the sardines vary in size from one day to another according to the shoals on which the fishermen chance.