William Radcliffe

CHAPTER XLIII
“PLUS UN PAYS PRODUIT DES POISSONS,
PLUS IL PRODUIT D’HOMMES”

If the above dictum[1094] and Williams’s statement that “in no country, except Japan, is so much food derived from the water,”[1095] be accurate, modern China should lack not folk nor food. Every method of fishing obtains in one part of the country or other, and scarce a sea or stream exists unvexed by some piscatorial implement.

“Fish are killed by the spear, caught with the hook, scraped up by the dredge, ensnared in traps, and captured by nets: they are decoyed to jump into boats by painted boards, and frightened into nets by noisy ones, taken out of the water by lifting nets, and dived in for by birds, for the cormorant seizes what his owner can not easily reach.”[1096]

This description, minus the cormorant but plus leistering, applies fairly well to Ancient China. Mr. Werner’s great work discloses no distinct mention of fishing previous to 1122 b.c., although the present to a Viceroy of “cuttle fish condiment” apparently implies it. From that date the Spear, the Net, the Line, the Rod, and divers strange devices figure frequently and historically.[1097] In the earlier centuries covered by this period, if the Line claimed adherents,[1098] Nets made of fine bamboo, with bags arranged in front of wooden stockades planted on the banks of rivers,[1099] were the general method.[1100]

Although the Chinese have produced quite a considerable literature on Fishing, the path of a writer unversed in their language is, from the absence of translations, compassed about with many difficulties. The trail winds dim and Serbonian, even if, as was my good fortune, a friendly hand holds out now and then a torch to guide his faltering steps.[1101]

The dividing line between the historical and the non-historical in China does not cut clearly and without breaks. History as distinct from legend was assumed till recently to begin between 900 and 800 b.c., but three archÆological discoveries have affected previous chronological conceptions.

1. The inscribed bone fragments (till the advent of paper, c. 100 b.c., bones, stones, bronzes and tablets of wood served for papyri) found in Honan apparently carry as far back as c. 1500 b.c., and shed quite new light on the character of the early Chinese script. Among the divination tablets I had hoped for some fish omens similar to those of Assyria, Greece, and Rome, or some trace of the belief still current in Southern China that certain fish, as the Dolphin in the Mediterranean, were weather-prophets: but, owing probably to the dry character of the country of which they are the voice or rather the testament, none survive.[1102]

2. The wooden tablets at Tunhuang along the Great Wall which illumine social conditions and deal largely with the commissariat of the army.

3. The MSS. at the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas, found about 1907. Coming from a Buddhist monastery, they give in the main Buddhist texts, but also (as do the Egyptian Papyri) many quite new excerpts from lost writers, in addition to accounts, etc.[1103]

A goodly store of stories and descriptions of prehistoric Fishing and Fishers exists in ancient and modern works.

The statement that “Fishermen used the silk from the cocoon for their lines, a piece of sharpened iron for their hook, thorn-stick for their rod, and split grain for their bait”[1104] carries us back to an age very early and indefinite. On asking a high Sinitic authority what was the date of the Emperor in whose reign this tackle was employed, he rapped out, “Date! What was Adam’s date?”

The use of gut was familiar at any rate about the fourth century b.c., judging from the sentence in Lieh Tzu: “By making a line of cocoon silk, a hook of a sharp needle, a rod of a branch of bramble or dwarf bamboo, and using a grain of cooked rice as bait, one can catch a whole cartload of fish.”[1105]

Angling as a pastime must have secured the Imperial favour in early ages, as its metaphorical use by Sung YÜ, fourth century b.c., indicates. “In the golden age,” he tells us, “the Emperors were fishers of men, using sages as their rod, the true doctrine as their line, charity of heart and duty to one’s neighbour as their bait, the world being their fishing ground, and the people their fishes.”

Strolling down the lane of Time, we meet (c. 1122 b.c.) with Chiang Tzu-ya, the first statesman to recognise the importance of fishing, and its allied industry, the manufacture of salt.[1106]

The tale—not of Chiang’s rise from a very lowly station to governance of a great Empire, for history furnishes many parallels—but of his Angling is morally edifying, piscatorially instructive, and is possibly responsible for the rise in Great Britain and America of the barbless school of anglers. As yet its pupils, despite the missionary zeal of Mr. Rhead, are scattered few and far between. The limitation of their numbers can doubtless be ascribed to their introspective and becoming fear lest the “real attraction,” which, according to a Chinese classic, was in our hero’s case not his straight iron but his innate virtue, should with them, either from sparsity or lowness of power, lack the requisite magnetism!

