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456 MANUFACTURE AND tSE OP
Let this passage be compared with the following, which gives
an account of the use of the same kind of net among the
Arabs. It will then appear how extensively it is employed,
since we find it used in exactly the same way both by our own
countrymen and by tribes which we consider as ranking very
low in the scale of civilization ; and on making this comparison,
the inference will seem not unreasonable, that the ancient
Greeks and Romans, wdio in several of their colonies in the
Euxine Sea, on the coasts of Ionia, and of Spain, and in other
places, carried on the catching and curing of fish with the
greatest possible activity and to a wonderful extent, used nets of
as great a compass cis those which are here described.
" The fishery is here {i. e. at Burka, on the eastern coast of
Arabia) conducted on a grand scale, by means of nets many
hundred fathoms in length, which are carried out by boats.
The upper part is supported by small blocks of wood, formed
from the hglit and buoyant branches of the date-palm, while
the lower part is loaded wuth lead. To either extremity of this
a rope is attached, by which, when the whole of the net is laid
out, about ihirt}' or forty men drag it towards the shore. The
quantity thus secured is enormous ; and what they do not re-
quire for their own consumption is salted and carried into the
interior. AVhen, as is very generally the case, the nets are the
common property of the ichole village, they divide the prod-
uce into equal shares*."'
That this method of fishing was practised by the Egj^ptians
from a remote antiquity appears from the remaining monu-
ments. The paintings on the tombs show persons engaged in
drawing the sean, which has floats along its upper margin and
leads along the lower borderf. An ancient Egyptian net, ob-
tained by M. Passalacqua, is preserved in the Museum at Ber-
* Lieutenant Wellsted's Travels in Arabia, vol. i. (Ornarn), pp. 186, 187.
t See Wilkinson's Mantjers and Customs of Ancient Egypt, vol. ii. p. 20, 21
see also vol. iii. p. 37. One of these peiintings, copied from Wilkinson, is intro-
duced in Plate X. fig. 3. of this work. The fishennen are seen on the shore
drawing the net to land full of fishes. There are eight floats along the top, and
four leads at the bottom on each side. The water is drawn as is usual in EgJT-
tian paintings.
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