But retournons À nos poissons! King WÊn, the founder of the Chou Dynasty, and one of the great sages—whence, perhaps, his intelligent annexation of Chiang, for all Anglers ex necessitate are, or should be, also sages—comes across our hero fishing with a piece of straight iron instead of a barbed hook. This tackle, he explains to the unrecognised monarch, is based on principles dear to our Conscientious Objectors, viz. voluntaryism—“for only volunteers would suffer themselves to be caught thuswise”—and of mercy—“since it gave all those who wished a chance of escape.”

WÊn, from his many campaigns, observed much and missed little. He noticed the full creel. Thence, as a Sage would, deduced that since a virtuous man’s wants are always satisfied, Chiang must be just such a man. He felt instinctively that here indeed was the statesman whom his grandsire—observe the ancestor-reverence!—would have selected. So without more ado or any references as to character, WÊn carried Chiang off, whether with or without the full creel history deigns no word, to his palace, installed him as Viceroy, and ever after termed him “my Grandfather’s Desire,” a sobriquet which, however well meant, our philosophic piscator—he was only eighty when caught straight-ironing—must at times have resented.[1107]

Not dissimilar in method if unlike in emolument, stands out the historical (for he shone in the eighth century a.d.) Chang Chih-ho, that “glittering example of humorous romantic detachment and carelessness of public opinion, who spent his time in angling, but used no baits, as his object was not to catch fish.”[1108]

But the greatest Sage of them all, Confucius, whose philosophy has for 2400 years permeated, perhaps even dominated, public polity and private action, was not as one of these. Humane, practical, and a sportsman, “The Master angled, but did not use a net: he shot, but not at birds perching,” which Legge[1109] in a note kindly expands into “Confucius would only destroy what life was necessary to him!” Since netting in his era (c. 500 b.c.), as now, held the field, or rather the water, the touch of the philosopher’s sole device being the rod implies a compliment, confirmed by the context, to his humane sportsmanship.

To Mr. Yen’s statement as to the importance of fish, marine or fresh-water, as a staple of subsistence in China can be added the evidence as regards ancient times collated by Werner,[1110] later times by Du Halde,[1111] and modern times by Williams,[1112] Gray,[1113] and Dabry de Thiersant.[1114] While they agree with the rest of the world in the economic necessity of fisheries, the people, and especially the epicures of China, differ profoundly from the European or American in ichthyic appreciation.

As the Greeks and Latins at times saw not eye to eye as to the palatal primacy of certain fishes, the people of the Middle Kingdom eat not, and never ate, tooth to tooth with those of the West. To the Sinitic opsophagist his salmon, indeed most of the deep sea fishes, appeals not at all.

“We delight,” says Mr. Yen, “in eating those of the finny tribe whose meat is soft and fine, and they are caught for the most part in rivers, brooks, lakes, ponds, and the surface of the ocean. On the other hand, there are products of the sea which are regarded by us as delicacies of the table, but which have little or no consumption in the West. Just to mention a few well-known ones, the fins of the shark,[1115] the bÊche-de-mer, the cuttlefish, the jellyfish, and the scollop form important articles of domestic commerce, but are not bought or sold to any extent in the West.”[1116]

The cuttlefish as a dining delicacy appealed to very early palates. The Records of Chou recount that on the appointment of Yi Yin to Viceroyalty, T’ang “bestowed—could he do more?—on him cuttlefish condiment.”[1117]

In China, as elsewhere, the priority of fishing implement furnishes a problem not easy of solution. Professor Giles’s statement that “it is clear the net preceded the hook” demands for its gainsaying a knowledge equal, if possible, to his, and, in addition, more than triple brass. Mr. Yen, in his “our ancient classics refer to a time when our primitive ancestors tied ropes together to form fishing nets,” seemingly confirms Giles. Legge is uncommittal: “they fished with the line, but the ordinary method was with the net.”[1118]

Search in the great Chinese EncyclopÆdia endorses the precedence of the Net over the Rod, but not by overwhelming length of time. Its first reference to the former comes from the I Ching or Book of Changes, which may date from the eleventh century b.c.; to the latter from the Shih Ching or Book of Odes, which apparently ranges from the eleventh to the seventh century b.c.

This last passage runs—“What are used in Angling? Silk threads formed into lines. The son of the reverent Marquis and the grand-daughter of tranquil King.” The startling identification of the silk threads with a son of a reverent Marquis and a grand-daughter of a King of Peace (according to another translation) shows that in the matter and measure of his metaphors in the millennium preceding the Christian era the Turanian was far from played out.

Fortunately our deus ex machina Prof. Legge again comes to our aid by his assurance that “the allusion to silk threads twisted into fishing lines would seem simply to be to the marriage of the princess and the young noble—not to the lady’s holding fast of wifely ways to complete the virtues of reverence and harmony.”[1119] Another interpretation—“the metaphor indicates that the union of man and wife, like the silk twisted into fishing lines, is a lasting one”—recks not of post-war divorce courts, or post-war tackle.

The next reference in the Shih Ching strikes a sad note. Unless we knew that it was not the grand-daughter of the peaceful King, we might almost fancy we hear the heroine of the silk-line boast bewailing her virginal home.

“With your long and tapering[1120] bamboo rods you angle in the Ch’i” (a river in Honan). “How should I not think of you? But I am too far away to reach you. When a maiden leaves her home to be married, her parents and brethren are left behind. Calmly flows the current of the Ch’i. There are oars of cypress and boats of pine. Would that I might drive thither and rid me of my sorrow.”

The third reference strikes also a note of sadness, caused now by the absence of a husband. “When he went a-hunting, I put the bow in the case for him. When he went a-fishing, I arranged his line for him. What did he take in Angling? Bream and tench—bream and tench, while the people looked on to see.”[1121]

Angling appears in the Mu t’ien tzu chuan, a work assigned to the tenth century b.c., but probably of much later date. “The pith of the ti, tied half-way up the fishing-line,” about 500 b.c. took the place of our modern float: the moment the Angler “saw it sink, he knew a fish was on.”[1122]

In the first century before and after the Christian era the germ of Imperial ostentation and extravagance in tackle raged virulently. Spreading, if not from China to Peru, at any rate like silk[1123] from China to Rome, it claimed among its victims the Emperor Nero and the Emperor Wu of the Han dynasty. The bacillus found the better host in Nero, who[1124] fished with golden nets drawn by purple ropes, while his brother of Asia confined himself to angling from a boat with a hook of pure gold, a line of white silk, and red carp for a lure.[1125]

But the commonality of one State, at any rate, ran no bad second to the Imperial pair. “The people of Lu,” we read, “were fond of fishing: they used cinnamon bark for bait, forged gold for hooks, which were variegated with silver or green colours, while their fishing line was ornamented with the feathers of the turquoise kingfisher.”[1126] Here perhaps, as the bird lives on fish, we can detect a conscious or unconscious touch of homoeopathic magic.

Lures such as the natural or artificial fly obtain no record: even now the Chinese and Japanese try most things before an artificial fly. The baits consisted of worms, grain, fish, meat, and cassia. The latter aromatic herb recalls the anglers of Oppian and Pliny, who believed in the attraction of fish by the sense of smell.[1127]

In their unusual baits our authors suggest their confrÈres of Greece and Rome. Thus in size of prey, and similarity of bait, the author of the K’ung ts’ung tzu and Herodotus coincide. As the former lived not two centuries later than the Father of History, the tip had possibly just reached China from Egypt—“from Africa comes ever something new”—viz. the chine of a porker for a crocodile.

The story runs that Tzu-ssu, a grandson of Confucius, witnessed the landing from the Yellow River of a fish “as big as a cart.” The fishermen had baited first with bream, but as the monster, like the law, de minimis non curavit, they substituted half a sucking pig with instantaneous success.

But the bait handed down to us by Chuang Tzu (fourth century b.c.), if it faintly recall, completely eclipses “the lungs of a wild bull,” which Ælian recommended for the capture of the Silurus, in that it was no less an one than “fifty whole oxen!”[1128]

As a producer and as a user of Nets, China ranked and ranks perhaps higher than any country. The number and variety of Nets in Julius Pollux can well be matched, while the Oppianic opulence of

meets its peer, if not its superior in Scarth, Gray, or Dabry de Thiersant,[1129] who devotes thirty-five pages to what Plutarch terms these “engines of encirclement.”

If the Net proper, the barrage, and the fish fence sprang from the same parent,[1130] then in China the fish fences of bamboo, erected for catching and spawning purposes, should be included in the term Net.[1131]

If this be the case, the Chinese stand out as experts both in the diversity and the ingenuity of their devices. Passages from old Chinese authors justify this appreciation.[1132] They are too numerous for quotation here, but three or four seem worthy of notice.

The Chronicles of the Elders of Hsiang Yang set forth that the villages, when forbidden to catch the fine bream of the Han river, achieved their purpose by erecting a fence, probably of the same nature as that which in Lu Kuei-mÊng’s History is called Wei hsiao—“which name was taken from the kind of fence used to catch crabs.”

The Shan t’ang ?su K’ao describe the mÊng sou as a basket net, plaited of small bamboos: “The cover of its mouth was woven of bamboo splints: to it hairy and bristling bamboos were fixed: it gradually decreased in size from the mouth to the junction with the hairy and bristling bamboos (elsewhere, bamboos with whiskers) so preventing the fish from going out after they had got in.”

From the same source we learn that the mÊng chou resembled in shape a sieve. When the water became cold, the fish hid in it.[1133] It was used for fishing, but how it, the ch’u kuo, or the chao were used or found useful, deponent maketh not clear. But the hung, a sort of bamboo dam, holds the record. With but one of these the people of Ch’ien T’ang obtained during the Chin Dynasty a million fish a year, whence the name Wan chiang hung, or “the million-worker dam.”[1134] The Odes of Lu Kuei-mÊng tell of a bamboo fence 10,000 feet or about 2 miles long.[1135]

We read in the Kuang chou of baiting the nets with the whites of eggs. In the Ko Kai we encounter a method and a net, both of which to me, at any rate, are new and may be unique. The San ts’ai t’u hui states the ko kai was the net commonly called the kai-ou—literally “striking net.” It was an implement for taking fish out of a larger net. The kai-tou was brought down with force on to the larger net near the fish, which thus were made to rebound into it.

But the device, which the Ching chih ch’i wu lei describes and gravely explains, must act as the limit at once of our wonder and of our space. “Fishermen (we are told) used to put the hair of small monkeys on the four corners of their nets, by which means they succeeded in taking large numbers. It is said that the fish seeing the hair were attracted towards it, as a man to embroidery!”[1136]

The infrequent mention of what was probably the oldest fishing implement of PalÆolithic man, the Spear, admits of no satisfactory explanation. For some reason the Chinese seem to have employed the Spear-harpoon but rarely.

Pictures of fishing in T’u shu EncyclopÆdia (extracted from a work of the sixteenth century a.d.) confirm this view. If numbers be any test, the Spear found least favour—it is represented but once—while the Rod appears four, and the Net seventeen times.

Lu Kuei-mÊng, the Izaak Walton of China, in his book of the ninth century a.d., does, it is true, include spearing (ch’ai yÜ) with a four-pronged weapon among other fishing methods, such as shooting with bow and arrow (shÊ ch’ien) and driving into shallow water with the aid of a wooden rattle (ming lang) for stockade work. A curious variation of the spear-harpoon (hsien) was an iron instrument having at the end of a bamboo a cock’s spur, which was used for iguanas.[1137]

The Chinese were evidently familiar with our Otter, i.e. a line carrying hooks at short intervals, and fastened at either end. The Yo Yang fÊng t’u chi, a work of the Han Dynasty (about the time of the Christian era) expressly states that this method, with the line made fast across a river between two boats at anchor, accounted for many big fish.

But enough evidence has, I believe, been adduced to prove that the Sinitic piscator had little to learn of his craft.

He apparently lacked Oppian’s pantomimic but scarcely aromatic method of clothing himself in the skin of a she-goat, probably because he lacked its victim, the salacious Sargus. If he knew not Ælian’s pneumatic device of capturing the eel by the aid of a sheep’s bowels, he was no ignoramus of the habits of the MurÆnidÆ, for he watched carefully and waited patiently for air-bubbles, like a destroyer hunting German U-boats, to rise to the surface and betray the fishes’ lair in the mud, and then plunged home his depth-charge, or rather his bident.

Fishing by cormorant was unique and peculiar to China alone, according to Mr. Yen, who adds that “in our country it was confined to one family, the Liu.[1138] The fishes thus caught, however, are limited to those of small streams, unpalatable, and eaten only by very poor people.”

Few realise how great is the patience necessary for the training of an expert cormorant, or how good is the reward. These seemingly altruistic piscatores are taught to fish an area in flocks, and at a given signal return to their master with their prey, made unswallowable by means of a neck-ring. One boatman watches twelve to twenty of the birds, each one of whom, although hundreds may similarly be hunting the same water, knows its own master. If one seize a fish too heavy for him, another comes to its aid, and together they fetch it to the boat. More generally the ally (not unlike certain nations in history) hustles the weaker and despoils him of his catch, and of his titbit reward.

The barndoor fowl, whose hospitable warmth and credulity all the world abuses, usually hatches out the young birds, whose piscatorial propensities increase and accentuate on a diet of fish hash and eel’s blood.

A curious and vicarious manner of Indian fishing can be witnessed on the Brahmaputra. Birds of the cormorant family range themselves midstream in line, and advance towards a bank, making a prodigious pother by flapping the water with their wings. The fish, panic-stricken, flee to the shallows and even throw themselves on land. The birds, still in close array, pursue and gorge themselves on their penned-in prey.

“Now enter villagers,” who as soon as feeding ceases, rush to the bank and by drums, gongs, and every conceivable noise frighten the cormorants. Heavy from over-repletion, they have, before they can fly, to lighten themselves of most of their meal, which in due time provides the peasants’ supper! This method, if it does not appeal to the palate, possesses the merit of semi-poetic and retributive justice.[1139]

De Thiersant’s assertion that to the Chinese belongs the honour of being the first to invent pisciculture can only be allowed to pass, if the term be restricted to hatching out by natural means, bringing up, and caring for young fish. From this, pisciculture proper differs as chalk from cheese. Originated by RÉmy in the last century, it consists of artificial fecundation by the extrusion and mixture of the milt of the male and of the eggs of the female, the hatching out of the eggs on specially constructed trays of wire, etc., set in running water, and the nurture of the fry on specially adapted food in carefully prepared and graduated ponds.

De Thiersant himself, a few pages later,[1140] makes the point clear. Chinese fish-breeders do not resort to artificial fecundation, with which they were even in 1870 very faintly acquainted, for several reasons, not least of which was their contention that fish thus produced were predisposed to quick deterioration.[1141]

The Chinese (like the Roman) method of fish-breeding in the eighteenth century,[1142] and till 1872, consisted in gathering from collecting fences constructed for the purpose[1143] eggs which had been fertilised naturally. These were carried (sometimes hundreds of miles, for the secret of safe transportation had early been mastered) to ponds or streams for natural, not artificial hatching. The young fry were guarded carefully, and fed most watchfully.

Gray[1144] enumerates some of the many and minute precautions as to shelter and food. Rockeries were erected in the ponds to shelter the alevin from the sun. Bananas were planted on the sides and banks, because the rain which falls from their leaves during a shower promoted health. Forbidden, however, were all pigeons, whose dung was held hurtful, and also (contrary to our experience of the haunt of many and good fish) all willows, whose leaves were deemed inimical to the growth, even to the life of the fry.

“The earliest pisciculturist of ancient China,” states Mr. Yen, “was T’ao Chu-kung,[1145] who lived in the fifth century B.C. His method of fish culture combined both knowledge and ignorance. He dug a pond of the size of an acre, leaving nine small islands scattered about it. In one pond he placed twenty female carp, three feet in length, and four males of similar size. This was done in the month of March. Exactly one year later, there were 5000 fishes one foot long, 10,000 two feet long, and 15,000 three feet long. In the third year the number had multiplied ten or twenty times, in the fourth year it was not possible to keep count.”

While congratulating T’ao on the nimbleness of his enumerators and his success, and haggling not at the numbers (for the CypridÆ breed prolifically), both the disparity in growth and the similarity of the exactly graded variations in size of these, all yearling, fish are unto the practical pisciculturist a stumbling-block, which neither cannibalism nor luck of food can displace.

But to return to T’ao, or rather to his islands. “The nine islands were to deceive the fishes, who would believe that they were in the big ocean, travelling round the nine continents.” We may complacently smile at these fancies, but at any rate let us humbly recall the 2300 years we took to solve the problem of the generation of eels, and the fantastic theories propounded by Aristotle, by Izaak Walton, and others, some of which, e.g. the Cairncross, read as ludicrous as T’ao’s “Happy Isles.”[1146]

Fan Li apparently was the first to practise fish breeding not only in China, but in the world.[1147] Living in the early fifth century b.c. he antedates the Roman Varro, our earliest authority, by some three hundred years. He not only bred, but wrote about fish. But to brother-breeder and brother-writer of the present century like myself, the process as set forth in his Yang YÜ Ching (Treatise on Fish-breeding), is not only difficult to follow in detail, but sadly lacking in result.

As an example, take his method with the bastard carp, or Carassius pekinensis. “In order to breed from the chi fish, it is ripped up with a bamboo knife, and small quantities of quicksilver, mixed with river sediment, and yu-ts’ai are introduced into the belly. The fish is then stuffed with cabbage leaves, and hung up for forty-nine days” (note here, the time is pre-ordained, and alters not, as with us nowadays, with changes in the temperature of the water flowing over the eggs) “in an empty place, after which river water is used to extract one or two eggs from the belly. These are placed in water, and covered up with something, and after a while each egg turns into a fish.”

Such ingenious industry, coupled with no small expenditure on quicksilver, yu-ts’ai, and cabbage, deserved a far better return. Had Fan Li intelligently anticipated a method in vogue among his countrymen some two and a half millennia later, money, labour, time, would all have been saved. But as Rome was not built in a day, so centuries were necessary for the evolution of a method of fish-hatching absolutely (to me) unique.

“Not once or twice in its rough” world’s story must the ample, yet guileless, bosom of the domestic hen have swelled with anticipatory pride, and subsequent resentful curiosity, as the results of her “watchful waiting” emerged in guise of ugly ducklings, swans, or cormorants.

But of all the sittings to borrow her body’s warmth, the strangest and the most incongruous—after all, the ducklings were terrestrial, of a kith akin to her, and not aquatic and unregistered aliens—was that composed of hundreds of fish eggs!

Lest this last sentence seem to label me as a descendant of “the first pre-Pelasgian piscator” from whom, in Sir O. Seaman’s witty verse,

or lest it seem to disqualify me for the character bestowed by Alciphron on an angler, of being one “who would never even slip into misrepresentation,” I call no less a witness than Mr. S. Wells Williams, LL.D., late Professor of the Chinese Language and Literature at Yale College, and author of Tonic and Syllabic Dictionaries of the Chinese Language.

From page 349 come ipsissima verba:[1148] “The Bulletin Universel for 1829 asserts that in some parts of China spawn is carefully placed in an empty egg-shell, and the hole closed: the egg is then replaced in the nest and after the hen has sat a few days upon it reopened, and then placed in vessels of water warmed in the sun, where it soon hatches!”

De Thiersant, in his assertion that “from time immemorial it has been the policy of the Government and officials to protect fishing in every way,” and Mr. Yen in his that “our ancient classics mention the appointment, several centuries before the Christian era, of special officials to rule over and protect our fishermen,” indicate that a Board of Fisheries came into existence at an early date.

The Chou Li, or The Rites of the Chou Dynasty (c. 1000 b.c.) point distinctly to wardens being appointed for fishing purposes. We read, in fact, of an official staff, called Fishermen attached to the Imperial Court: “They were entrusted with the fishing appropriate to each season, and made dams for catching fish.”

Private fisheries, with some few exceptions such as the Imperial preserves, apparently were not allowed, or seem not to have existed. All waters were free and open to all citizens of ancient China. In modern times fishing belongs to the State, and licenses to fish, which are strictly limited in each canton, are obligatory. District magistrates are bound to care for and police the rivers: to put down fry in suitable streams: to enforce the laws, especially those dealing with a close time, and to permit no cutting of weeds in the waters during the spawning season.[1149]

The Emperors, especially the earlier Emperors, were keen all-round sportsmen,[1150] but especially zealous disciples of the craft of Angling. Like all good fishermen, they rejoiced in having themselves or sharing with their friends a good day. Sometimes their keen hospitality made them entirely forget, or turn a blind eye on their own ordinances. Even fear of the wardens attached to the Imperial Court, to whom was entrusted (according to the Chou Li) “the fishing appropriate to each season,” served not at times to stay their ardour.

Fortunately they were saved from themselves and from breaches of the law, as Mr. Werner shows in a sentence, which in manner and “superior man” strangely recalls Sandford and Merton, and Mr. Barlow. “It appears from edifying anecdotes that the pleasures of the chase, etc., were a snare to the Chinese monarchs, but they were seldom left without some superior man to keep before them the moral ideas of earlier days.”

That such was the case some 3000 years ago the story of one of the Chou Dynasty demonstrates. He was anxious in the extreme to go a-fishing with the Empress. None of his courtiers and none of his laws could deter him, although it was the fourth moon, when fish are spawning.

At last his great minister, Tchang-sy-pe, flung himself at the Imperial feet, implored him not to violate one of the most essential laws of the realm, and so set an example which, if followed generally, would destroy one of “the commonest and amplest staples of food.” The “superior man” succeeded. The Emperor, struck by Tchang’s reasoning, and perhaps by the enormity of his wrong-doing, immediately called the party off.

Another “superior man” later on saves the situation, and his monarch, also one of the Chou Dynasty.

This time we have no excuse of hospitality, no fair Empress before whose eyes our angler, as Antony with Cleopatra, wanted to display his prowess, or a new cast. No! he was “merely amusing himself”—think of the crime!—“by fishing in one of the Palace lakes.”

But alas! ’twas the fifth moon, when fishes were still busy breeding the nation’s common and ample staple of food. The line raised for a fresh throw was suddenly cut by the Viceroy, Ly-Ke. “What the deuce are you doing?” thundered the Emperor, aghast at the audacity of the act. “My duty,” quietly answered Ly-Ke. “All must obey the laws which you have bidden me enforce.”

The voice is the voice of Ly-Ke, but the sentence and sentiment smack of Mr. Barlow! Such, however, is the power of the “superior man,” that the contrite autocrat not only bestowed a present on the intrepid Atropos who shore his line, but commanded that its severed bits should hang for all to see in the ante-chamber of the Palace, as a warning to future ages.[1151]

Whether in ancient China a fish-god, such as Ebisu in Japan,[1152] or fish-gods existed, I have not ascertained, but in our day the fishermen on the southern coasts celebrate in spring or autumn a festival to propitiate the gods of the waters. An immense display of lanterns lights the path for a huge dragon, made out of slender bamboo frames covered with strips of coloured cotton or silk: the extremities represent his gaping head and frisking tail. The monster, symbolising the ruler of the watery deep, is preceded by huge models of fish gorgeously illuminated.[1153]

But whether the Sinitic Pantheon lacked or held a deity of fishermen, it was reserved for HsÜ, the hero of one of the stories in Liao Chai Chih I, to summon from the vasty deep and hold in willing peonage a piscatorial power all his own.[1154]

This djin of the water was both recognisant and static—no twelve-day banquets speeded him to Æthiopia—and far more instant in service than Hermes or Aphrodite, as Heliodorus and other epigrammatists plainly prove. Not infrequent must have been the occasions when Greek and Roman fishermen returning, despite their sacrificial offerings, with empty creels, met the taunt,

Had the fishermen of the Dodekanese and of Italy, following the example of HsÜ, poured oblations of the wine of the islands, or deprompted the old Falernian, perhaps the deities of their craft, who oft-times must have jibbed at repeated hecatombs of fish, even if “spiced,” and at the sight of the Olympian box-rooms littered with cobbled cobbles and torn tackle, would have been more regular in attendance and more prompt in aid.

The story runs that “every night, when HsÜ fared forth to fish, he would carry some wine with him, and drink and fish by turns, always taking care to pour out a libation on the ground, accompanied by the invocation, ‘Drink, too, ye drowned spirits of the River!’ Such was his regular custom: and it was noticeable that, even on occasions when others caught naught, he always got a full basket.”

The means by which this success was attained and other pleasant details are set forth fully in that delightful book by Professor Giles, Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio.[1155] Suffice it, however, here to recount that one drowned Spirit of the River, the genius of HsÜ’s beat, touched, perhaps even affected, by the alcoholic libation, at first invisibly, afterwards openly glided down stream, quietly drove the lower reaches, and shepherded the fishes towards our angler’s bait.

Like his Chinese brother, the British angler, when he goes a-fishing, carries a flask: unlike him, he does not, and cannot, unless he have the grand accommodation of a Loch Leven boatman thirty years ago, “drink and fish by equal turns.” Even if the difficulty of equal drinking turn by turn on the part of the sportsman and sprite be overcome, it is doubtful whether a British angler, however adaptive and alert to learn, can in these days ensure a full creel by adopting HsÜ’s tip, having regard to the scanty stock and prohibitive price of whisky. Whether in the near or even far future the recipe can be thoroughly tested lies on the niggard lap of the Board of Control.